Glenn Beck has kept up a steady refrain of railing at President Obama's putatively radical socialist philosophy and his goal to "fundamentally transform America." While Obama had largely ignored this, the president struck back last week, challenging his detractors to prove he's a socialist.

"I can," replied Beck, kicking off a 15-minute look at what he called Obama's "foundation," the people who shaped his life from an early age. Before dubbing the president's parents, grandparents and mentors radical socialists, Beck took great pains to explain he was not denigrating Obama's loved ones.

I want you to know that I'm by no means attacking his family. In fact, I think after five minutes, you will feel like I now do: Really sorry for little Barack Obama — the boy, not the man — because of the tragedy of parents that seemingly placed radical politics over everything, including this cute little boy.

From there, Beck pulled no punches, calling Obama's father "a committed communist," and charging his mother "may have been a practitioner of 'critical theory' — Marx to the extreme." By the end of Beck's determined analysis, he argues the question of whether Obama is a socialist is akin to the question of whether Bill Clinton had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky--in other words, proven beyond a doubt.

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