Stephen Lerner goes to The Nation to respond to the attacks Glenn Beck has launched on him:

What did I say that led Beck to spend two nights attacking me and defending big banks and Wall Street CEOs?

I think I may have found part of the answer in what disgraced former Wall Street stock analyst Henry Blodget admitted when he echoed Beck’s wild theories on Business Insider. Describing my remarks, he wrote, “Many Americans will undoubtedly sympathize with and support them.”

So that was it: Beck, right-wingers and Wall Street sympathizers went ballistic because they knew the ideas I talked about are far from being a secret leftist conspiracy; in fact, they’re in sync with the thinking of most Americans. In my talk, I raised a very simple yet powerful idea: that homeowners, students, citizens and workers should make the same practical decisions Wall Street and corporate CEOs make every day—they should reject bad financial deals.

Beck and Wall Street are terrified that regular Americans will begin to challenge the double standard that allows one set of rules for the rich and another for the rest of us. They are petrified of the growing understanding, among people of diverse political backgrounds, that our country isn’t broke; that the tiny elite at the top has manipulated the economic crisis it created to grow even richer and more powerful while the rest of us suffer the consequences; and that Wall Street and corporations, sitting on record profits, are holding the country hostage, essentially threatening a capital strike if they don’t get further tax and regulatory breaks.

As long as Wall Street and the superrich feel secure and confident, they have no reason to negotiate a fair deal with the rest of us. Only by creating uncertainty and instability for them—by disrupting unfair business as usual—can we build the strength to challenge their stranglehold on our economy and our democracy.