Ultra-conservative Paul Ryan and Glenn Beck put their little heads together for a few minutes to let Beck's listeners know that "progressivism is a cancer" that desperately needs to be "flushed out."

About halfway through their powwow, Ryan starts rambling about how the German intellectuals in Wisconsin where he grew up were the genesis of Progressivism and so he understands just how evil it truly is, and how it "threatens the American ideal."

Paul Ryan is a Congressman who makes my teeth grind when he doesn't even try. While he smiles and plays the fresh-faced eager-beaver Alex P. Keaton type lawmaker, he's really just as deep in the tank of the teabaggers and Birchers as any I've ever seen. He champions driving a stake through Medicare, ending Social Security, and handing out undervalued vouchers so Americans can reduce the cost of health care.

Paul Ryan is driven by the almighty dollar and little else, but he's very, very good at what he does. His almost-casual mention of "German intellectuals" in his argument about why progressives threaten the American ideal has Lee Atwater snickering somewhere in hell, I'm sure.

As my friend David Badash says, cancer is cancer. Not progressivism.

(h/t StopBeck)