Oh? He is? Ohhhh yippeee! People, SOCIALISM really is coming! And we don't even have to do the hard work of figuring out how to convince the working class that they have nothing to lose but their chains because there is a commie in the White House and he's got it all figured out for us! Wheeew! That is a relief! :)
But seriously, I didn't doubt that Van Jones was a former radical. But you say "is". So where is he really at politically now? According to the wikipedia page, true or not, he is now simply a liberal advocate of "green capitalism" (excerpt pasted below).
It really is silly how Beck and others conflate radical left with mainstream liberal, and weave these facts into some sinister conspiracy theory about some coming big end event where we all end up in the gulag. It would be funny, and it is, if not for the fact that I sometimes wonder where this lunacy will take people.
Check out this collection of Beck rantings from only the past week (video embedded in the blog post).
Sheldon
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/28/773752/-Full-Mental-Beck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jones
By the late 1990s, Jones began promoting capitalism as he transformed into an environmentally friendly capitalist. He emerged as one of the foremost champions of green business, entrepreneurship and market-based solutions. In his 2008 best seller The Green Collar Economy, Jones contended that invention and investment will take us out of a pollution-based grey economy and into a healthy new green economy.[19] Jones wrote:
[W]e are entering an era during which our very survival will demand invention and innovation on a scale never before seen in the history of human civilization. Only the business community has the requisite skills, experience, and capital to meet that need. On that score, neither government nor the nonprofit and voluntary sectors can compete, not even remotely. So in the end, our success and survival as a species are largely and directly tied to the new eco-entrepreneurs — and the success and survival of their enterprises. Since almost all of the needed eco-technologies are likely to come from the private sector, civic leaders and voters should do all that can be done to help green business leaders succeed. That means, in large part, electing leaders who will pass bills to aid them. We cannot realistically proceed without a strong alliance between the best of the business world —and everyone else.