Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The Gathering of a Quarter Million Subversives

The fascinating result of an event in Washington that was organized by Glenn Beck caught my attention. The event was called "Restoring Honor", and was a gathering of a huge crowd in the Mall, led from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Checking out the theme of the event, I found it studiously avoided overt political rhetoric, but rather was about returning to the values upon which our country was founded and became great. As far as I can tell, Sarah Palin was the only speaker who flirted with the political line, with some unsubtle references to the current anti-constitutional government attitudes.

The Left is apoplectic. To them, it was nothing but a large gathering of angry white racists converging on Washington to express a shared hatred of the President.

The only problem is that nobody on the stage ever even mentioned the President, aside from Sarah's indirect references.

The event seemed mostly like a Christian Revival Meeting, exhorting everyone to rediscover their roots of faith, honor, family, responsibility. To find fault with that message and use name-calling against those who attended is pretty absurd and insulting. Not to mention the horrible aspersions being cast on Martin Luther King's niece, who was a prominent speaker at the event and has been shunned and destroyed by those who consider her a traitor to her race.

The President himself showed utter disdain for these folks and everyone else who shares their values. He dismissed us all by calling us a bunch of folks ginned up by Beck, then went further in his attempt to discredit a major segment of the population with a bad joke about walking around with his birth certificate plastered to his forehead.

The event itself gives me hope that perhaps enough folks have been awakened to the the left-wing agenda enough to undo that damage in November. But it also disappoints me to see the President so clearly dismissing and attempting to marginalize so many people for simply standing up and exhorting Americans to restore the greatness through reviving our own sense of honor and morality.

It was an opportunity for him to show leadership, but he failed miserably. What if he had said, "I completely agree with those who came to Washington this weekend, that faith, family, honor, and integrity are the most important qualities of Americans. I'm all for those who would remind us of those American qualities."

But his hatred for Beck and the conservative Christian Right he is helping to awaken trumps any ability to reach out to them.

So my hope is that change happens in November, that repudiates the Obama government and gives our country at least a chance to pull ourselves out of the terrible hole we're in.

No comments: