Thoughts on the Rally to Restore Honor

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According to the preliminary official estimate, the Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” today drew under 100,000 people. The Million Man March may have fallen far short of its eponymous goal, but it still drew about four times as many as yesterday’s rally, and the MMM did not have the benefit of more than a month of free advertising that the “liberal” national media (I’m in Nepal and I read about this rally half a dozen times). Note also that the 28% of the country considers themselves tea partiers is quadruple the percentage of the country who are male African-Americans (and less than .1% who were followers of Louis Farrakhan, that event’s organizer). How far does the tea party’s deep passion really extend beyond bitching through e-mails and on Facebook with like-minded friends? Perhaps not far, but the only real question is whether they are passionate enough to make it to the ballot box. Unfortunately, I think that the answer to that is almost certainly yes.

Overshooting was one of Mr. Beck’s mistakes. The arrogant and insulting co-option of Martin Luther King was another. If he were more interested in expanding this movement than in bolstering his own celebrity, he would have realize that no moderate American could not take seriously that he was “taking back the civil rights movement”. Perhaps the biggest mistake, though, was the title. President Obama has plenty of critics with their own valid opinions, and plenty of others who, I think, do not grasp just how badly things were going for our country 18 months ago. Most of his critics, however, realize that he is not dishonorable. And I think that is the main thrust of the current opposition—trying to paint the President who is somehow not fit to be where he is. In a way, it is a refusal to accept Democracy; you are not one of “us” and we are the “real Americans”, therefore, your leadership is illegitimate. Indeed, the most virulent find the President unfit to be an American or a Christian. From his “pulling up from the bootstraps” background, to his idyllic family life, to trying to do right in the position he has reached, most Americans know that this is not a dishonorable man. Painting someone unfairly will ultimate create sympathy for them (see “Fahrenheit 9/11”).

No one ever called the 19th Century “the American Century”. The people in D.C. this weekend want to restore the America of 120 years ago. That’s not an exaggeration. That is a proud objective of the Beck bloc, the Ron Paul bloc, and at least a third of the Supreme Court. The 20th Century was a great one for the United States. For God’s sake, we all know that, right?

The country was thrust in bad directions for eight years. If you thought that it could be fixed immediately, you were listening to the Obama Icon, not the words coming out of his mouth. To move this country forward, we need a Congress who supports the President’s sound agenda. Please everyone. Vote in the mid-term elections.

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