August
29th 2010
Posted under Politics & TEA Parties
87,000 showed up at the Lincoln Memorial for Beck’s rally:
Forty-seven years after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech,” Fox News host Glenn Beck stood Saturday close to the spot at the Lincoln Memorial where the civil rights leader called for racial equality, urging the nation to return to “faith, hope and charity.”
Now let me get this straight — Beck stands at a monument that deifies the man who transformed the voluntary union of States into a centralized behemoth, and invokes the legacy of a man tied closely to communists — for the purpose of restoring liberty and small government?
One of us is realllllly missing something.
Kirt Higdon on 29 Aug 2010 at 3:43 pm #
Idolatry of Lincoln and MLK are by now the main articles of credal Americanism. Many have tried to assume the mantle of these two and it would be hilarious if Glenn “the Buffoon” Beck was the most successful. It might also serve to discredit the cult, but that is probably wishfull thinking on my part. More likely, given the gullibility of the mob, it will just serve to empower Beck and his annointed, Palin.
BTW, where did the 87,000 number come from? Most estimates I have seen, including in the linked article, are far higher than that.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 29 Aug 2010 at 5:09 pm #
Kirt Higdon,
Like you, I’ve never been impressed by Beck. He’s always struck me as a snake-oil salesman. Instead of cutting a trail toward true liberty, he’s herding patriotic conservatives into the Federal corral.
Lady Val on 29 Aug 2010 at 6:23 pm #
Well, I certainly disagree with Beck regarding Lincoln and the “Black Founding Fathers” et al. ad nauseum, but let’s be honest here. Beck called out all of Obama’s socialist-communist-fascist types who surround him in the Brown House (or is that Brau Haus?) and certainly enlightened a whole lot of very ignorant folks about Coward and Piven and all of the rest. He connected the dots with Valerie Jarred and the Black Panthers, Jones and all the rest. Nobody else was saying squat about these connections when Beck made them and, again let’s be honest, made them in such a way that even the most ignorant and lazy could not help but get the point. He “outed” the unions and their connections with the Democraps and the Administration and also all of the financial mess involving Fannie and Freddie, institutions that most Americans were not even aware were agents of the government and not “banks”. So, again, let’s not dismiss Beck entirely.
Apparently, Beck is still holding to the mind-set of “the Greatest Generation” which was the last unquestioningly patriotic set of Americans albeit, their dishonest federal government did not deserve them. He really believes that Lincoln “saved the Union and freed the slaves” and that blacks in this country have suffered so badly that we whites should be grateful for the opportunity to give them justice – and everything else, apparently, including a pseudo history in which their race is more important than it actually was. At least I believe that to be the case.
I am very conflicted about Beck. He is, of course, a neo-con. Most who claim the mantle of conservatism these days are. And we know where neo-cons stand on all things pertaining to the South and the Confederacy (which they compare to Nazi Germany!) and to Lincoln. I don’t know if it’s possible to get things straightened out. Perhaps not, but we must be honest and at least acknowledge efforts and motives that serve the purpose of truth and liberty.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 29 Aug 2010 at 10:19 pm #
Lady Val,
I agree it’s important to support efforts that “serve the purpose of truty and liberty” — that is, as long as they truly do. Beck, on the other hand, is merely coopting what could be a genuine freedom movement into accepting the values and goals of the empire.
For example:
http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-neocons-love-mlk.html
Believer on 29 Aug 2010 at 11:01 pm #
HB2-I really dont know how to respond to your critisim of Beck other than to say that his endevour to bring accountability to our leaders and return America to traditional values makes him a candidate for a snake oil salesman. Your estimate of 87,000 makes me wonder if your a bit jealous that any one who preach’s traditional values can bring out so many, actual estimates are from 300,000 to much higher. My guess is that your political views revolve around the party who wants to legalize a certain drug. I actually enjoy most of your articles but try and contain your resentment of someone who at least is doing it in the name of traditional values.Beck like me believes that the only thing that will turn the country around is a return to the faith of our founders, if you disagree with that thats fine but as you will see in the coming years nothing short of that will work.
Sean Scallon on 29 Aug 2010 at 11:34 pm #
I found this on the Chronicles website but I think it aptly sums up Beck:
18 Comment by Joel Marshall on 27 August 2010:
Beck’s appeal to vague, utopian values is a symptom of the wider neoconservative mentality which leaves no room for cultural pessimism but seeks to readapt conservatism to the prevailing liberal paradigm. The aim of this philosophy is not to preserve any relics of the old world but to temper the new world by selling it old habits vulgarized by the rapping of a post-modern mentality. Idiocy and vulgarity sells well in the modern world and the sale of conservatism is no exception to this rule. While Glenn Beck is busy selling conservatives as the true heirs of equality, Megyn Kelly is lecturing about the revealing attire in PETA advertizements and at the same time wearing a miniskirt. Equality sells as well as sex.
Around the Blogosphere AKA Rule 5 Sunday | Political Byline on 30 Aug 2010 at 1:51 am #
[...] Glenn Beck is unclear on the concept [...]
HarrisonBergeron2 on 30 Aug 2010 at 5:58 pm #
Believer,
If 300,000 showed up to honor Honest Abe and MLK, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised — or envious. I was going by what seemed at the time the consensus of the news reports.
My point is that the ideology of the two men honored at this silly rally is fundamentally at odds with the goal of restoring freedom and reducing the size of government. Beck’s call for miltarism is the enemy of traditional values.
I am not a libertarian, either in upper or lower case. I’m a Southern traditionalist.
James on 30 Aug 2010 at 6:22 pm #
A civilization defines itself by how it remembers and re-lives it’s founding myths. The founding myth of the modern United States is the Civil Rights Movement. What happened is that the Left took control off all the major institutions in this country (media, government and especially the cultural institutions like academia) and forced a refounding, a redefinition, of the “meaning” of America. Since roughly 1965 this country has been understood as liberal, progressive, egalitarian social welfare state and with a civil society and a culture which holds as its highest principles “tolerance” and “diversity.” The pre-1965 America, including the original founding, is now seen through the lense of the 1965 founding myth which is viewed as either a fulfillment of what the Founders “really meant” or a “completion” of what they started but were unable to achieve. In either case, this is the “True” American, that of Washington and Jefferson was not.
That Beck would hold a rally in honor of MLK at the Lincoln Memorial shows just how much Beck accepts of the liberal, progressive version of America. He honors two individuals who did more than any to undermine the old and establish the new. He might disagree with that characterization, but the man, as we all know, is utterly confused intellectually. His supposedly “conservative” philosophy is rooted in, what, exactly? What he read this past week and is now talking about on his TV show? He is vacuous, shallow and superficial. It is as if we are watching an adolecent just beginnig to realize there is a world of ideas out there and every week they are excited about something new. First it was “libertariansim,” now its “honor and values,” next it will be, what? There is no coherent, consistent, thoughtful worldview at the heart of Glenn Beck. There is only impulse and fury, both of which he has every right and reason to feel these days, but he is not finding the answers is the right places. His history is confused. Anyone who paints a direct line from Jefferson and Jackson though Wilson to Nancy Pelosi is just messed up intellectually.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 30 Aug 2010 at 6:26 pm #
James,
“Anyone who paints a direct line from Jefferson and Jackson though Wilson to Nancy Pelosi is just messed up intellectually.”
Nicely expressed.
Captainchaos on 31 Aug 2010 at 2:41 am #
“He’s always struck me as a snake-oil salesman. Instead of cutting a trail toward true liberty, he’s herding patriotic conservatives into the Federal corral.”
And incessantly framing the issue as the central crisis of our age being big gubmint and not the existential crisis facing our race is not snake-oil? LOL! Jesus Crisper, Harrison, it’s not like you need to worry about scaring off a significant number of lemmings by telling them too much of the truth as only about, oh, twenty people actually read this blog.
HarrisonBergeron2 on 31 Aug 2010 at 1:55 pm #
Captainchaos,
Sorry we inflicted this wretched blog on you. I’ll speak to the site owners and stop them from forcing you to read and comment on it.
Hey, here’s an idea! Why don’t you start your own blog? You could delight the blogosphere with your insights on the entire spectrum of political issues, including race, and race, and from time to time, you might even want to toss in some hard-hitting rants about race.
At least it would keep you busy.
Captainchaos on 31 Aug 2010 at 11:24 pm #
I’ll let you in on a little secret, well, perhaps that is too strong a word, as I’m sure you were aware of it already, but apparently not aware of the full implications: we are Northern Europeans. Which means, that the type of civilization we have constructed, and at its best, regard as congenial for ourselves, is absolutely an expression of what we are essentially. To give not a care for what can only be the foundation of all else we cherish in this life is to have succumbed to not least superficiality, but also nihilism.
On the other hand, if you find yourself incapable of swallowing that, which may be for you an intolerably bitter pill, you could always relocate to sub-Saharan Africa. I don’t expect, given the right location there, you will be much bothered by overly intrusive gubmint, not to mention civilization.
RedPhillips on 01 Sep 2010 at 5:37 pm #
“as only about, oh, twenty people actually read this blog”
CC, our numbers don’t support that assertion, but at any rate a lot of “big name” paleos read this blog. So we have quite a bit of reach within a certain orbit.