The Glenn Beck Restoring Honor Rally in Washington, DC, Saturday, was an outright incarnation of a ministerial revival meeting. It was a specific call to seeking greater numbers (in effect, converts) to join a cause centered on God. Speakers preceding Beck referred to him as a son of God, with no one that I heard later or Glenn Beck, himself, refuting that, in effect accepting the mantle of not only a Jesus-like figure, but Jesus himself. As far as my understanding of Christianity, that is heresy. It was a call to action to restore Christian values in concert with the way supposedly America's founders had in mind for America. God and American flags were dominant.
However, one has to understand that those original American values included genocide of Native Americans with survivors contained on reservations, slavery of Blacks, treating women as chattel and granting the most power to the largest landowners - hardly representative of freedom which was preached over and over during the rally. Any rational person understands we are now a more free society now than in those days.
And, if the rally was a call to Christian values and a uniting of people, a logical call would be to rally around our president - our elected leader and a practicing Christian who has made his agenda bringing people together by governing from the center, trying to represent even Republican positions like his healthcare program which is essentially a copy of Republican Mitt Romney's healthcare program enacted in Massachusetts. Plus, he has a former Bush Secretary of Defense, as his.
This president inherited an economy in free-fall, on the precipice of another Great Depression. He can rightly be credited with averting a depression, with now positive GDP numbers and unemployment nowhere as bad as the early 30's. However, it is also clear that the recovery is fragile. So, logically, since he has had initial success against Depression, it would be wise to support or at least compromise, not completely resist what he wants.
The main reason for the economic collapse was the bursting of the Housing bubble - so it is understandable for now that Housing-related jobs would be difficult to have now - we are unwinding an over leveraging of the public. In such a shortage of private jobs, it is only the government which fill the need temporarily and wisely concentrate spending on investments which will eventually return more than they cost, like education, alternative energy, etc. See my post on the JosephOppenheimInvesting blog about our economic crossroads.
Back to the rally, the rally was very misleading, they were seeking everyone to join the cause. However, there was no mention of what about those who choose not to join the cause. It can be inferred that Beck, etc would view these people as either Godless, people who don't believe in freedom, etc and worse yet from his perspective, believing that government serves a purpose in helping the vulnerable. So, understanding what Glenn Beck has presented himself before the rally, this was a call to Far Right conservative positions. This political group doesn't really believe in freedom, not just because they seem to restore our founders' values, but would use the government to persecute Gays, people who are pro-choice and other such dissenters from his views. This fundamentalist religious fervor is reminiscent of what has happened in Muslim countries where some fundamentalist Muslims, like the Taliban and al Qaeda, blame hard times in those countries on Muslims not being religious enough Muslims. When you add to the mix of Glenn Beck, etc values, they include vigorous NRA supporting gun rights and strong militaristic positions like the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan despite the huge cost of such militarism while also advocating extension of tax cuts to the very wealthy which not only is fiscally irresponsible but also further divides our nation, further shrinking the middle class so we approach a nation of haves and have-nots, with little or no government help for the have-nots.
So, I see this rally as a danger sign, for a Far Right, fundamentalist agenda which does seem worrisome for the political direction of America. This was a call to very bigoted values not just aimed at believers, but a hatred of non-believers, which is at least half of America. To underscore the bigotry, sitting behind Glenn Beck was Reverend John Hagee who has denounced the Catholic Church as "the great whore of Babylon" and has said hurricane Katrina and its devastation on New Orleans was because of God's wrath that New Orleans had a Gay pride parade the week before.
