OK, So Three Hours of Beck Can Get a Little Slow
Nobody landed with a parachute. Nobody took off in a balloon. And where was (were?) Up With People? I only watched on the tube, but at about the two-hour mark of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally I was wishing Beck's liberaliberatiosyndicalarian enemies were right: Where's Mussolini when a crowd needs him?
The Daily Caller's Jon Ward gives a very straightforward review of a very straitlaced rally:
Arguably, the energy in the country that drove so many people to attend the rally came from concern about government spending and debt, as well as its size and its growing involvement in the private sector and individual lives. But Beck, who is a Mormon, titled the Saturday rally "Restoring Honor" and used that theme to talk about the need for Americans to return to God themselves as individuals and live upright, moral lives.
"If we want our country to survive, we must begin to look within ourselves," Beck said. "To restore America we must restore ourselves."
Beck's presupposition was that America is at a crisis point and its citizens are in danger of losing their power for self-government because they have grown lazy and apathetic and allowed it to atrophy.
My two cents adjusted for inflation of unconstitutional fiat currency: I didn't see anything objectionable in the degree or type of religion on display. You may have different ideas about the structure, function or establishmentarian nature of the mall. Aesthetically, Beck might have done even more diversity in the guest list, but I'd guess he exceeded analysts' expectations anyway. The race card is off the table for the rest of this hand. And private money was raised for soldiers who have served this country in two very long wars. So the haters must linger in suspense, as the Glenn Beck self-immolation watch continues.
The National Park Service no longer counts crowds, and apparently AP doesn't either:
"The crowd — organizers had a permit for 300,000 — was vast, with people standing shoulder to shoulder across large expanses of the Mall."
Los Tiempos de Nueva York starts out with a thumb in the eye and doesn't get any friendlier. Tim Carney has a link-rich refutation.
And I was interested to learn that Tom Jones, who carried a hod before his singing career took off, has returned to honest labor, and that he blames Bush:
Tom Jones, who owns a small landscaping business in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said an awakening has occurred in the country, though he described something more civic and cultural than religious.
"We were all up on our cloud nines. Had our flat screens. God bless America. Support the troops. We didn't know nothing. We didn't read our Constitution," he said. "Then things started going awry, during the Bush administration. Then Obama came in."
Take it away, Tom:
