A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Beck’s Rally

I imagine most of you have heard about the "Restoring Honor" rally Glenn Beck held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial last Saturday.   If you read the newspaper, or Time Magazine, or watch network news, you probably heard that a bunch of white conservatives got together to bash Obama.  This wasn't the case.  At all.

Jonah Goldberg of The Los Angeles Times and National Review has a brief, splendid piece on the 8/28 event that I found at RealClearPolitics.com.

An excerpt:

One striking feature of Saturday's rally was how deeply religious and ecumenical it was. It seems like just yesterday that everyone was talking about how Christian evangelicals were too bigoted to vote for upright and uptight Mormon Mitt Romney. Yet Christian activists saw no problem cheering for - and praying with - the equally Mormon but far less uptight Beck, who asked citizens to go to "your churches, synagogues and mosques!"

The inclusiveness transcended mere religion. While the crowd was preponderantly white, the message was racially universalistic. That was evident not just on the stage, but in the crowd as well. When Reason TV's Nick Gillespie asked a couple whether as "African-Americans" they felt comfortable in such a white audience, the woman responded emphatically but good-naturedly: "First of all, I'm not African, I am an American . . . a black American." She went on to explain how "these people" - i.e., the white folks cheering her on - "are my family."

I confess, if Beck wasn't a libertarian, I would find his populism worrisome. But his message, flaws and excesses notwithstanding, is that our constitutional heritage defines us as a people, regardless of race, religion or creed. Is that so insulting to Martin Luther King Jr.'s memory?

I concur with Mr. Goldberg's assessment in that Beck, while susceptible to over-the-top emotional outbursts on his show, is genuine in his desire to see a predominantly religious nation restore many of the Judeo-Christian values that we've lost.  How about you?  Did you watch any of the coverage?  Did you even hear about the event before this blog-post?