@Gargamel,
Quote:seems to be conspicuously lacking any specific call to action.
Do you know what the solutions are? I dont think anyone has much of a clue at this point. The Tea Party so far is about "we are in trouble, and what we have been doing is not working, so we need to do something else". Organizing our collective efforts through the government has stopped working. What's next??
Our problems are so complicated and interconnected that the solutions can not be seen. That is not any reason to refrain from sounding the alarms, and demanding all hands on deck. The answers will not come from on high, this we now know for sure, the answers will come from the common people who have not lost their common sense. All are now called into action.
Fair enough, though I'm not expecting much. But you could have guessed I'd say that.
@Gargamel,
I dont know what to expect, but I do know that what Beck, Palin and the Tea Party have tapped into is real, and is growing rapidly. What concerns me is that so far there is no focus on the corruption which is being promoted by the corporate class, which has been the primary driver of the corruption that has ground government efforts to do good to a halt. We need to take America back, but we must be clear on who we need to take it back from, and I don't see this awareness currently.
@hawkeye10,
Hawkeye,
Do you really think that religious fundamentalism is the answer to whatever problems you see in the US?
@maxdancona,
Quote:Do you really think that religious fundamentalism is the answer to whatever problems you see in the US?
No, but I think stripping the elites of power and wealth, and recommitting to the sanctity of the individual and to the owning up to the responsibilities of the individual.....are. Beck I think uses the old spiritual language to call for individualism working towards the collective good only because that is all he has that will not sound socialist. I don't think one needs to believe in God to know what Beck is talking about, or to agree with him.
@hawkeye10,
I am currently thinking that Becks message is not primarily a religous or spiritual one, it is a call for the renewal of mid western American values....that which I was raised upon. I rarely stepped into a church while growing up, but I heard Becks message constantly and from every quarter as a kid. It resonates deeply in me, and with many others. When we are in trouble, with insanity apparently everywhere, the desire to pull back to what we know and to what we trust to be true and useful is extremely strong.
@hawkeye10,
Yeah riiiight hawkeye.
Beck and Palin are all about "bringing American back to God". Just listen to them, they will tell you as much.
Incidentally, the term "stripping the elites of power and wealth" is an awfully strange phrase for a movement that pushes economic policies that favor the wealthy. I suspect that either Beck or Palin would strongly object that phrase.
@maxdancona,
Quote:Incidentally, the term "stripping the elites of power and wealth" is an awfully strange phrase for a movement that pushes economic policies that favor the wealthy. I suspect that either Beck or Palin would strongly object that phrase.
I am a Zen socialist, so ya. As I have mentioned the movement so far is fundamentally flawed as they don't have knowledge of who the enemy is. All they see is the government doing them wrong, being wrong, they don't know yet who corrupted government, who is using government to the expense of the common man. I simply have faith that we will in time get there. I might be stupidly optimistic.
@hawkeye10,
I don't think that Beck and Palin are the Messiah you are looking for, Hawkeye.
The "hundreds of thousands" of people there were religious conservatives. This religious conservatives have been in bed with the corporatists since Goldwater. Beck and Palin are speaking their language. From what I have read from your posts, you don't really belong with them. I mean that as a compliment.
We need to take America back from the greedy monsters in most all big-business. The greed is unnervingly insidious as its tentacles reach out and into most all boards meeting in private, even into most Home Owner Associations. All the used-to-be responsible, those we thought were taking care of our money, have turned into crooks and shysters. They are so thick that there's no place to start.
@maxdancona,
Quote:The "hundreds of thousands" of people there were religious conservatives
THis we do not know. While the religious conservatives gave birth to the movement they have always claimed to aim to be much more inclusive, and I think that they are succeeding in building the movement by bringing in moderates. This is a fluid situation and most of the activity is off the grid, so getting a handle on who is curently driving the populous movement known as the Tea Party we cant be sure. It is even more difficult to predict the future.
I think that this election cycle most all of the votes will go GOP, but that is a short term tactical move...this Congress must be replaced because it does not represent the values of the Tea Party, and the fastest way to do that is vote the DEMS out. Doing so will also prevent Obama from doing any more damage. And then we see. Unless Obama has a come to Jesus moment after this election like Clinton did in 94 he has to go, and who the GOP picks will say a lot about where the Tea PArty is and waht they want. I am obviously hoping and expecting that it will be a Relative moderate with Mid Western Values.
I tried to watch some of the Beck rally. When it started off I got about 5 minutes into it and i had to shut it off because the stinking religiosity made me nauseous. But curiosity made me turn it back on. I got the the military tribute and was a bit relieved because I do support Obama and our troops.
Then it got all stinkin' religious again and I fell asleep when I woke up they were all still praising Jesus and retorting how they need to bring America back into the dark ages, again, and in total disgust and I changed the video feed and caught some of Rev. Al Sharpton's speech and it was not bleeding Jesus freaks putting on a show, but, he talked about about the homeless, affordable housing and health care for the poor and I though, finally, something I can believe in.
The republicans and Glen Beck are so out of touch it is a silly charade. Why didn't they have an atheist's opinion represented and "non Christianized" American Indians. It occurred to me that they don't give a hoot's behind about religious liberty, they just want to cram their Christian cross down the throats of American voters. This is not only insanely narrow and myopic but purely insulting. The next time they decide to stage a religious rally why don't they do it on public lands rather than federal lands? Maybe they can do it on the anniversary of when overly religious Christians burnt Joan of Arch at the stake.
Martin Luther King Jr's rally was about civil rights and the dream for black equality. Glen Beck reminded me of Jim Baker and his cheesy PTL styled Jesus freak programs.
Abraham Lincoln and George Washington would have spit or maybe even taken a whiz.. on Beck and his entourage of racist and religoio-zealot republican and tea party goons...
This rally was offensive to those of other faiths and I hope it is seen for what it is nothing but religious grandstanding by Fox News and their contributors. More racist insults and activity from the inherently racist Tea Party. The Republicans and Tea Party leaders bemoan and deny they are not racist, THEN THIS!
This Glen Beck rally was disgustingly appalling and I hope never to see such a religious rally of this type ever staged again so close to federal monuments. Such a rally, defacing a sovereign country that holds separation of church and state to be a most sacred and a collective value of free people, how insensitive. Perhaps we need an Islamic rally next weekend and they can force their beliefs on Christians... I say the American people of Islam have more taste and sensibility then do the Glen Becks of the world....
Faith hope and charity was Glen Becks epiphany theme, my ass! Why don't you practice what you preach Glen? The republicans did everything in their power to blocked universal heath care and could care less if a homeless person is ever fed, while, they suck up tax payer subsidies for their faith based initiatives and schools for radical religious folk. They are hypocrites! "And the greatest is CHARITY" you stingy tight wad big business tax the poor conservatives.
Before I though Glen beck was just an idiot and now I think he is both an idiot and a freak.
Glen made a point of mentioning "The Chosen People" at the beginning of his rally...Then later Glen had a black preacher from the south speak a sermon about a woman who was a gentile and she went to Jesus and Jesus called her a dog because she was not a Jew and she said even dogs are given the crumbs from the table. But not with these Republicans! They block unemployment benefits, health-care, abandon those in a storm (Katrina) and deny them even the crumbs from the table (social security) with their just say no policies. Hypocrite lip service... At this point even Jesus needs to take a whiz...
Religiosity? Good grief, I'm glad I didn't watch that.
Hitchens has that it is all about "White Fright"...it is about fright all right, but race has little to do with it. We get so used to thinking about race being central to everything that we tend to weave it into things that are taking place, assume that it is part of what is going on, even when it is not. The call to old time values is a call to values that were at the time shared by all, back when we still considered America to be a melting pot. The fact that at the time the pot was majority white and soon it will not be is not relevant, it neither shaped the values then nor motivates the call to go back to those values.
Quote:One crucial element of the American subconscious is about to become salient and explicit and highly volatile. It is the realization that white America is within thinkable distance of a moment when it will no longer be the majority. This awareness already exists in places like New York and Texas and California, and there have even been projections of the time(s) at which it will occur and when different nonwhite populations will collectively outnumber the former white majority. But it also exerts a strong subliminal effect in states like Alaska that have an overwhelming white preponderance.
Until recently, the tendency has been to think of this rather than to speak of it—or to speak of it very delicately, lest the hard-won ideal of diversity be imperiled. But nobody with any feeling for the zeitgeist can avoid noticing the symptoms of white unease and the additionally uneasy forms that its expression is beginning to take.
http://www.slate.com/id/2265515/
@hawkeye10,
hawkeye10 wrote:
Quote:what the hell was the rally actually about
stop sniveling, get to work, don't bother looking to government for solutions because government is broken, and let's massively shrink government now and get its interference in our lives stopped now. We are the solution, working together, not government and a lot of rules which are imposed upon us. Look inside yourself, you know what is right, then do what is right.
The entire point is that you idiots
don't know what's right. The fact is that the economic policies supported by the Tea Partiers are part of what got us into this mess...
Cycloptichorn
@hawkeye10,
That says it all, alright; we still have bigots and Napoleon schizos in this country who believe they are king ****, because they have a "following" of like-minded robots.
MLK's Son Carefully Marks Off King's Legacy From Glenn Beck
Quote:This weekend Glenn Beck is to host a "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial. While it is commendable that this rally will honor the brave men and women of our armed forces, who serve our country with phenomenal dedication, it is clear from the timing and location that the rally's organizers present this event as also honoring the ideals and contributions of Martin Luther King Jr.
I would like to be clear about what those ideals are.
My father championed free speech. He would be the first to say that those participating in Beck's rally have the right to express their views. But his dream rejected hateful rhetoric and all forms of bigotry or discrimination, whether directed at race, faith, nationality, sexual orientation or political beliefs. ...
Although he was a profoundly religious man, my father did not claim to have an exclusionary "plan" that laid out God's word for only one group or ideology. He marched side by side with members of every religious faith. Like Abraham Lincoln, my father did not claim that God was on his side; he prayed humbly that he was on God's side.
He did, however, wholeheartedly embrace the "social gospel." His spiritual and intellectual mentors included the great theologians of the social gospel Walter Rauschenbush and Howard Thurman. He said that any religion that is not concerned about the poor and disadvantaged, "the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them[,] is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial."
I pray that all Americans will embrace the challenge of social justice and the unifying spirit that my father shared with his compatriots. With this commitment, we can begin to find new ways to reach out to one another, to heal our divisions, and build bridges of hope and opportunity benefiting all people. In so doing, we will not merely be seeking the dream; we will at long last be living it.
In my opinion this guy Beck has gone off the deep end. His message may not always have been mainly religious but...
"The secret is God": Beck sees divine influence over his 8-28 rally
Beck said it was about reclaiming the civil rights movement. Frankly, that's bullcrap. I wonder when or where poor glenn felt oppressed or was forced to drive 100 miles out of the way to find lodging that would allow white people to spend the night. Dr. King's message is clarion clear and he wasn't speaking only for people of color...if any American is oppressed we have not been practicing inclusion. I find it laughable that milky white beck thinks he knows something about racism.
But honestly, what did Beck say at his MLK perversion rally that will ever be remembered. II can listen to the "I have a dream" speech and still get the same gooseflesh that I got as a little white Irish Catholic girl, listening with my parents.
My husband grew up in the deep south and lived and experienced truely dreadful treatment of African Americans. How he rose up in opposition to the mainstream treatment of non-whites is something that makes me love him forever.
I don't have a clue how people contributing to this thread experienced racism, but living in Maryland during the civil rights movement I saw and heard many things that made my heart heavy.
Regarding commentary after the revival meeting, I think it would be useful to read Courtland Milloy's piece from Sunday or Monday in the Washington Post. glenn beck is a frightening figure to me because he can influence those who mistakenly believe that this is a white's only, Mormon version or Beck's idea of Christianity country.
@glitterbag,
Quote:Beck said it was about reclaiming the civil rights movement. Frankly, that's bullcrap
Irrelevant. The audience ate it up, mission accomplished. Beck was right on the money, was in perfect pitch.
So what are you saying??? Horray, the American People are stupid? At Klan meetings, the members eat up as well.
