Glenn Beck rally, not bad

Glenn Beck recognizes the power of and right to freedom, and everyone can admire him for that. He’s off track when he sees a conspiracy of “progressives” out to destroy all that is good, but at least his line of questioning makes people think. And it forces the powerful to explain what exactly it is they think they’re doing.

Beck’s rally two days ago in Washington, D.C., was impressive for its passion and its numbers. Whether it was 87,000 people, as CBS claimed (citing a company with no experience in crowd estimates), or more than 200,000, as others estimated, it was big. And it reflected a national uneasiness about a government that seems to treat our biggest problems by simply making those problems bigger.

Beck this year moved his politics deeply into the world of religion. Though the evangelists love him for this, I think he’s gone too far here. His new crusade is likely to turn off Tea Partiers, who are more libertarian than devout, and many other independents, who want a separation of politics and piety.

That said, if Glenn Beck can muster the faithful in the defense of freedom, amen.

Frank Warner

Comments

[CJW]

Religion? Which religion? It's not about any one religion. It's about the Creator.

If you had bothered to watch any of his Friday shows, which most of the time go back into history and the founding fathers, you would see Beck is merely going back to this country's roots and how the founders came to the constitution. It was all clearly "God" based.

"Progressives" are in an ongoing battle to dismiss the constitution. Rather than hold to that sacred document, they choose to go with case law that bends as you go rather than depend on the constitution. The progressives started that crap in the early 20th century, with Harvard getting lots of credit for amping it up. But, for more details, watch Glenn Beck and the history experts he has on his show-- or don't and just criticize his conspiracy theories regarding those who say they are "progressives" or "liberals" or leftists or Democrats who all want to depend less on the document that is the Constitution and more on what they can get activist judges to pronounce regardless of what the intent of the constitution was/is.

[Spooky D]

You are one of the dumbest commentators I've read on the internet; all the studies done have found that the Tea Party is overwhelmingly made up of conservative Christians.

[CJW]

>> one of the dumbest

Who else is in that category?

[jj mollo]

Does anyone really know what the Tea Party is? Can we even say that the party is a single coherent entity? For one thing it has changed a lot since this post was originally written. At least some libertarians have loudly abandoned the party as being "too religious". Some populist politicians have, on the other hand, muscled in on the party to ride its momentum. Whatever these blowhards say about the party, or supposedly in its name, is taken as gospel by the Press, but that's questionable. Would you say that Pat Buchanan was a legitimate representative of the Reform Party? Party consistency is hard to maintain in the best of situations, but in the US it seems to be impossible.

[CJW]

The Tea Party is not even a party-- it's a movement.