Glen Beck and his rally for American Values:
What I find the most interesting and hypocritical of this movement is that these guys want us to ensure that everyone says the Pledge of Allegiance (written in 1891 and not mandatory for schools because the US Constitution prohibits compulsory swearing of allegiance), sing the National Anthem (written by Key in 1814 but not our national song until 1920's), singing “America the Beautiful” or “God Bless America” and now declaring the "Civil Rights for All" is not a political movement to return us to "historic traditional values of the founding of this nation and all the while slamming socialism as a bad thing.
Well all of the above were placed into our American cultural history, lobbied for as items of American identity and created to instill patriotic feelings in the American’s by Christian Socialists and the Social Christian Movements of the end of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. These guys say go back a read the history to know your countries origins; I cannot agree more. In fact, it is my contention that American’s do not know or read their history but rely on others like Beck, Limbaugh and other talking heads that spout ideas they like to give them the history they want to hear.
While agree with Beck that the historic foundations and processes that make this country great and have formed our national identity (warts and all) needs to be known by the citizens and taught in our schools; I know he would not recognize or be willing to accept the truth about our Founding Father’s motivations. Which I am sure he has not read or he would not be saying, “we are a Christian nation.” All one has to do is look at Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state;” Franklin’s feelings concerning “that damned book,” or Addam’s (John Q) legal argument of “not wanting to be part of any nation that persecutes one for their religion or a nation who espouses a religion as the faith for the populace.” Heck, Beck et al should just read the “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (aka The Jefferson Bible) to see the deist and socialist (though term socialist will not be around until early 1810 or so) nature of the late 18th century American movement. This movement that preached all laws to e maintained equally, all ideas to be voiced but supported by logic and debated by reasoned and educated people and that all of humanity be seen, protected and treated equally under the law, by the national government and those who reside within the borders.
We must stand up to these bullies, we cannot dismiss them as mere idiots or whack jobs. They are dangerous and corrosive forces at work in this country and are using rhetoric and tactics similar those used in the mid 1920’s in Germany, France, Britain and even the US by the Fascists to gain popularity, become a mass popular movements that threatened the freedoms and lives of us all. Of course in Germany those Fascists did more than threaten.
STAND AGAINST IGNRANCE, HATE and BIGOTRY but most of all we need to DEFEND OURSELVES FROM OURSELVES as we have become media consuming, uneducated, parochial, insular and isolated pockets of people.
