THE SUCCESS OF THE BECK RALLY

The Conservative Revolution vs America's Ruling Class. We are unique! Speaking humbly, to be a small part of this historic ground-swell is exciting, and a bit frightening at the same time. The Tea Party movement has grown to monumental proportions because America has had enough of 'Dirty Politics', and it's not going to take it anymore. There was a culmination of this movement in last year's 9-11 March on DC, and again in the 8-28 Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

We have seen elected officials scoff at their own people, and rule against them, time after time. We have seen our own government sue one of our sister states, for simply attempting to protect themselves in the same manner laid out by our federal government. We have heard too many times our nation is arrogant, we are a nation of cowards, we are no longer a Christian nation, and that America is a mean country.

We have had enough!

The liberal press is just frothing at the mouth to lay blame on someone -- anyone, but they cannot. This movement doesn't need a leader, it comes from within -- which is why all the venom and the vitriol they throw at us only gives us strength. What makes me perk up is the little phrase "Reagan Was Right", and the values for which he stood. They keep us on the right path, holding our timeless founding principles in the light where they belong, and God back in to our country.

Putting the DC rally in perspective is an excellent piece by Jeffrey Lord in American Spectator: (Loved it)

The Success of the Beck Rally
by Jeffrey Lord - August 31, 2010

I love watching Glenn Beck on TV.

Day winding down, he makes so many good points. As someone who has spent a lifetime studying history, been there in government and politics, I find it great to watch Beck's particular insistence on educating Americans about real history that has gone missing. Having long ago learned first hand the progressive-race connection, for example, by having lived for a couple years in Woodrow Wilson's hometown, I am stunned to see someone have the wit and the chops to detail this particularly disturbing history of America's "progressive" president on popular television.

Bravo.

So I watched the rally on C-SPAN.

And you know what? (He says gently…)

I was elated -- and concerned.

Elated because putting together something like this is no day at the beach. Beck clearly worked his heart out on it and so too the Tea Party folks and all manner of others. It was a triumph. A huge success and Beck deserves congratulations for it.

If I may raise one concern.

Believe it or not, I found this event to be a bit of an intellectual muddle.

After considerable amounts of time doing a superb job on his television show analyzing American history -- from early American religion to the Founders to the Progressives -- and managing to draw a television audience of amazing size with all this, it was almost as if there was a bit of indecision as to what to say at this rally. Was this politics? Or religion? Or something else?

In truth, I wasn't sure. There's a difference between spot-on political assessments of "social justice" and being Billy Graham. Of urging people to political action -- and religious action. Oddly, this is one of the reasons (in reverse) why Beck opponents in the world of liberal religion have lost members: they have presented themselves as religious leaders yet behave as if they were secular politicians. Beck seems to be struggling with being a secular talk radio commentator -- or the Reverend Glenn.

There's nothing wrong with either. But the latter, per se, seems not what he was about all of this time up until now.

FOR REASONS THAT HAVE nothing to do with Glenn Beck -- television, the celebrification of America, the eternally human tendency to be attracted to powerful personalities -- it is critical to remember that events of this nature are not about the speakers but the participants. Martin Luther King's famous speech will be remembered forever -- but it will be remembered because the American people understood how to bring about racial equality for all Americans using the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Principles King spent a career discussing.

In other words, while the headlines go to a King or a Beck -- it is in fact the principles and the millions working to make those principles a reality that are always the real story.

But if the leader is well-intentioned yet unclear, well, muddle ensues.

The 2010 election is not about personality X,Y or Z. With the greatest of respect to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, both of whom I like, neither this election -- nor any other -- can afford to be about Glenn or Sarah or Newt or Rush or Sean or Mark or the Tea Party or Rand Paul or Sharron Angle or Alaska's Joe Miller or anyone else.

Is God part of this election? Yes, as always in American history. Beck is fond of quoting what originally came from Lincoln, saying that it's not important whether God is on our side but whether we are on God's side. But having well and powerfully established himself as a man of politics, Beck seems to be going elsewhere. True? Untrue? No idea.

Conservatives would do well to remember that this election is simultaneously about none of the above -- and all of the above. It is about millions across America who are totally un-famous beyond their church, their village, town or city, their service club, their school, their military unit if serving.

The 2010 election -- and every day we all draw a breath -- was correctly summarized centuries ago by Edmund Burke when he spoke of the principles at stake in a "partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born."

The Beck rally, says Beck, was about prayer. About God. And God generally supplies the help. As John Fund reported over at the Wall Street Journal, the grass roots nature of this event was evident as hundreds of Tea Party members buckled down to do the hard work of making the event and other events associated with it actually happen and run smoothly. But the Tea Party as it has emerged has presented itself as a political movement concerned about economics and politics. Not a religious faith.

The conservative movement's success comes from, among other things, the very fact of its messiness. Burke never said it wouldn't be messy. It is totally uncoordinated, filled with vibrant personalities who are busy blossoming in their own way that is not someone else's way. To which one can only say: Amen! This is a central strength, never a weakness. Beck says the rally to him was about God and, with his brigade of 240 ministers and awards for Faith, Hope and Charity, he added a distinctly unique flavor that is his. Some watched and saw a direct connection to politics. To each his own.

Ronald Reagan never ever saw himself as anything other than what he was his entire, mature adult life -- an advocate for timeless conservative principles. The reason conservatives celebrate the life and presidency of this mortal human being was his thorough, in-the-bones understanding of the fact that the principles are timeless -- even if individual humans are not. To be a Reaganite is to take Reagan's lesson to heart.

Liberals are out there just going crazy waiting for Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or any other prominent conservative to take a fall -- so they can turn around and say to the country: "See? It doesn't work. It's all about them." Turning himself from talk radio and TV commentator Glenn to Reverend Glenn will surely be seen by some -- if in fact that's what happening -- as just such an opening.

If Glenn Beck hasn't yet figured out where he's going with all of this, all the more reason for conservatives to stay focused on principles.

Beck has to know this. He comes across as so remarkably open, educating himself and his audience as he goes along. This is what surely accounts for part of the enthusiastic response from his audience. So too does Sarah Palin get it.

But whether Americans see the Beck rally as a rally about God or a rally about American politics, without doubt what is also at play here is the absolute rebellion that is taking place across America. A rebellion of which Beck and Palin and Newt and the call for God are symptoms but not causes. The American people in 2010, not at all unlike the American people in 1776, have had it. As Angelo Codevilla has so devastatingly captured in his forthcoming book on America's Ruling Class, beyond any one issue they are simply done with the arrogance that is the "dismissal of the American people's intellectual, spiritual, and moral substance." They are done, more than done, with the self-selected class of their fellow citizens whose "principal article of faith, its claim to the right to decide for others, is precisely that it knows and operates by standards beyond others' comprehension."

THIS REBELLION HAS BEEN COMING for a very long time. Surely the 40-plus years of yanking God out of every public school and square plays a role in this upheaval. Take a good look around.

One of the most successful books in the last year has been Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.

What's particularly interesting about Levin's book is that it was written before the election of Barack Obama. Which is to say, that Levin understood exactly the continuing conservative revolution -- and that it was not, as its critics of the moment wishfully insisted, dead. A prediction made with some regularity since at least the day after Barry Goldwater's 1964 defeat.

On the contrary, the success of conservatism can be measured in multiples of ways, Levin's book sales but one.

Let's take Levin's own talk radio field. Rush Limbaugh is in a class all by himself. The story of his success is both personal and a tale of conservatism's genuine popularity. His influence as he patiently and entertainingly explains principle in terms of daily events is simply unmatched. There are others behind Rush, from Sean Hannity to Levin to Beck and so on. Each with his own unique style. America knows these people well.

Which means something in the real world of 2010 politics.

Has anyone paid attention to the success of Sean Hannity's Freedom Concerts? Here's a guy who spent his vacation-less August trekking from city to city putting on star-studded musical extravaganzas at the rate of two a weekend from Atlanta to Las Vegas to San Diego and Dallas to Cincinnati to name just a few locations. Sold out crowds. Tens and tens of thousands of people. Millions of dollars raised for a charity, the Freedom Alliance, which in turn has used its funds for, among other things, the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund. A program to help educate the kids of those who were disabled or lost their lives in the military. Hannity pays for chunks of this personally. And the concerts are always presented with the help of Alliance co-founder retired Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and a cast of hundreds.

Does no one think this means anything politically? That there's no message from all those people who show up to cheer on Hannity as he sings (sort of!) "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with Charlie Daniels fiddling away? Of course there's a message, and that message is about principles. Conservative principles.

Does no one really get the Sharron Angle story? Here is a conservative struggling in her Nevada primary race against more establishment, better-known and financed Republicans. Suddenly she is lifted from obscurity because Levin has taken up her cause -- and now she is the designated terror that Harry Reid is trying to use to scare Nevadans into giving him yet another endless term? Even as Reid's son tries to claim the state's governorship? Of course there's a message here -- a message about conservative principles.

Does no one understand the role of talk radio -- alongside Sarah Palin -- in Joe Miller's apparent lead over the establishment incumbent GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski? Yes, indeed, once again it was Levin at work. Levin plunged into Arizona, and took up the cause of McCain opponent J.D. Hayworth -- losing. But the loss is beside the point. The real point is Levin's understanding that these races for conservatism are won state by state, district by district, one vote at a time, doing the nitty-gritty of hard work all across America.

IT HAS BEEN BEYOND BREATHTAKINGLY foolish for liberals to take a look at the Tea Party movement and shut it out, dismissing the participants as just a bunch of racist, ignorant Nazi-loving nuts. Aside from being insultingly and deliberately bogus, it was mind-bogglingly stupid. A year ago I spent some time in the small town of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, while Senator Arlen Specter was conducting one of those now-famous raucous town hall meetings on health care. The astonished police told me there were at least 1,000 people outside on the streets. I spent time talking with those in the crowd. They were from all across the state. They had taken time off of work to drive to Lebanon. They came on their own. They did not, they made it clear, come because of anyone on the radio or television. They were mad. Furious about what they saw as, in the President's words, an attempt to "fundamentally transform" their country from a set of constitutional principles to some sort of statist utopia.

All of this hot success -- the conservative books, the talk radio shows, the summertime Beck rally and the Hannity concerts, the ratings of Fox News and the prominence of publications like the one you are reading -- combined with the Internet -- are in the process of bringing forth the next chapter in a serious philosophical movement that features a veritable universe of stars past and present discussing in Burkean fashion a timeless set of principles.

From the Edmund Burkes, John Lockes, Adam Smiths and Abraham Lincolns to a Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and on and on right down to, as was said in the famous Longfellow poem of Paul Revere's ride, "every Middlesex village and farm" -- the conservative revolution flowers. And yes, Beck is correct to include early American religious leaders in this long chain.

Make absolutely no mistake.

Glenn Beck is doing his thing, which only he can do and do well. This is no slam at Beck. It is just an expression of, well, not understanding where he's going with this. Those half million on the mall with him are now part of this chapter of the Conservative Revolution. Whether they were showing up for God or America or tax cuts or to support the troops, whatever it is or was is having an impact. And so too the thousands who showed up at Sean Hannity's Freedom Concerts are part of all of this. Yes, don't forget the people who bought -- and continue to buy --- Mark Levin's book. Or Laura Ingraham's or Ann Coulter's or Michelle Malkin's or -- yes again -- Glenn Beck's. Not to mention who those who voted for Sharron Angle or Joe Miller or conservative candidate X. Or those who tune in faithfully to Rush.

But never forget that the real hero here is, well, you. Or, as Beck might have it, the children of God.

The average American who gets out of bed every single day and raises a family, goes to work, pays the taxes, serves in the military or in some fashion is the driving force in their community.

And the average American is now in open rebellion from coast to coast. Against a ruling class bent on social engineering when they're not busy erasing American history.

The message is timeless. The principles sound. They are colorblind and reject attempts to divide by race, class or religion. And yes, they do have a core that comes from a Judeo-Christian heritage

America, as Ronald Reagan use to say, is an idea. You can move to England yet you will never be an Englishman. You can move to France but you will never be French. But anyone can become an American (legally!). And once here, a realization takes hold, as Levin quotes Reagan in his book.

"Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

Conservatives, Levin noted in his book, need to get busy.

If the Beck rally, the Hannity concerts, the talk radio and Fox ratings, the book sales and the intensity factors of every poll out there are correct -- conservatives are busy.

Millions of you. All at the same time. All in your own way. God's children one and all.

To borrow from James Carville: It's the principles, stupid.

Can you say Amen!


Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.

MEDIA WATCHDOG HAS NO BARK

Back in the day, the media was our watchdog.  It kept all phases of government honest, and hence was under constant scrutiny and intimidation.  Freedom of the press has been hard fought down through our history, and a welcome sight at our door each morning.

Times have definitely changed, and none more obvious that this past year.  The Heritage Foundation writes:

Media Watchdog Has No Bark
The Heritage Foundation, September 15, 2009

In the age of Obama, the media formerly known as mainstream can remind one of 19th century British literature. Pride and Prejudice sometimes, of course, but more often a favorite Sherlock Holmes story, Silver Blaze. In it, the famous sleuth has the following exchange with Inspector Gregory:

Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”

The media, you see, used to have something called a “watchdog” role in this country, by which it was understood that they worked for society and protected it against those in power, preventing abuse. But as with the Sherlock Holmes case of the “dog that didn’t bark,” old traditional media such as the New York Times, network television, National Public Radio and PBS, are not doing much, if anything, to keep those in power in check. For that today, one has to rely on blogs and popular outlets such as FOX News. In fact, FOX News gets labeled as conservative for merely fulfilling this obligation.

The New York Times, for example, ran zero—that’s right, zero—stories on Van Jones, the Obama Administration “green jobs” Czar before he was forced to quit last weekend. It was left to investigative reporting by conservative bloggers, amplified by FOX News, to reveal that Jones had signed a petition accusing the Bush administration of allowing 9/11 to happen so they could have a pretext to wage war on Iraq. This was a man with real power and real budget authority. In fact his department’s budget nearly doubled the total annual budget for NASA. But not only did the New York Times or the networks never devote any resources to investigate, even after the revelations of his obvious instability came to light, the traditional media outlets sat on the story.

Much, much worse, has been the silence on ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the community shakedown artists for whom President Obama worked with when he was a community organizer. ACORN also has real power—it was going to work with the Department of Commerce on the 2010 Census—and receives tens of millions of dollars annually in tax payer money.

It was left to a couple of 20-somethings working for the new BigGovernment.com site to break omerta on ACORN by releasing videos of ACORN employees conspiring to help avoid taxes for a criminal enterprise. Thanks to these new media types, last night, in an 83-7 vote, the Senate voted to strip all funding of ACORN from the transportation housing and urban development appropriations bill.

Why didn’t the old media report on Jones, or ACORN? Where was 60 Minutes, or 20/20? And where are all the old media on the tea party protestors? Why do they keep denigrating them, emphasizing how angry they are, or how they are unrepresentative of the public? When was the last time tens of thousands of people showed up on the steps of the Capitol, less than a year after an election, to speak up against out of control federal spending? Many across all sides of the spectrum are taking note. One of the left’s sharpest minds, Camille Paglia, observed in an article in Salon last week that:

Too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web—both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights.

No wonder that, according to Pew Research this week, two thirds of Americans do not trust the media, the lowest ranking ever. And no wonder that Glenn Beck, the FOX commentator who went after the Jones story, gets 2.6 million viewers every day, while his closest competitor at the same time slot gets 600,000 on a good day.

The old media is busy keeping the administration accountable—the Bush Administration, that is. NPR this morning had another long piece on the investigations into Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft. Trouble is, the Bush administration is no longer in power.

In the case of the dog that didn’t bark, the pooch stayed silent because it was friendly with the man who committed the transgression. Today the left has all the power, controlling the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the media in all the above-named outlets are acting like adoring supporters. Is that the reason this watchdog isn’t barking?

Democracy, Thomas Jefferson believed, could only survive if the populace was informed, and that, he believed, was the job of newspapers. Thank God, at least, for those media still doing their jobs.