Glenn Beck missed the best date for his "Restoring Honor" rally.
Best date: August 20.
August 20, 2010 was the 83rd anniversary of the "Day of Awakening" rally held by some self-appointed super-patriots in Central Europe. Their 1927 rally (the fourth in an annual series) was designed to inspire a restoration of national self-respect at a time when the super-patriots believed their nation had "renounced the protection of its values." The 1927 rally's other great purpose—like Beck's rally this weekend—was to restore lost pride in the nation’s military and those who served and fought: "Suddenly an ordinary military band begins to play, then the sleeper awakes from his dreams and begins to feel himself a member of a people that is on the march, and he marches along."
The great rally was organized by people in a movement (which had turned into a party) who believed that their "entire struggle is a battle for the soul of our people." They knew to the core of their beings that they were fighting against the same sort of dishonoring influences as Beck and his allies on the right believe they are fighting today in America: The forces of an elitist, power-grabbing socialist left which had (has) taken control of the federal government; a confused public that had (has) been lied to and tricked into electing a government inimical to their interests, hostile to their values, and indifferent to their voices; and an increasingly dangerous internal "enemy among us” (among them) that did (does) not share the values of the true citizenry and was (is) encroaching on the hallowed ground of the true nation, desecrating its soil, robbing the homeland of its former honor and glory.
The keynote speaker of the day told the crowd that the nation "wants a leadership in which it can believe, nothing more."
Listen for these themes on August 28th at Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally.
The 1927 rally was titled “The Day of Awakening” – five years later, in 1936, the ninth annual rally of a series begun in 1923 was held; it was called “Rally for Honor.” That rally, like the others before it starting in 1927, was held in Nuremberg.
The notion of restoration is an old and recurrent theme for the ultra right. It always plays on fears that the “real people” are being squeezed out, that “we” are losing “our” nation, that “our” values are being disparaged, that “we just want our nation back.” The ‘others’ who threaten ‘our’ way of life are…well, they’re ever-changing: The “International Jew”, the socialists, the intellectual elite, the feminists, the Blacks who don’t realize that Martin Luther King was really all about color-blindness, the Muslims who want to desecrate ground we suddenly and arbitrarily decided was (selectively) sacred. Often the contaminating other is simply conjured out of fevered imagination: Do we know who it is that Beck thinks need to be reminded to honor our veterans and rebuked for not valuing their sacrifice? Who is it that he believes soiled our honor; when exactly was it lost?
Well…
It is this very impulse to look back to a “lost honor” that is the hallmark of revanchist rightwingers everywhere and throughout history. And for present day America, it is an ironic perversion of a core American value: to instead look forward to a fulfillment of our highest aspirations, to recognize the defects of democracy, to listen to the voices of dissent naming the promise not kept, to follow those who would lead us toward a shared overcoming of ourselves and the realization of what we may be.
Thomas Jefferson articulated this core American outlook:
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As
that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of
circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as
civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Think about that phrase “barbarous ancestors” next time you here some self-appointed guardian of the pure soliloquize the Founding Fathers, the next time you see Beck weeping over an image of George Washington. The new cult of veneration of the Founders contradicts—and contradicts precisely—the spirit of the revolution in which we were born.
Which is to say, the posture of the teaparty is antithetical to the values of the revolution it seeks to mimic. Which is to say, the spirit of Beck’s rally—beyond being a desecration of the memory of King—is patently un-American.
Yep. Two taboos in 750 words: I’ve called Beck and his followers unamerican and I’ve associated Beck and his rally with the thugs of 1927 Germany. And I meant it.
And…Oh, yeah…Of course they have a right to free speech and everything, it’s just that…and so forth.
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