Restoring Honor Rally 8.28.10: Part 2, Reflections

It has been a week since the rally in Washington DC, enough time to reflect on the experience, the speeches and the message. The overall theme, as promised, was lifting up the value of honor. Why?  Because as we look around in these United States today, honor seems to have been lost.  From our presidents, accused of everything from corruption to lechery, to citizens who drive cars with bumper stickers touting that their kid kicked your honor student's ass and everything in between, we have as a nation seem to have chosen guttural behaviors over courtesy, mutual respect and rewarding merit.  Standards have gone out the window.  Everyone gets a trophy.  Effort and achievement are no longer held up as qualities to which to cling and aspire.  Honor, like integrity is about doing the right thing, even when nobody is watching.  It comes from within and is not always the easiest path to follow. But it is with such qualities that our country was founded and with which it shall be saved.

The rally started with a slide/video presentation with an inspiring narrative by Glenn Beck. We then all stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance.  I chose to say it as it was originally written rather than with the addition of  "under God" that occurred during the McCarthy era. It actually flows better and makes sense in its original form: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."  I don't think that anyone around me necessarily noticed my omission. Appropriately, after the Pledge, we sang the National Anthem.  Hearing thousands of voices young and old, on key and off, raised and reverberating in and around the trees was pretty spectacular.  I stopped singing a few times so I could listen and my heart was filled with overwhelming patriotic pride. It was the first of several times during the three hours of rally that my emotions ran high and tears came to my eyes.  After that, Glenn came out to make a few opening remarks, setting expectations and ultimately introducing the speakers.


Since the rally was also a fundraiser for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation (http://www.specialops.org/), the first couple of speakers spoke of the organization which ensures that the children left behind when a Special Forces soldier dies in battle, get a college education. One of the leaders of the fund spoke as did a mother of one of the recipients. 

Sarah Palin spoke next as a mother of a soldier. (Watch the video of her speech here: Sarah Palin "Restoring Honor" 08/28/10) Bringing forth living examples of people who live honorably and lifting them up as true heroes was a most touching part of the rally.  Stories of soldiers who get the job done even when they are severely injured, or go above and beyond to make sure their fellow soldiers are rescued and safe always work to pull at my heartstrings. When each of the three soldiers whose stories we heard were introduced, there was thunderous applause to greet them which was palpable.  As Ms. Palin's speech was winding down, and she was talking about the qualities that these men were made of, that our founders were made of, she reminded all of us present, "You have the same steel spine and the moral courage of Washington and Lincoln and Martin Luther King. It is in you. It will sustain you as it sustained them." 


Next, Glenn came out and talked about the original Purple Heart which was commissioned by George Washington to reward soldiers for merit above and beyond the call of duty.  Back then, it had nothing to do with being wounded and everything to do with achievement.  Then, three awards were bestowed: one each for Faith, Hope and Charity. Recipients were chosen by Glenn as best fit representations of each value.  Each recipient's story was told by someone who knew them well and how they lived their lives, and each are shining examples of how we can live and make a difference in the world. 


After the Faith, Hope and Charity awards came Alveda King, niece of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I do not like this woman. I found it misplaced that she insists on being introduced as Dr. Alveda King when her doctorate is an honorary one.  To me this is disgraceful, and diminishes the value of title as well as the effort, struggle, and hard work of those who actually EARN a PhD.  During her time on stage she spoke some and then introduced singers who then performed inspirational or patriotically themed songs.  When the last song was finished, Ms. King gave her speech, which was way too evangelical for my tastes.  Hers was also the only one to get political, the only one to play the race card. I did not need to hear her pro-life views. I disagree with her on that. The choice to keep or end a pregancy is between a woman and a man, her doctor, her God if she has one, and her conscience.  It is something that should never be politicized.  I also vehemently disagree about her desire to have prayer in public [sic] schools. In order to truly maintain freedom of religion, we must be absolute in the interpretation of separation of church and state.  But the most unconscionable phrase of the entire day was "I have a dream that WHITE privilege will become HUMAN privilege..."  This was out of line and far from the spirit of the day and also because as it was said usurping the use of her uncle's "I have a dream..." message.  This was the lowest point of the rally, at least for this observer.  You can hear it here: Alveda King at Restoring Honor

Finally, it was time for Glenn's speech. (Watch it here: Glenn Beck Keynote Speech, Restoring Honor Rally 08/28/10) It was filled with imagery and inspiration.  He spoke about the monuments and memorials around him and how we were surrounded by giants.  He spoke of the reflecting pool and how it was a reminder for us to reflect the values of courage, sacrifice, duty and honor of those men, the very giants who were there immortalized in stone. He pointed out that they were ordinary men who did the hard thing and that we are made of the same stuff... that one person CAN change the world.  But the thing that got to me more than any other happened closer to the end during Glenn Beck's speech when he talked about his sureness that in the crowd there was an 8 year-old boy or girl who would become the next George Washington and when he recited a speech which means as much now as it did when it  was delivered on November 19, 1863 by then President Abraham Lincoln on a battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania:  

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

As the crowd dispersed, Jo Dee Messina took the stage for 20 minutes or so of patriotic songs, including America the Beautiful, one of my favorite national hymns. Many of us sang along as we made our way back towards the train station and our buses. There is something special that happens when people join together in meaningful song.  When it happens, music becomes like connective tissue bringing all those within its reach together with a single common thread of song.  It fills the heart, lightens the soul and with it comes hope.


I left the rally very honored that I was able to experience it.  What I heard from the stage cemented in me the notion that politically I truly am a Libertarian, and most definitely NOT a Republican.  What I saw and overheard in the crowd somehow strengthened my sense of atheism.  That second one was odd for me, considering the God-centered message I knew about going in.  Perhaps part of me was hoping that I would have some sort of religious experience to restore my once-held belief.  Though I walked out without regaining belief in a divine creator, the event did restore faith within me; not in an unprovable unseen force, but in people and what may be possible when the right kind of leader appears. I am happy with that. 

Note: To see my pictures from the day go HERE