Although the Washington media elite would like nothing better than to dismiss those who attended this past weekend’s Glenn Beck rally as single issue “racist Tea Party” folks, I think what transpired on Saturday left them smarting and scared to death about November. Chris Matthews and others tried to marginalize the event in an interview with my good friend Colin Hannah, but Colin got the last laugh when hundreds of thousands of regular, small government, God-fearing folk descended upon Washington, D.C., like a couple from North Carolina who stayed at my own house during the weekend who came specifically for the event.
The Pattons own a dry cleaning business and work hard all week to build their business in a tough economy. Lord knows they could have used the rest rather than drive six hours each way to Washington to stay just one night. But they, like most of the others who came to the nation’s capital, desperately wanted their elected officials to hear their angst and to understand the seriousness of the situation. They came to reaffirm the nation’s fidelity to founding principles, both from fiscal and social issue standpoints.
The Beck rally was supposedly just about the economy, but the end result was a revival of sorts. It was regular people joining each other to pay homage to their God and to show love for their country. All of those ideas work in perfect harmony because it is from this same perspective that our nation was founded by similarly brave men and women.
I think George Washington summed up the message Saturday when he said in 1789:
The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained. – George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789