Last Saturday, conservative pundit Glenn Beck held a tea-party rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, on the anniversary of the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington.
Beck claimed he didn’t select the date intentionally, but has since said it was “divine providence” and stayed in the same hotel that Martin Luther King Jr. stayed in the night before the 1963 march.
On Aug. 28, 1963, between 200,000 and 300,000 people, mostly black, rallied on the Mall. It was here that King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
The march and King’s speech are defining moments in American history, marking a hard-won turning point in race relations. The following year, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, and then the National Voting Right Act in 1965.
At the mostly white tea-party rally, titled “Restoring Honor,” speakers Beck and former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin evoked King’s speech, and cited the Founding Fathers, in their calls to restore traditional values to America — with a strong dose of religion.
Beck entreated the crowd to pray more: “I ask, not only if you would pray on your knees, but pray on your knees but with your door open for your children to see.”
Civil-rights activists, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, held a counter-rally after the Beck rally, where speakers chided participants in the earlier rally for their “March-on-Washington envy.”
Frankly, it’s disturbing to think that Palin and Beck, who have likely never faced discrimination in their lives, can speak to thousands of people who have also likely never faced discrimination in their lives — and certainly never to the degree that was inflicted on African Americans in the past few centuries in the U.S. — and evoke King’s spirit.
Palin compared the tea-party group to the 1963 marchers, saying the same spirit that helped them overcome oppression, discrimination and violence would help this group too.
She should be reminded that, in 1963, marchers were seeking government support in obtaining “jobs and freedom,” whereas tea partiers want less government involvement. Sure, they want jobs and freedom, but they also want less taxes and more religion.
Unfortunately, their views don’t always reconcile.
Less government implies less government involvement in people’s lives and, yes, perhaps greater freedom to do what one wants.
But it also means government shouldn’t mandate religion (separation of church and state) or impose one religion’s views on everyone else.