Posted on 08/30/2010 7:01:13 PM PDT by markomalley
(CNSNews.com) – Conservative black leaders who participated in the rally hosted by radio and TV personality Glenn Beck at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday said the event honored the legacy and vision the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech on the same date and at the same place 47 years ago.
The event, the leaders said, was designed to honor people based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin, the very idea Dr. King spoke of in his speech at the Memorial almost half a century ago.
Alveda King, a niece of Dr. King, said the purpose of the rally was “to focus on honor and on the content of our character, and not the color of our skin,” echoing the words of her uncle’s famous speech of 1963.
“We’re here to honor Uncle Martin,” she said, surrounded by black clergy and gospel singers on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. King further said that her uncle would have approved of “Restoring Honor,” which was billed by Beck as a non-political gathering to honor America, Americans like King, and the military men and women who have made great sacrifices for the freedoms that U.S. citizens enjoy today.
Franz Kebreau, national director of the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of All Colors (NAACPC), told CNSNews.com that a counter-rally led by Rev. Al Sharpton, also on Saturday in Washington, D.C., was really a disservice to the slain civil rights leader.
“[Beck] is actually extending the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., which is fantastic,” Kebreau said. “You know, Al Sharpton should be here. This is where he should be. We’re trying to create a unifying effect, and create a unity.
U.S. Marine Eddie Wright, who lost both hands when his company was ambushed in Iraq and he was hit by a rocket propelled grenade, was a guest of honor at the 'Restoring Honor' rally hosted by conservative pundit Glenn Beck. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr) “We would love for him [Sharpton] to be here because we’re honoring Martin Luther King Jr.,” said Kebreau. “We’re honoring Frederick Douglass. We’re honoring the idea of looking at people based on the content of their character, and not the color of their skin."
On Friday, Aug. 27, Rev. Sharpton criticized Glenn Beck's rally, saying, “They have the right to rally. But what they don’t have the right to do is distort what Dr. King’s dream was about.”
Tim Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, told CNSNews.com that the presence of King’s niece and many other black leaders showed that Al Sharpton’s statements about Glenn Beck’s rally were unfounded.
“I think the fact that Alveda King is speaking right now disqualifies his statements,” Johnson said. “Obviously, it’s interesting to me that Al Sharpton hadn’t thought about doing anything commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech until Glenn Beck had this idea he was going to be restoring honor, so I don’t really give much creed to what they’re trying to do on the other side of town.”
Beck, who hosts a conservative political commentary show on the Fox News Channel, has said that he did not purposely plan the rally on the anniversary of King’s 1963 speech, but instead wanted to hold a rally about God, patriotism and to honor the U.S. military.
Black leaders who attended the rally said people responded to Beck’s call because his goal is to unify people around their common values and beliefs.
“Well, all I can tell you is that Glenn Beck is a great American and he’s representing all of the people of America,” Bill Marcy, a congressional candidate from Mississippi, told CNSNews.com. “Reverend Sharpton, like many, are divisive and are trying to separate America.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (Library of Congress/Wikipedia Commons) “But folks here only see one color and that’s the color of America,” Marcy said. “And red, white and blue is our favorite.”
William Owens, who is one of the leaders of the Tea Party Express, told CNSNews.com that Sharpton’s “Reclaiming the Dream” rally, which started at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., and was scheduled to arrive at the mall at about 1 p.m.--the slated end of the Beck event--was actually the event that would have offended King.
“I don’t know if [Sharpton] had it planned already but that’s really an insult to Dr. Martin Luther King--for him to choose to commemorate the one he says he speaks for by doing the very thing that Dr. Martin Luther King would not stand for,” said Owens.
An unidentified man donned colonial garb for the 'Restoring Honor' rally on Aug. 28, 2010 at the Lincoln Memorial. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr) “Dr. Martin Luther King’s message was not about government taking care of black people,” Owens said. “It was about government ensuring equality for all people. And that’s what this represents. It represents equality.”
In fact, Owens said, if King were still alive he probably would have attended the Beck rally, not Sharpton’s counter-rally.
“I really don’t understand why Al Sharpton would take such a position and seek to discredit something that Martin Luther King would be sitting right at the front row,” Owens said.
Hundreds of thousands of peaceable, well-informed, independently knowledgeable citizens of the United States voluntarily assemble themselves in their nation's capital, and their President views them as being "stir(red) up" by "someone"?
How arrogant and insulting!
Does he view them, as he must have viewed the thousands who attended his campaign rallies, as just ignorant puppets who can be yanked around by "someone" like himself or Glenn Beck?
What does this say about the honor and sincerity of the man who sought and holds the office of President of the United States?
Can anyone imagine any one of the first four Presidents holding such a view of a peaceable assembly of 300-500,000 of his fellow citizens?
Informed citizens are the bulwark of liberty for a nation, and they should be considered a treasure. Here are quotations from two Founders and former Presidents. Note the tone of their comments regarding the need for the kinds of citizens who attended Saturday's event in Washington:
"I do not think it for the interest of the General Government itself, and still less of the Union at large, that the State governments should be so little respected as they have been. However, I dare say that in time all these as well as their central government, like the planets revolving round their common sun, acting and acted upon according to their respective weights and distances, will produce that beautiful equilibrium on which our Constitution is founded, and which I believe it will exhibit to the world in a degree of perfection, unexampled but in the planetary system itself. The enlightened statesman, therefore, will endeavor to preserve the weight and influence of every part, as too much given any member of it would destroy the general equilibrium." --Thomas Jefferson to Peregrine Fitzhugh, 1798. ME 10:3
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278
"If Caesar had been as virtuous as he was daring and sagacious, what could he, even in the plenitude of his usurped power, have done to lead his fellow citizens into good government?... If their people indeed had been, like ourselves, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer would be obvious. 'Restore independence to all your foreign conquests, relieve Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome, consult it as a nation entitled to self-government, and do its will.' But steeped in corruption, vice and venality, as the whole nation was,... what could even Cicero, Cato, Brutus have done, had it been referred to them to establish a good government for their country?... No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and their people were so demoralized and depraved as to be incapable of exercising a wholesome control. Their reformation then was to be taken up ab incunabulis. Their minds were to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and deterred from those of vice by the dread of punishments proportioned, indeed, but irremissible; in all cases, to follow truth as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another in endless succession. These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure of order and good government. . . . --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819. ME 15:233
"An enlightened people, and an energetic public opinion... will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of the government." --Thomas Jefferson to Chevalier de Ouis, 1814. ME 14:130
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787.
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789.
"Whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, the people, if well informed, may be relied on to set them to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789.
From James Madison:
"Although all men are born free, and all nations might be so, yet too true it is, that slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant – they have been cheated; asleep – they have been surprised; divided – the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson?... The people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it."
"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea."
Most of our U.S.Citizens are thankful and glad!
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD:.....”(Psalm 33:12a)
“Let everything that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.” (Psalm 150:6)
Of course, the muslim in chief is on the wrong side of this one too. He ignored the Restoring Honor rally just like he is a christian.
The left has worked really hard to rewrite history to conceal the fact that Dr. King was a Republican, that LBJ launched an FBI smear campaign against him, and that the Dixiecrats in the KKK much revered by Dems such as Byrd lynched both Blacks and Republicans at roughly a 3:1 ratio because Repbulicans actually believed and defended, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . “ and totally agreed with his dream for a time when all people would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
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