Posted on 08/30/2010 6:26:59 PM PDT by Kaslin
Grass Roots: The president says he didn't watch any of Glenn Beck's "Restore Honor" rally on the National Mall. That's not surprising. Democrats and the White House haven't been listening to the people for awhile.
Whistling past the political graveyard looming for his party in November, President Obama dismissed the crowd gathered to hear the Fox News pundit, telling Brian Williams of the NBC Nightly News, "It's not surprising that someone like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of (the American people) ... "
He dismissed this crowd just as he and his party dismissed the "angry mobs" that descended on health care town meetings wanting to know why their government no longer wanted to hear their voices or seek out the consent of the governed. Those people were also said to have been "stirred up" by political opponents and conservative talk radio.
This genuine grass-roots movement was dismissed as "astroturfing" by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others. But their anger did not have to be manufactured. It was a quite natural response to a government that is bankrupting their children and grandchildren as it spends money we don't have on things that don't work.
"Mr. Beck" didn't manufacture the people on the Mall. He merely has given them a voice and a focal point, and a reminder that we are endowed with inalienable rights from a higher authority than any gaggle of senators and representatives. "We the people" assembled on the Mall, not an angry mob stirred up by rabble-rousers.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
So no mention on Hannity TV tonight; he interviewed Sarah-she did not mention the Mall event at all.
On talk radio, Dennis Prager mentioned Beck a lot; Hugh Hewitt radio-—barely a mention; Tom Sullivan on radio-nothing.
Perhaps he didn’t watch any of it, nonetheless he is supremely aware of it, as are all of the democraps.
The Great One has no clothes.
Ping
I noticed that and wonder if maybe theres a bit of professional jealousy going on there? Let’s see if it comes up with the panel.
Ignoring us and Beck and calling us names is all to our advantage.
Speaking of ignoring Beck. What is with Hannity?
He did not even give a passing note to all the patriots who showed up. And he even interviewed Palin without bringing it up.
Pretty shocking and sad.
Nothing, not any adversity short of death, will keep me away from the voting booth in Novemeber. It is my hope that every like-minded conservative, libertarian, constitutionalist, and freedom-loving American will feel the same. With that, we will begin the process to reclaim the United States as the founders forsaw it.
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."
"Virtue in the people"==now, isn't that what the 300,000-500,000 peaceful citizens were urging on Saturday? And, if so, why doesn't this President recognize their value to liberty?
Last week on the radio, Hugh Hewitt suggested for people not waste their money on going to Glenn’s rally, but send the money to the Republican party instead. I was disappointed in Hugh.
Friday, Hannity suggested for people who want to win in Nov. to go to a real tea party, not a one person tea party. Again, I was disappointed.
As Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
1994, Democrats?
I’m really getting fed up with much of the infighting, for lack of a better word, amongst most of the conservative talk radio. Most of whom are on the same page 95%, if not more, of the time. I know you have ratings to worry about, but when you talk about all of “us” coming together despite our differences for a greater cause, please do the same.
Some radio personalities like Hannity, and you too Mark Levin (yeah I said it!), tend to get really petty about this stuff and it does nothing more than divide and give aid and comfort to our common enemy: Statists.
Thanks for the ping.
“Speaking of ignoring Beck. What is with Hannity?
He did not even give a passing note to all the patriots who showed up. And he even interviewed Palin without bringing it up.
Pretty shocking and sad.”
I’m pretty sure that the TV personalities at Fox are under orders to tread very carefully here, because the line between political endorsement and broadcast news could get very murky. This is sort of uncharted territory.
That IS SAD!!!!!! Think it is time to FREEP HANNITY!
Methinks Mr. Hannity may be just a wee bit jealous of Mr. Beck.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.