I have to be honest. Apart from the recognition of the tremendous sacrifices made by our Special Forces, I wasn’t particularly moved by the Restoring Honor event. I really didn’t hear much that I hadn’t heard before. I mainly attended because I like being around people with whom I share common values. That’s pretty much the reason most people attend events like this or the 9/12 march–not to see celebrities or hear a particular person speak. The turnout was huge and that made more of an impression on me than most everything that occurred on the stage.

I think my feelings are largely due to the fact that the part of me that wants to celebrate honor is less energized than the part of me that wants to root out and defeat dishonor. Beck bent over backwards to make the event non-political but I believe the larger part of me wanted it to be political. Without the politics, it felt like a big, watered down mega-church gathering.

The left-wing histrionics that broke out across Twitter and the blogosphere portraying the totally benign event as some racist or Nazi-like enterprise have ceased to anger me because that sort of thing has become pathetically transparent. Those people are trapped in a vicious cycle. They preach tolerance but they are so filled with hate for conservatives that they must project their own hatred on to the conservatives in order to rationalize it with the peace-love-and-harmony cover story they’ve sold themselves. Their tortured reasoning is simple bigotry. They believe that conservatives are deserving of their hatred because they hate conservatives. Like any bigot they lack the capacity for self reflection or the humility to consider another’s opinion before condemning it. As Chesterton said, “Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.” Any thinking person who read of the nonsense being said and compared it to what actually took place recognizes this to be true. I’ve long since ceased to care about the opinions of those who won’t, can’t or otherwise don’t think.

Speaking of people who don’t think, by a twist of fate I was still hanging out on the mall when the “reverend” Al Sharpton arrived with his marchers. I wasn’t close enough to see any of the signs they were carrying but I was able to hear some of their silly chanting. The chant’s included the following:

Glenn Beck doesn’t speak for me.

Clearly this one precisely captures the sentiments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His “dream” was all about protesting radio talk show hosts who hold rallies about honor, faith, hope, and charity.

Frankly, Glenn Beck doesn’t speak for me either. Glenn Beck speaks for Glenn Beck. I speak for myself. My attendance at his event is not a tacit endorsement of everything he says. That these folks chose to follow Al Sharpton under the assumption that Glenn Beck speaks for everyone at the Restoring Honor rally leads me to believe that they feel that Al Sharpton does in fact speak for them. That tragedy speaks for itself.

The people

United

Will never be defeated

This one clearly leads a thinking person to wonder several things. Who are “the people?” The American people? Black people? White people? With whom are they “united” and who is trying to “defeat” them? At what endeavor are they not going to be defeated?

No justice

No peace

This one gets chanted quite often at left wing protests I’ve witnessed. On one level I agree that peace is difficult to attain without true justice. The chant however seems to be a threatening message of violence and civil unrest if the group perceives some “injustice.” Coming from people who let Al Sharpton speak for them, this sentiment is disturbing. What they may see as an injustice may not truly be an injustice (e.g. the Tawawna Brawley hoax).

Reclaim the Dream

This one is puzzling. Reclaim what dream and from whom? As I recall, the dream expressed by Martin Luther King Jr. was not the sole property of any one group of people. That was sort of his point. Unless someone has convinced these marchers that the “dream” is holding an event at which only one race is welcome, this chant–which was also the title of Al Sharpton’s event–makes little sense.

Having been there to witness the end of Sharpton’s march, I also happened to run across some of the nattily attired New Black Panthers with they’re sunglasses and berets. I was walking to the Metro station and three people who I believe were part of Sharpton’s march were walking in front of me. The New Black Panther guys were selling some sort of newspaper. They offered one to the people walking in front of me. The older gentleman in the group asked the price and was told “One dollar for you, black man.” Given my proximity and relative melanin deficiency, the comment seemed to be intended for me. I was briefly tempted to ask how much it would be for a white man but even though I was genuinely curious, I figured it would be taken as an insult so I just kept walking.