The double-meaning of the headline says it all….”Beck, Palin Rally in Washington Stresses God, Country.”  One can’t help but wonder what God would think of the co-opt of His message by the radical conservatives bent on returning the country to Biblical Law, racism, homophobia and a growing sense of “Me-First”ism that appears to have forgotten all about the teachings of Jesus. 

Beck’s God is most definitely an Old Testament God.

Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally was a story of reinvention.  Sarah Palin is suddenly no longer a politician, but the “mother of a soldier.” The homophobic anti-abortion activist Alveda King is suddenly the heir to the civil rights legacy of her uncle, the great Dr. Martin Luther King Junior.  They claim the event was non-partisan and non-political.  And the veneer may have passed muster, what with no political signs or candidates allowed to speak to the crowd.  At least, not at the actual rally itself.

Via Business Week:

While the rally was designed as apolitical, there was plenty of political activity before and after.

Activists gathered at a warm-up event yesterday organized by FreedomWorks, an advocacy group affiliated with the Tea Party, to listen to candidates and pick up campaign signs supporting Tea Party-backed candidates.

“What happens this year will make what happened in 1994 look like a Sunday picnic,” Mike Lee, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Utah, told yesterday’s gathering in a reference to Republicans gaining control of the House in that year’s election.

Republican Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and several other members of Congress held a campaign rally nearby immediately after Beck’s event.

Americans for Prosperity, a group with Tea Party ties, held its political action convention in Washington over the weekend and bused people to Beck’s rally.

The head of the House Democratic campaign committee, Maryland Representative Chris Van Hollen, challenged Beck’s claim that the event is nonpartisan.

“It’s a blatant political effort,” he told reporters yesterday at a Washington press conference. “You’ve seen Glenn Beck and a lot of the talk show hosts on Fox News out there talking about this election.”

Call a political event non-political.  Say you aren’t trying to co-opt King and “coincidentally” hold the rally on the anniversary of his most famous speech.  have one of the biggest political conservative stars speak and say she’s not a politician.  And then, say you are trying to take back the government from the current administration, all while stealing lines from the current president’s campaign speeches.

From Yahoo News:

Glenn Beck is borrowing some lines from President Barack Obama.

At his rally with tens of thousands on the steps of Lincoln Memorial, Beck used the closing lines of then-candidate Obama’s campaign stump speech of 2008.

“One man can change the world,” Beck told the crowd. “That man or woman is you. You make the difference.”

Obama used a similar message on the campaign trail. He used to say that one voice could change a room, one room could change a city, and one city could change a state. Obama liked to say that state could change a country and urged supporters to go out and change the world.

Beck’s reinvention and co-opting definitely did not go unnoticed, especially that of painting Alveda King with the mantle of the new leader in civil rights.  The Religious Coalition of Reproductive Rights, along with numerous African American religious leaders and activists, put out the following statement in response to the Beck rally, and King’s participation:

Leading African American clergy and civil rights activists blasted the August 28 Glenn Beck rally and Alveda King’s “Freedom Rides for the Unborn” as insulting to Americans of all races and religions who have worked for equality, unity, and inclusion and contrary to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ideals of justice, freedom, and respect for the dignity of all people. The controversial rally is being held on the 47th anniversary of Dr. King’s historic “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the landmark March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

“The ‘Religious Right’ and the Tea Party can hold a rally on the anniversary of a time that is sacred in our nation’s march to equality but there is no question that they are not – and never have been — concerned about the African American community or about the racism, poverty and injustice that Dr. King was dedicated to eradicating,” said Reverend Dr. Carlton W. Veazey, President and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC). The national interfaith coalition sponsored a news conference today (August 26) to raise awareness about “Religious Right” attempts to hijack the civil rights movement for its own political agenda.

“The ‘Religious Right’ billboard campaign asserting that African American children are an ‘endangered species’ and Alveda King’s comparison of anti-abortion activists to ‘Freedom Riders’ have sparked outrage in the African American community,” said Reverend Veazey. “Disparaging clinics that provide abortion, birth control and reproductive health services is harmful to individual women and to communities struggling with high rates of unintended pregnancy, teen births and HIV/AIDS. It insults the intelligence and values of African Americans and is offensive to women who make conscientious moral decisions about pregnancy.”

Bob Herbert agrees.  In the New York Times, he wrote:

America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?

Consider a brief sampling of their rhetoric.

Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

King: “Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.”

Beck: “I think the president is a racist.”

…

Beck is a provocateur who likes to play with matches in the tinderbox of racial and ethnic confrontation. He seems oblivious to the real danger of his execrable behavior. He famously described President Obama as a man “who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

He is an integral part of the vicious effort by the Tea Party and other elements of the right wing to portray Mr. Obama as somehow alien, a strange figure who is separate and apart from — outside of — ordinary American life. As the watchdog group Media Matters for America has noted, Beck said of the president, “He chose to use the name, Barack, for a reason, to identify not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify, with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?”

Facts and reality mean nothing to Beck. And there is no road too low for him to slither upon. The Southern Poverty Law Center tells us that in a twist on the civil rights movement, Beck said on the air that he “wouldn’t be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us go to jail — just like Martin Luther King did — on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming.”

He makes you want to take a shower.

In Beck’s view, President Obama is driven by a desire to settle “old racial scores” and his ultimate goal is “reparations” for black Americans. Abe Lincoln and Dr. King could only look on aghast at this clown.

Did Beck’s attempt to rewrite the ideas of justice, patriotism and civil rights work this weekend?  Not as long as there are videos out reminding people of what a real dream for America looks like, as opposed to the Tea Party version of a dream.