Dear Joanie, we need to understand the reasons why the audience appeared "lukewarm."
My sense is this wasn't a case of they just didn't get it or were indifferent to the message. On the contrary, I think they may have gotten the message very well indeed — and it scared the sh*t out of them (pardon my French).
It boils down to Thomas Jefferson's profound insight: When the people fear the government, there is Tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is Liberty.
Let's face it: We the People now fear the government. The single most effective way to end this seemingly endless usurpation of the sovereign liberties of the People by the Obama administration (in apparent concert with the Pelosi Congress and Reid Senate, not even to mention the Supreme Court) would be to simply "starve the beast."
However, the People know the beast lusts to impose draconian punishment on anyone who refuses to render sacrifices unto its unholy alter. So to speak. So the People fear, and they despair over their own seeming powerlessness to correct the corruption and abuse that is killing the American future. No wonder Beck's audience was subdued....
May God ever bless Glenn Beck! He is our modern-day Thomas Paine — and the rest of the Sons of Liberty rolled into the bargain. In contrast, Bill O'Reilly lately seems never to have even heard of the U.S. Constitution before, not in his entire life. His idea of "fair and balanced" seems to be: Stand on both sides of every issue.
Maybe "blame" Glenn Beck for this? Since joining Fox News, it seems he has pushed O'Reilly massively to the Left. To put it mildly, I have fallen away from O'Reilly's show in recent times....
Beck is where the real action is anyway. His shows are amazingly informative, and there's some little piece about the Constitution every day. It's an education for "the clueless." And a confirmation for those "clued-in" on the Constitution and how it's supposed to operate.
Anyhoot, dear sister in Christ, please do not despair. God is still in charge. Truth and justice are not dead. And He will not forsake His beloved.
And so we have good reason to hope.
Or so it seems to me.
Thank you ever so much, dear joanie-f, for your beautiful, poignant, and deeply moving essay/post! May God's blessings be with you and your loved ones.
Thanks very much for the pings to this thread. Thanks to every poster. BIG THANKS to Noumenon and Jeff Head for their outstanding, thought-provoking posts and many, many others offering counterpoint, historical lessons, links, assessments, activism on other fronts, ways-forward advice, optimism, pessimism and a broad range of patriotism and love of country and freedom/life.
Thanks very much to every like-minded lurker.
Read-it-all BUMP!
“My husband and I attended a simulcast presentation of Glenn Beck’s Common Sense Comedy Tour about ten days ago. The theater was sold-out, and yet the audience responses to Beck’s call-to-arms was lukewarm, at best. I hope it was otherwise in other locations.”
Spirited: Many people are, as betty said, afraid of speaking up. Many more are adrift in a sea of peculiar ideas, myths, lies, and in short...mental and spiritual confusion. Some, like Episcopal Bishop Swing, call themselves Republicans even as they hold their arms up in worship to Hecate. Others call themselves conservatives but believe themselves an emergent product of evolution ascending the progressive escalator up, up, up...to what? Oneness with The Force?
America was founded on a unique set of immutable presuppositions, starting with, “In the beginning God...” and moving directly to a distinctly Christian view of man, universal moral law, and nature’s law. Firmly grounded on these unique ideas, America was called by de Tocqueville the freest, most enlightened civilization in the long history of man.
Today however, Americans for the most part are either floundering in ignorance with regard to our founding or in outright rebellion against it.