On The National Mall, Divisions Kept In Check
Fox News personality Glenn Beck has brought together small-government Tea Party activists and traditionalist social conservatives with this message: "We simply must remember who we were, who we've been, who we can be — not what we've allowed ourselves to become."
And though Beck insisted the event he hosted at the Lincoln Memorial was not about politics, he enlisted the support of a pretty popular Republican: Sarah Palin.
"May this day be the change point!" she told the roaring crowd. "Look around you, you're no t alone! You are Americans!"
The crowd packed in around the reflecting pool and spilled out over half the National Mall, almost to the Washington Monument. Couples planted their folding chairs and families grabbed space under trees. As far as Washington demonstrations go, it was calm and genial, almost like a massive church picnic.
Betty Fitzgerald, who came down from Morton, Pa., wore a button on her lapel with a photo of Beck.
She said the day was not about politics, but about values.
"I guess maybe just to be a better person, and be good to your friends and neighbors ... and ... that kind of stuff always chokes me up a little," she said.
Fitzgerald and others said those values do inform their politics. And there were quite a few Tea Party activists in the crowd.
Joe Alek made the trek from Cinnaminson, N.J., wit h this message for elected officials: "You know, so we're not going t o buy the lies anymore. Every politician wants us to buy in to them so that they stay in power. That's going to stop."
They're going to have to stand for something, he said, and keep to the Constitution.
"And when they don't follow that, they're out," he said. "Republicans and Democrats — don't matter."
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