Whose Dream is it Anyway?

Last week, Glenn Beck shared, or I should say borrowed the venue at Martin Luther King gave his seminal "I Have a Dream" speech.

Beck claimed that the rally was to honor "our heroes, our heritage and our future." (While I hate to link to it, Beck's site is here.) He claimed the rally was a non-political event to pay tribute to America’s service personnel and "other upstanding citizens who embody our nation’s founding principles of integrity, truth and honor."

Perhaps I am plagued by the paranoia that afflicts some diasporan Jews, but his rallying cry to "restore honor" is eerily reminiscent of Hitler's early speeches in pre-war Germany.

I arrived at this juxtaposition on my own, but it appears I am not alone in seeing the pattern, witness here and here .

Fact is that Beck trades on his "commoner" image without any reasonable foundation. He is not one of his followers. He makes more than 20 million dollars a year spewing vitriol, hatred and paranoia. And he does so without shame, while invoking God.

As a civil rights attorney, I will defend his right to speak, regardless of the lack of any intellectual content to his drivel, but the fact that he appeals to anyone without cortical level impairment remaings frightening.

As one of my very favorite bloggers, Helen Philpot of "Margaret and Helen" wrote recently here:

"The greatest threat against America is not terrorism. It’s not a mosque in Manhattan. It’s not gay marriage. It’s not healthcare reform. And, believe it or not, it’s not even Beck or Palin. The greatest threat against America are the tens of millions of Americans who won’t turn out to vote this November effectively giving power to 87,000 angry assholes."

Nothing positive can come from such negative energy. Nothing positive ever came from Hitler either.