Taking place on the 27th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, Beck himself has dubbed the day "Restoring Honor," and on a website promoting the event has described it as follows:
Throughout history America has seen many great leaders and noteworthy citizens change her course. It is through their personal virtues and by their example that we are able to live as free people. On August 28, come celebrate America by honoring our heroes, our heritage and our future.
But a sampling of opinion of Mr. Beck's Washington gathering shows that the event may not have the unifying effect that its host is promoting.
In Newsweek, Ben Adler takes on the notion that Saturday's gathering has much to do with King's legacy:
Beck says the event will "reclaim the civil-rights movement," from progressives who have hijacked it for their redistributive agenda. The original March on Washington, like the civil-rights movement more generally, saw economic justice (hence "jobs") as inextricable from legal equality. It was an inherently liberal cause. Beck can disagree, and say that the two goals are separable, as indeed he does.
But to claim, as he recently has, that economic justice was not a concern of the civil-rights movement, and that liberal political leaders who are popular among African-Americans are "perverting" the cause, is both demonstrably false and deeply disrespectful to the African-American community.
But writing in the Christian Science Monitor, King's niece, Alveda King, an anti-abortion activist, explained why she was planning on speaking at the rally:
The rally will be a celebration of who we are as a nation and a chance to stop for a moment, reflect, reorganize, and re-energize. It's a chance to think about character; both our character as a nation and our character as individuals.
Rival cable television news host Keith Olbermann mocked the purported apolitical nature of "Restoring Honor" and openly asked, "Is he nuts?"
In an article in American Thinker, tea party spokesman Lloyd Marcus praised Beck for selecting the anniversary of King's most famous speech on which to hold the "Restoring Honor" event:
I am a black American who wishes to thank brother Beck for honoring Dr. King in such a powerful way. Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally is linking the restoration of our great nation's Godly principles, freedom, liberty, and culture to the black civil rights leader. Beck's rally is a wonderful tribute to the man I remember, when I was a little boy, as being larger than life. I was there, August 28, 1963, in Washington, D.C. with my dad -- yellow school buses lined up and black people as far as I could see. I do not remember feeling hate in the air. Dr. King spoke of all Americans yielding to God, righteousness, and brotherhood. Sounds like Beck to me.
Calling Saturday's rally a display of "egomania on an unhealthy scale," The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen is having trouble distinguishing the messenger from the message:
Glenn Beck's "Restore America" event is itself an extraordinary display of self-aggrandizement. This deranged media personality picks the site and anniversary of the "I Have A Dream" speech to present himself as the leader of a grand movement that will save civilization. Beck even claims, out loud and without humor, to be acting as a vessel of God.
Meanwhile, at Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace, Warner Todd Huston points to what he sees as an irony about those who take issue with the day selected for "Restoring Honor":
The intellectual dishonesty of the left is simply breathtaking. To show exactly how out of whack their ideology is, they are protesting the site and date of a Glenn Beck rally over his perceived "insensitivity" but on the other hand seem wholly unbothered by the mosque planned on being built at Ground Zero.
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