Archive for the ‘Glenn Beck’ Category

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See Glenn’s new revelations on George Soros One World Revolution happening now.

By Matt Lewis

With a possible government shutdown, a proposed budget, and Libya still in the news, word that Glenn Beck would be leaving his popular daily Fox News show still managed to prove a huge story this week.

It also raised speculation about why Beck and Fox News would part ways. After all, his show enjoys very good ratings, and it hasn’t been on all that long. (It first aired the day before Obama’s inauguration. Just as Bill Clinton outlasted House speaker Newt Gingrich, it is interesting that Obama will also outlast his nemesis Glenn Beck.)

So why would Fox News make this decision?

My take is that while Beck’s show was individually a ratings hit, he also risked tarnishing the overall Fox News “brand.” Despite the fact that some advertisers were boycotting Beck, from Fox News’ perspective, this was clearly a brand management decision — not an individual dollars-and-cents business decision.

We’ve seen this sort of thing before in the entertainment world. In the early 1970s, for example, CBS made a similar branding move when they decided to cancel hit rural-themed TV shows such as “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Green Acres.” The “rural purge,” as it was called, was notable because the shows that were cancelled were successful in terms of their ratings, but they were perceived as being unsophisticated. CBS, it seems, was more worried about their image than about ratings.

Smart businesses sometimes take short-term profit losses in order to move in a direction that could help provide long-term sustainability of the organization (similarly, NFL teams sometimes let superstars who are past their prime depart, even though it has an adverse impact on their ability to win today). On this view, Glenn Beck was to Fox News what Jed Clampett was to CBS: a short-term moneymaker, but also one whose brand was growing increasingly out-of-step with the image the network wanted to project going forward.

Fox News, of course, makes no apologies for airing evening opinion hosts who have a point of view — nor should they. But Beck’s show came close to crossing the line between legitimate conservative political opinion and the fringe. I also have a sense that the times have changed a bit. Is it a coincidence that liberal host Keith Olbermann (one of MSNBC’s most successful) and Beck are both departing their shows so close to one another?

So what does this mean for conservatives? There is a theory that movements need people out there on the edges: they make the rest of us look moderate by comparison. That is sometimes true, but while I believe Beck, during his short tenure, was a net plus for conservatives, I also think there was potential for him to go too far and become a net negative. In which case, it is probably fortuitous that this is happening now.

For decades, conservatives fought off the perception that their views were anything less than mainstream and legitimate. And for decades prior to the rise of talk radio, cable news and the new media, conservatives were stuck with narratives driven by three TV networks and a couple of newspapers in New York and Washington, D.C. Fox News, along with Rush Limbaugh and the conservative talkers and bloggers, finally changed that — and it would be a shame to allow anything, or anyone, to undermine the credibility of what was achieved at great cost.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/04/07/why-fox-news-let-glenn-beck-go/#ixzz1MiQFfnjA

 

Glen Beck says UNCLE (I give up) and The Soros Organizations Cheer.

 

The Soros financed (communistic groups with the good sounding names) Jewish Funds for Justice, color of change, media matters, (Media Matters vowed to “sabotage” FOX News), the daily beast, and 400 other Soros financed communistic, Fabian socialist groups.

 

On Glenn’s radio show today he said now Fox can get regular sponsors and regular ads.

 

When are we going to get out of our Normalcy Bias and stop George Soros and his One World Order?

Posted on April 6, 2011 at 12:18pm by  Scott Baker

Editor’s note:  After a great deal of speculation about Glenn Beck’s future on television, here is the freshly-inked news release.  There will be a couple of key headlines out of this…yes, there is a new agreement with Fox News but this is the first confirmation that Beck will “transition off of his daily TV program” later this year.

The program has obviously been a great success for Beck and for Fox News, and the relationship between the organizations seems as strong as every.

This news release does leave some key questions unanswered for now, primarily, does Glenn have plans for a daily TV or video program down the road?  The Blaze will be tracking reaction and speculation about this news release throughout the day.  Check back for updates.

FOX NEWS AND MERCURY RADIO ARTS ANNOUNCE NEW AGREEMENT
(New York, NY)  Fox News and Mercury Radio Arts, Glenn Beck’s production company, are proud to announce that they will work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channel as well as content for other platforms including Fox News’ digital properties. Glenn intends to transition off of his daily program, the third highest rated in all of cable news, later this year.
Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO of Fox News said, “Glenn Beck is a powerful communicator, a creative entrepreneur and a true success by anybody’s standards.  I look forward to continuing to work with him.”

Glenn Beck said: “I truly believe that America owes a lot to Roger Ailes and Fox News. I cannot repay Roger for the lessons I’ve learned and will continue to learn from him and I look forward to starting this new phase of our partnership.”

Joel Cheatwood, SVP/Development at Fox News, will be joining Mercury Radio Arts effective April 24, 2011. Part of his role as EVP will be to manage the partnership and serve as a liaison with the Fox News Channel.

Roger Ailes said:  “Joel is a good friend and one of the most talented and creative executives in the business. Over the past four years I have consistently valued his input and advice and that will not stop as we work with him in his new role.”

“Glenn Beck” is consistently the third highest rated program on cable news. For the 27 months that “Glenn Beck” has aired on Fox News, the program has averaged more than 2.2 million total viewers and 563,000 viewers 25-54 years old, numbers normally associated with shows airing in primetime, not at 5pm. “Glenn Beck” has dominated all of its cable news competitors since launch.
About Fox News
FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour general news service covering breaking news as well as political, business and entertainment news.  For more than 100 consecutive months, FNC has been the most-watched cable news channel in the country.  Owned by News Corp., FNC is available in more than 90 million homes.

 

By Aaron Klein
© 2011

JERUSALEM – A conflict has erupted between conservative pundit William Kristol and Fox News host Glenn Beck over the chaos in Egypt, with a number of right-leaning authors taking sides, and a few even hurling insults. In my job as a Mideast-based, boots-on-the-ground reporter who has lived and breathed these issues for the past six years, in constant communication with all sides of the Mideast conflict – including near-daily interviews with Arab officials, jihadist leaders (such as those from the Muslim Brotherhood), as well as average citizens – I feel compelled to join Glenn Beck’s side.

Chastising Beck from his position as editor of the influential Weekly Standard, Kristol criticizes the talk-show host for his “rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and [he] lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left.” Kristol then evinces a highly optimistic view of the upheaval now roiling Egypt and hails the protests there as a precursor for democracy, while urging the United States to support “the Egyptian awakening.”

Besides excoriating Beck, Kristol takes issue with Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who warns the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood may come to power as result of the revolution, but quotes approvingly of Krauthammer’s view that the “Egyptian awakening carries promise and hope and of course merits our support.” 
 Krauthammer also asserts that “our paramount moral and strategic interest in Egypt is real democracy in which power does not devolve to those who believe in one man, one vote, one time.”
 And to top it off, Kristol compares the Egyptian revolution to America’s own founding.
 “The Egyptian people want to exercise their capacity for self-government. American conservatives, heirs to our own bold and far-sighted revolutionaries, should help them,” he writes.
 Unfortunately, the Egypt Kristol wishes for does not reflect reality on the ground. Glenn Beck’s vision of an emerging Islamic caliphate – with the radical American left aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood – is far closer to the truth and supported by abundant evidence.
 (Beck is not the only nationally syndicated commentator to make this argument. Popular talker Michael Savage devoted an entire broadcast last Friday to showing that leftist American figures had their hands in the Egyptian revolt, which, he said, will favor Islamists.)

Muslim Brotherhood to gain

Today, the Muslim Brotherhood is the most organized and popular opposition party in Egypt – and in much of the greater Middle East – and is poised to gain the most from any drive for democratic elections in the region. Some commentators have wrongly stated the Brotherhood has a popularity rating of “only” about 20 percent in Egypt. This figure is based on 2005 “elections” in which Brotherhood allies took about that percentage of the parliament. The Brotherhood then lost some of those seats in parliamentary “elections” held again last year. But both those elections were held amid widespread allegations of vote rigging and opposition intimidation in favor of President Hosni Mubarak, whose tightly controlled security forces reportedly rounded up and arrested Brotherhood leaders and key sympathizers in the run up to the ballots. 
 It is simply unknown how well the Brotherhood would have scored if free and fair elections had been held.

Like its Hamas offshoot in the Palestinian territories, the Muslim Brotherhood has been endearing itself to the Egyptian population over the past several decades by building a civilian infrastructure of social services to make up for what Mubarak’s regime is lacking.
 Even a pedestrian reading of the situation in Egypt sees that the Brotherhood stands to gain the most from a truly democratic vote. Indeed, the Brotherhood has already scored a major victory by being invited to consult with Mubarak’s regime over reforms that will allow it more representation in any future government.
 Even if the Brotherhood did represent less than a quarter of the Egyptian population, in my Mideast neighborhood we have already seen that this kind of base may be enough to hijack an entire government. 
 In Lebanon, Hezbollah – also a minority party – received veto power in the parliament last year. This year, the Iranian-backed extremist group just toppled the Lebanese government and seems poised to form a new one with a Hezbollah-allied prime minister.

Iranian template

Similarly, the Brotherhood in Egypt, which specializes in seizing power by stealthy, nonviolent means, understands any first real elections would be just one step toward its ultimate goal of a complete takeover.

For this it is willing to wait, just as Iranian Revolution leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was patient when he was first backed by Carter.

In 1979, Carter felt the U.S. could work with the weak Iranian politician Mehdi Bazargan, who Khomeini wanted as prime minister, instead of Shaphur Bakhtiar whom the Western-oriented shah appointed to take over.

Within eight months, however, Khomeini deposed of Bazargan and appointed a new prime minister who followed in the tradition of the Islamic revolution.

Now some are pointing to the “moderate,” Muslim Brotherhood-acceptable candidate Mohamed El Baradei, the former International Atomic Energy Agency chief. El Baradei wears a suit and tie and knows how to talk the right talk (see his recent declaration that Egypt would continue upholding its treaty with Israel) to ensure an uninterrupted flow of U.S. aid.

Of course, as chief of the IAEA, El Baradei did his best to obfuscate Iran’s nuclear program. He claimed he didn’t know about Syria’s construction of a nascent nuclear reactor Israel was forced to bomb in 2007.

Like Khomeini’s Bazargan, El Baradei doesn’t have much standing within Egypt and can be deposed at the right time.

Democratic Islamic takeover

Let’s look at other places where Kristol has championed democracy. Hamas swept to power in Palestinian Authority elections; Islamists are making gains in Iraq, where the current government is mostly paralyzed; Iran is ruled by Shiite fundamentalists who are the largest state sponsors of terrorism in the world; and Turkey has been democratically overtaken by Islamists who support Hamas and are in partnership with Iran.
 As we have seen, democratic elections do not necessarily lead to democratic societies, or to ones not profoundly hostile to Western values and interests.

In the Middle East, the type of elections Kristol champions are almost always used by Muslim Brotherhood allies to rise to power (democratically) and then to clamp down on press freedoms, human rights and the physical safety of woman and minorities. 
 In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a small Christian minority is routinely persecuted amidst a hardline Islamist regime that now imposes its way of life on all Gazan citizens, including moderate Muslims. In Egypt, Coptic Christian churches were already – before the recent upheaval – being torched and bombed by Muslim extremists. Likewise the arson attack on the ancient synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia – a country until now renowned for its tolerant, French orientation – in the immediate aftermath of last month’s uprising against President-for-life Zine el Abidine Ben Ali.

As Beck rightly stated, the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to create an Islamic caliphate in Egypt with ambitions to spread Islam across the Middle East, Africa and throughout the world. This is laid out in the Muslim Brotherhood’s secretive charter.
 Just yesterday, excerpts of a book by Mustafa Mashhur, who headed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt from 1996-2002, were published in English, making clear the Brotherhood’s objectives. The book reportedly details the Brotherhood’s goals of advancing the global conquest of Islam and re-establishing the Islamic Caliphate.
 This week, I obtained an Arabic copy of the revised Brotherhood charter from 2007. Among other things, it calls for the establishment of an Islamic state in Egypt in which non-Muslims cannot hold government positions and must pay thejizya, or special “protection” tax, for living in a Muslim country.

Yet many prominent U.S. commentators claim the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate organization, denying any Islamist plan to seize power. 

But just listen to Brotherhood leaders. The chief of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, Hammam Saeed, warned two weeks ago that the unrest in Egypt will spread across the Mideast until Arabs succeed at toppling leaders allied with the United States. 

On the Internet – as reported by the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute – prominent Salafi cleric Abu Mundhir Al-Shinqiti issued afatwaover the website Minbar Al-Tawhid Wal Jihad, encouraging the protests in Egypt and claiming that Islamist jihadis are now on the verge of a historic moment in the history of the Islamic nation, an “earthquake” he likened to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City and the Pentagon. 

Incidentally, in November the Brotherhood’s new supreme guide, Muhammad Badi, delivered a sermon entitled, “How Islam Confronts the Oppression and Tyranny,” in which he declared, “Resistance is the only solution.”
 
Like Beck, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned the revolution in Egypt may result in an Islamist takeover in the spirit of Iran.

“First, Egyptians may choose to embrace the model of a secular reformist state with a prominent role for the military,” Netanyahu said this week. “There is a second possibility, that the Islamists exploit their influence to gradually take the country into a reverse direction.”

Does Kristol similarly believe Netanyahu is engaging in conspiracy mongering?

Radical left fingerprints on Egypt chaos

Now, Kristol’s other criticism of Beck – the Fox host’s assertion of a leftist alliance with Mideast Islamists – warrants serious attention. 

Just yesterday, I reported  at WND that the International Crisis XX Group, led by billionaire activist George Soros, has long petitioned for the Egyptian government to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. The ICG also produced a report urging the Egyptian regime to allow the Brotherhood to establish an Islamist political party. 

Included on the ICG board is none other than Egyptian opposition leader El Baradei, as well as other personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas. 

U.S. board members include Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to Jimmy Carter; Samuel Berger, who was Bill Clinton’s national security adviser; and retired U.S. ambassador Thomas Pickering, who made headlines in 2009 after meeting with Hamas leaders and calling for the U.S. to open ties to the Islamist group. 

Another ICG member is Robert Malley, a former adviser to Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign. He resigned after it was exposed he had coros also has other ties to opposition groups in the Middle East. 

His Open Society Institute’s Middle East and North Africa Initiative has provided numerous grants to a wide range of projects that promote so-called democratic issues across the region, including in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood has much to gain from any future election. 

Soros’ Open Society also funded the main opposition voice in Tunisia, Radio Kalima, which championed the riots there that led to the ouster of Ben Ali. 

In September, Soros’ group was looking to expand its operations in Egypt by hiring a new project manager for its Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which is run in partnership with the Open Society Justice Initiative. The group is seeking to develop a national network of legal empowerment actors for referral of public-interest law cases. Such organizations in the past have helped represent Muslim Brotherhood leaders seeking election or other kinds of authority in the country.

Soros himself on Friday made public statements in support of the protests in Egypt, which the Mubarak government has warned will result in the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country. 

In a Washington Post editorial entitled, “Why Obama Has to Get Egypt Right,” Soros recognized that if free elections were held in Egypt, “the Brotherhood is bound to emerge as a major political force, though it is far from assured of a majority.” 

He stated the U.S. has “much to gain by moving out in front and siding with the public demand for dignity and democracy” in Egypt. 

It is surprising that Kristol so easily dismissed Beck’s claims of a leftist drive to aid the Islamists’ ascent to power. History is full of American leftists siding with our enemies (in Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, USSR, China), whom they hope will diminish our country’s capitalist powerhouse status. 

Kristol certainly should be well aware of American leftists, many with ties to Obama, who have been arguing for the U.S. to open dialogue with Hamas.

Obama pals in Egypt

Aside from those mentioned above, it is noteworthy that months before the protests erupted throughout Egypt aimed at toppling Mubarak’s regime, President Obama’s own associates provoked anti-regime, pro-Hamas chaos on the streets of that now-embattled country and longtime U.S. ally.

Similar scenes unfolded in January 2010, when Obama associates provoked chaos in Egypt in an attempt to enter the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to join in solidarity with the territory’s population and leadership. 

WND  reported  at  the time those protests were led by former Weather Underground terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn – close Obama associates for years. 

Another protest leader was Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink, a far-left activist organization formed in 2002 to protest America’s war in Iraq. The group previously met with Hamas and with leaders of the Taliban. Evans was a significant fundraiser and financial bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign.

Also protesting in Egypt was Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the anti-Israel Electronic Intifada website.WND previously reported that Obama spoke at pro-Palestinian events in the 1990s alongside Abunimah. At one such event, a 1999 fundraiser for Palestinian “refugees,” Abunimah recalls introducing Obama on stage.

The Gaza saga began when the radicals arrived Dec. 31, 2009. Evans appealed to Suzanne Mubarak, wife of Egypt’s president, to allow some 1,400 activists to cross from Egypt into neighboring Gaza to march there, deliver humanitarian aid and stage a protest at an Israeli border crossing with thousands of Palestinian Gazans. Egypt’s Interior Ministry had said the march was illegal and a threat to national security. 

So Mubarak reportedly offered to allow only 100 activists to cross into Gaza. The decision was at first reportedly accepted by Evans but was later rejected, leading to protests throughout Cairo all week under a heavy police presence. 

The rioters claimed some of the protests were violent; they accused Egyptian police of using brutality in trying to quell their riots.

Eventually, these Obama associates accepted the Egyptian offer of allowing about 100 marchers into Gaza. The marchers indeed entered Gaza and were reportedly met on the Gaza side by Hamas’ former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. 

I am not arguing here that this proves a global conspiracy between Islamists and U.S. leftists, but that these proven ties, particularly those of Soros and other radical left groups, warrant further investigation and should not be dismissed.

 And I sympathize with Kristol’s perspective; I too wish for a real democracy in Egypt and in the greater Middle East. But even the well-meaning should be willing to admit that this experiment has failed time and again. Indeed, it has aided the modern Islamist expansion now threatening the entire Middle East and beyond..

Read more:Why Glenn Beck is right on Egypt chaoshttp://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=261681#ixzz1Da0CL8qF

By Brent Bozell
1/14/2011
Within minutes of the news breaking that Jared Lee Loughner had killed six and wounded 14 in a rampage outside a Tucson Safeway store, including a critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the news media immediately leaped to the conclusion that the harsh tone of our political discourse — led by conservative talk radio — surely must be to blame.

That narrative turned out to be hogwash, but another one has emerged during the investigation into Loughner’s psyche, yet virtually no one wants to discuss it. Was the shooter inspired by the entertainment media?

Why would violent movies or music be left out of the rush to judgment? Perhaps it’s because pop-culture defenders never tire of arguing that no one can blame the “artists” — be they musicians, movie-makers or video-game manufacturers — for youth violence. So it becomes awkward, to say the least, that everyone’s discussing the need to curb a national appetite for angry rhetoric, when it was disturbing music and movies that were influencing Loughner’s mind, and they are ignored.

It took 72 hours for Loughner’s entertainment appetites to enter the media mainstream. On Jan. 11, the Washington Post noted that on the shooter’s YouTube channel, a lone video is listed as a favorite. J. Freedom du Lac reported on the rock band Drowning Pool: “As a hooded figure wearing a garbage bag for pants limps across the desert to set fire to an American flag, a howling heavy-metal song called ‘Bodies’ serves as the video’s relentless soundtrack.”

The lyrics are screamed: “Let the bodies hit the floor! Let the bodies hit the floor! Let the bodies hit the floor!” in an obvious echo of a shooting rampage like Loughner’s. This isn’t the first time this music was associated with a murder. In the northern Virginia suburb of Oakton in 2003, du Lac added, “then-19-year-old Joshua Cooke cranked the throbbing tune on his headphones, walked out of his bedroom holding a 12-gauge shotgun and killed his parents.”

I think we can agree that this is a more provocative ode to violence than Sarah Palin’s map with targets on a piece of congressional geography. Even the name of the band implies death.

In a statement posted Jan. 10, the band said they were “devastated” by the news from Tucson “and that our music has been misinterpreted, again.” They claimed the song was written about “the brotherhood of the mosh pit and the respect people have for each other in the pit. If you push others down, you have to pick them back up. It was never about violence. It’s about a certain amount of respect and a code.”

The words “mosh pit” are nowhere in the lyrics. But this line is: “Push me again / This is the end.”

The closest reference to being in a rock-concert crowd is this: “Skin against skin, blood and bone / You’re all by yourself, but you’re not alone / You wanted in, now you’re here / Driven by hate, consumed by fear.” But these words depict “a certain amount of respect and a code”?

The wire services added that Loughner liked government-conspiracy documentaries like the 9/11-truther films “Loose Change” and “Zeitgeist,” and bizarre cult films like “Donnie Darko,” a 2001 movie summarized as “A troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.”

As he’s told the world will end in 28 days, Donnie Darko (played by actor Jake Gyllenhaal) floods the school, steals his father’s gun and burns the home of a motivational speaker, where firemen uncover a “kiddie porn dungeon.” The film ends with Donnie laughing in bed as a falling jet engine crashes into his bedroom.

No network news anchor was blaming Richard Kelly, the cult film’s writer and director, for filling Loughner’s disturbed mind with more apocalyptic visions. That would be unfair. That would be oppressing an artist with a “chilling effect.” But blaming a Palin map with targets on congressional districts (or TV and radio talk shows that Loughner never watched or heard) isn’t just fair game. It’s an urgent national priority.

I don’t know if Loughner is deranged or the epitome of evil. If you want to look at the dark influences, however, be honest and report the evidence as it exists. Fox News had nothing to do with this. Nor did Rush, Beck, Palin or any other conservative. Angry heavy-metal bands and cult-movie directors shouldn’t be charged with crimes, either. But to what extent did their “entertainment” poison this man’s mind? Let the discussion go there.

What Are the Requirements for Sainthood?

To become canonized as a saint, a perfect track record isn’t required (or possible). Hence, being sinless isn’t on the list. So, what is required for sainthood?

• Two verifiable postmortem miracles

Note: Canonization (sainthood) requires two miracles, whereas beatification (blessed) requires only one.

• Evidence of having led an exemplary life of goodness and virtue worthy of imitation, having died a heroic death (martyrdom), or having undergone a major conversion of heart where a previous immoral life is abandoned and replaced by one of outstanding holiness

Formally declared saints are chosen ultimately by the pope, but only after a thorough investigation of the life, writings, and legacy of the saint candidate. No stone is left unturned. Testimony from witnesses and experts, physical evidence, and the entire life of the person is examined with fine detail.

We conclude that Glenn Beck has had at least one miracle and now should be called – “Blessed Glenn Beck”

At Lincoln Memorial, a Call for Religious Rebirth
By KATE ZERNIKE and CARL HULSE
New York Times Aug 28, 2010

WASHINGTON — An enormous and impassioned crowd rallied at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, summoned by Glenn Beck, a conservative broadcaster who called for a religious rebirth in America at the site where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago to the day.

“Something that is beyond man is happening,” Mr. Beck said in opening the event as the crowd thronged near the memorial grounds. “America today begins to turn back to God.”

It was part religious revival, part history lecture, as Mr. Beck invoked the founding fathers and the “black-robed regiment” of pastors of the Revolutionary War and spoke of American exceptionalism.

The crowd was a mix of groups that have come together under the Tea Party umbrella. Some wore T-shirts from the Campaign for Liberty, the libertarian group that came out of the presidential campaign of Representative Ron Paul, while others wore the gear of their local Tea Party group, or of 9/12 groups, which were founded after a special broadcast Mr. Beck did in March 2009.

But the program was distinctly different from most Tea Party rallies. While Tea Party groups have said they want to focus on fiscal conservatism and not risk alienating people by talking about religion or social issues, the rally on Saturday was overtly religious, filled with gospel music and speeches that were more like sermons.

Mr. Beck imbued his remarks on Saturday and at events the night before with references to God and a need for a religious revival. “For too long, this country has wandered in darkness,” Mr. Beck said Saturday. “This country has spent far too long worrying about scars and thinking about scars and concentrating on scars. Today, we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished, and the things that we can do tomorrow.”

Mr. Beck was followed on stage by Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate and former Alaska governor, who said she was asked, in keeping with the theme of the day, not to focus on politics but to speak as the mother of a soldier.

“Say what you want to say about me, but I raised a combat vet, and you can’t take that away from me,” said Ms. Palin, whose son Track served in Iraq.
But Ms. Palin did not steer entirely clear of politics. In a veiled reference to President Obama and his pledges to fundamentally transform America, she said, “We must not fundamentally transform America as some would want; we must restore America and restore her honor.”

Many in the crowd said they had never been to a Tea Party rally, but they described themselves as avid Glenn Beck fans, and many said they had been motivated to come by faith.

Becky Benson, 56, traveled from Orlando, Fla., because, she said, “we believe in Jesus Christ, and he is our savior.” Jesus, she said, would not have agreed with what she called the redistribution of wealth in the form of the economic stimulus package, bank bailouts and welfare. “You cannot sit and expect someone to hand out to you,” she said. “You don’t spend your way out of debt.”

Mr. Beck’s themes were ones he returns to on his radio and television shows, and people in the crowd echoed his ideas, saying that “progressives” were moving the country toward socialism and that the country must get back to a strict interpretation of the Constitution, which would limit the role of the federal government and do away with entitlement programs.

“The federal government is only to offer us protection from our enemies and help us when we need it,” said Ron Sears, 65, who came on a caravan of three buses from Corbin, Ky. “The states are supposed to control education and everything having to do with their citizens, except when they need federal help.”
Mr. Beck billed the event as the Woodstock of this generation, telling listeners that for decades, people would be asking, “Were you there?”
He had instructed his fans to leave their protest signs at home and to bring their children.

While there were few signs, people carried American flags or yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” banners, which have become mainstays at Tea Party rallies.
The event had the feeling of a large church picnic, with people sitting on lawn chairs and blankets with coolers and strollers.

Officials do not make crowd estimates because they are unreliable and can be controversial, but event organizers put the number of attendees at 500,000; NBC News said it was closer to 300,000, but by any measure it was a large turnout. The crowd stretched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.

The rally organized by Mr. Beck, a Fox News broadcaster who has been critical of Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats, has come under attack as dishonoring the memory of Dr. King by staging the event on the anniversary of his speech. Critics have suggested that Mr. Beck was trying to energize conservatives for the midterm elections.

Across town, several hundred people packed a football field at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School to stage a rally commemorating Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
“We come here because the dream has not been achieved,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, an organizer of the rally. “We’ve had a lot of progress. But we have a long way to go.”

“They want to disgrace this day,” Mr. Sharpton told the crowd, referring to Mr. Beck’s event.
While the crowd at Dunbar was mostly African-American, the audience at Mr. Beck’s rally was overwhelmingly white, though a number of speakers and performers were black.

Among them was Alveda King, a niece of the civil rights leader, who in a speech said that if Dr. King were alive he would commend the organizers of the event and “would encourage us to lay aside the vicious lies that cause us to think we are members of separate races.”

Mr. Beck made a surprise visit on Friday to a convention held by FreedomWorks, a Tea Party umbrella group, for Tea Party supporters. He received a thunderous welcome from a crowd of about 1,600 in Constitution Hall.

He told the crowd that he had begun planning his march on Washington a year ago, thinking “it was supposed to be political.”
“And then I kind of feel like God dropped a giant sandbag on my head,” he said.

“My role, as I see it, is to wake America up to the backsliding of principles and values and most of all of God,” he said. “We are a country of God. As I look at the problems in our country, quite honestly, I think the hot breath of destruction is breathing on our necks and to fix it politically is a figure that I don’t see anywhere.”
Raymond Hernandez contributed reporting.