I just got back from the huge rally in the front of the Minnesota State Capitol. It’s hard to get an estimate of the crowd size, but it had to be in the thousands. The area in front of the capitol building was packed with people waving American flags and hoisting Liberate Iraq signs.
Gov. Pawlenty and Sen. Coleman were excellent as always. One of the best lines was when Gov. Pawlenty referred to the terrorists as "sucker-punching cowards". That line naturally got quite a bit of applause. Congressmen Jim Ramstad, Gil Gutknecht, and John Kline all had some good speeches.
The only negative aspect to the rally was a speaker from the Muslim community who tried to talk about how America’s past failures have led to more hatred of America. Now I’ll grant that’s a legitimate argument to make – but not at a what was essentially a massive pro-American rally. The reaction to her speech was not at all good, which reflected badly on both sides.
Still, the real message of the rally was about supporting our troops. Pictures of the crowd will be send to Minnesota units operating in the Gulf – hopefully it will be a real morale booster for them.
And unlike the leftist protests, no one felt the need to wave around big paper-mache puppets to make their points.
UPDATE: Mitch Berg was also there and shares his thoughts as well.
Does waving around the flag really give you guys a realistic moral high ground over those waving around “paper mache puppets”? As Bill Maher said about the flag-waving crowd, “It’s the least you can do…literally.”
It’s also ironic how some of the same people who voted to cut benefits promised to veterans yesterday, like Gutknecht and Kline, and “showing their support for the troops today.” Today’s soldiers would definitely be smart to keep their military uniform on when the return home because once that uniform comes off, they are dead in the minds of Congressional Republicans.
And who are you to say that the Muslim woman shouldn’t have made the comments she did? Just because a group of narrow-minded flag-wavers wanted to hear a series of one-dimensional speeches that didn’t challenge their one-dimensional viewpoints on any issue, do you guys seriously feel you’re entitled to that? Up until recently, it’s been the left who’s been the most obnoxious about attempting to squelch the opinions of dissenters from being heard in their presence, as is evident on nearly every college campus. However, with a war to hide behind, the “patriot police state” that defined theright during the Joseph McCarthy era is making an unfortunate comeback in today’s generation of right-wingers.
The purpose of the rally was to show our support for US troops overseas. While political rallies are admittedly one-sided and aren’t exactly high political discourse, it’s important for the morale of our troops to see that they have that kind of support.
As for the Muslim speaker, the fact that she was invited to speak shows that this rally was not in support of a "patriot police state". In fact, there were a number of people in the crowd that thought that she was treated very rudely.
I wish the Left would get a sense of perspective. If this really were some Naziesque police state, people like you wouldn’t be alive to be speaking out. The slurs against Bush only make you look crazy to people who might be sympathetic to the anti-war message and only cheapen political rhetoric in this country. If you really think Bush is a Hitler, then you’ve obviously never seen what real totalitarianism is.
You are very unprofessionally putting words into my mouth. I never said anything a word about Bush in the above post, let alone compare him to Hitler. In broader terms, however, I am suggesting we are moving towards a new era of McCarthyism and I stand by the term “patriot police state.” The censorship of the Dixie Chicks music because of anti-Bush comments and the “pass this tax cut or you’re a traitor to our country” tone Tom DeLay and his hand puppet Dennis Hastert used in the US House on Friday morning are all the examples I need to prove that rabid nationalism brings out the worst in the human spirit.
“The Left needs to get some perspective”???? A firestorm of Republican Congressmen who just voted to further cut the benefits promised to veterans to pay for ANOTHER budget-busting tax cut for the rich on Friday come out on Saturday to express their “support for the troops” and the left needs to get some perspective???
Hi Jay,
WOW!!! about thousands(very precise)…that makes a LOT of people.it’s very hard to describe such a crowd!!
well maybe if you looked on Tv, you would see the millions protesting against your ideas,but I doubt you really care about what non-american think …
really great website.every peace (oops this word must be a mistake) of article you summarize is either crap or lie.
I can’t believe you’re actually a pretty well educated person who travelled and everything…
don’t you realize that violence never stopped violence???
I think we don’t have the same idea of the humanitarian help because what I see on TV doesn’t really look like any kind of help(and I’m watching CNN, not only french media…
anyway, since you’re on the winner side, you must be right. gorillas use to think like that.
wishing you all the best,
Vincent
p.s: I think you forgot to mention “and france surrendered”, “germans are faggots”, and “who care about muslims lives” on your website
p.s2: your website is the funniest one after the onion.com!!!go on dude!
I attended the rally at the Capitol. It was great! That evening I did not see anything about it on TV. You only hear about the 100K demonstrating against the war. I saw a small blurb regarding “various demonstrations support the war”. This was shown after the “100K anti war demonstrations. Is the media really helping?