Beck: 'You want a leader? Don’t worry about their waistline...worry about their spine.'
Glenn Beck speaks at the Restoring America One State at a Time event, hosted by the NJ Tea Parties, The 912 Project and Right2RecallNJ, at the Northern Star Arena at Six Flags Great Adventure.JACKSON — The American experiment is in jeopardy, and it is up to Americans to rescue it, said conservative political commentator Glenn Beck on the first stop of a national tour that opened to an enthusiastic crowd of about 1,500 at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson last night.
Public pensions, union leaders, Democrats, Republicans and Woodrow Wilson all came under fire in an hour-long speech that was part rally, part history lesson and part lecture.
"We have a moral imperative to make sure liberty and the spark of freedom remains or we will be held eternally responsible," Beck said as the sun began to set over Ocean County.
Beck, dressed in a blue checkered shirt and jeans, peppered his speech with a characteristic mix of humor and emotional entreaty, to the delight of an adoring crowd of Tea Party members.
"I would love to meet Chris Christie," Beck told the crowd at the Northern Star Arena. "You want a leader? Don’t worry about their waistline...worry about their spine."
Beck praised Christie for taking on union leaders who he said created an unsustainable public pension system.
"Here in New Jersey, the union bosses tell Chris Christie, ‘So I guess you’re gonna shut down the government,’" Beck said, impersonating a mob boss. Channeling Christie, Beck said "Yep. I guess so. I’m going to have some pizza and beer. I’ll be at the mansion if you want to get serious."
Judge Andrew Napolitano speaks at the Restoring America One State at a Time event, hosted by the NJ Tea Parties, The 912 Project and Right2RecallNJ, at the Northern Star Arena at Six Flags Great Adventure.Beck said public employee pensions were bankrupting the country.
"Cops: I’m sorry man, you were lied to," he said, adding that if future pensions weren’t reduced, "then we will have no job, no pension and no country."
Beck, who says he is not involved in the Tea Party, will make a series of similar stops throughout the country in advance of the November mid-term elections.
Beck capped a day of speakers and events that began at 2 p.m., amidst the swirling roller coasters of Six Flags.
Before Beck spoke, Newark native Judge Andrew Napolitano took the stage shortly after 4 p.m.
"We were created in the image and likeness of God" Napolitano told the crowd. "As God is perfectly free, he created us perfectly free."
Napolitano, a former Newark superior court judge and a regular legal analyst on Fox News, was among a roster of speakers that rallied the crowd today, in preparation for Beck, the headliner.
Napolitano spoke for 40 minutes, casting the Tea Party movement as an historic constitutional struggle for freedom from the tyranny of the federal government.
"Every two or three generations a president comes along . . . that president seriously violates the constitution," Napolitano said and cited John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt for civil rights violations. "Why is it that when people get into power they forget about freedom?"
Napolitano, sounding a regular theme of Tea Party members, criticized President Obama and Congress for passing healthcare legislation that Napolitano said was an intrusion on the freedoms of Americans.
The scene at the Northern Star Arena at Six Flags Great Adventure hours before Glenn Beck spoke."They’re first job is to keep us free," Napolitano said. "If they’re keeping us safe but unfree, they’re not doing their job."
According to Beck the key elements of the political movement underway now are service, freedom, and a renewed importance for individual freedom.
"Do you know why the Tea Party is still standing? Because we’re unpredictable...they don’t understand you and they don’t understand me," Beck said.
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• Ex-Newark judge speaks at Glenn Beck rally at Great Adventure