I left the studio in a foul mood. People who know me know that I don’t just want to talk about problems; I want to do something about them. I didn’t feel like the discussion accomplished anything. We started and ended poles apart, and Dr. Fauntroy’s refusal to entertain the notion that sometimes a rally is just a rally left me frustrated. I learned later that the producers were pleased with my appearance and hoped to call on me again someday. At least there was that; I hadn’t made a fool of myself.

I spent the day in a hotel conference room in Rockville, Maryland, preparing for a presentation that evening to a group of people from out of town who were attending the rally the next day. It was while I was sitting in that conference room, catching up on the news, that I came across these words, uttered by the Reverend Walter Fauntroy, civil rights leader, first non-voting delegate to Congress from DC, and founder of the Congressional Black Caucus:

We are going to take on the barbarism of war, the decadence of racism, and the scourge of poverty, that the Ku Klux — I meant to say the Tea Party,” Fauntroy told a news conference today at the National Press Club. “You all forgive me, but I — you have to use them interchangeably.

As I read these words, my spine stiffened and my temperature began to rise. His slanderous words, directed at millions of decent, God-fearing Americans, were ridiculous and infuriating at the same time. For those too young to know, or too willing to extend trust to a man once admired but now sadly lacking in perspective, veracity or acuity, let me explain why these two are not even remotely interchangeable.

The Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democrats in the south from 1865 to the mid-1960s. Historian Eric Foner wrote, “the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy.” Theirs is a legacy of innocent blood spilled upon the soil of a nation through acts of unspeakable evil. The Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror places them in a category occupied by only the most murderous organizations in world history.

The Tea Party movement hasn’t lynched anyone, hasn’t burned anyone’s home to the ground, hasn’t intimidated voters at a polling location, and hasn’t spat upon black congressmen or chanted racial slurs at them. The everyday Americans who comprise the Tea Party movement include many blacks like me, who understand that what the self-anointed black leaders of today want is not liberty but entitlement, not equal justice but vengeance.

The Tea Party movement is more true to the legacy of the great Frederick Douglass, who demanded individual liberty and equality under the law and nothing more, than the small men and women who claim leadership in the black community today. His cry to America when the nation wondered what it should do with its new black citizens was “Do nothing with us!” How similar a cry that is to that of today’s Tea Party movement, “Leave us alone!”

There is no comparison whatsoever between a hate group that practiced domestic terrorism for a century against all who were not like them, including Jews, Catholics, and other whites as well as blacks, and a grass-roots political movement arguing for liberty and self-governance as intended by the founders of our nation. To hurl such a comparison about so casually trivializes the violence and evil that uniquely characterizes the Ku Klux Klan, and therefore is the height of irresponsibility.

This charge is morally repugnant and exposes the mentality of these relics of the civil rights movement, who are fighting old battles long since won. While they foster within the black community resentment and bitterness about the past, and hopelessness for today and the future, they support policies that keep urban blacks in broken families, substandard schools, and dying communities. Why they continue to have a following despite their failure to change anything since 1965 is a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

The message of Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally, by contrast, was an overwhelmingly spiritual, unifying and uplifting message, one which the Reverend Al Sharpton cannot discuss with any authority since HE WASN’T THERE – he didn’t hear it. He was too busy listening to the sound of his own voice.

I was there, and not only was I not lynched by people in white hoods and robes, or beaten by union thugs in purple shirts, I was welcomed with hugs and kind words. Despite the heat and the packed crowds, everyone was accommodating and polite – they even guided me back to my place from the portable facilities when I got lost!

The speeches spoke of America’s fighting men and women as the epitome of honor, and they spoke of a nation that needed to turn to God for forgiveness and redemption. They honored Dr. King’s dream of racial reconciliation and said there was still much work left to do. The speakers were from all walks of life, many races, and many faiths, but they stood together and spoke one after the other about American heroes past, present and future, and the need for each of us to pray on our knees for our families and our nation.

The names of those who oppose us were not spoken even once. Our foes predicted we would speak ill of the president and his supporters, but Barack Obama’s name was never uttered. In fact, the only reference to the president came at the very end and, even then, it wasn’t by name.

Dave Roever, a Vietnam veteran who was horribly scarred by the wounds of war, but healed in his heart by the love of Jesus Christ, led a closing prayer that brought me to tears. I wasn’t the only one; I looked up at the large television monitor in front of me, and I saw Sarah Palin dabbing at her eyes as she bowed her head in prayer.

He prayed not only for our nation and for all of us, but he prayed for our president and our leaders. I was overcome by his words and the emotion in his voice as he prayed, and I left with my sense of purpose renewed, and my heart afire for the work that God has set before me.

Previous Tea Party gatherings in which I participated were like pep rallies, designed to fire up the team before the big game against their rivals. The “Restoring Honor” rally was a revival, and no one who was there and heard the words that were spoken, and the songs that were sung, would label as racist or hateful anything that took place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that day. The rally was about us coming together under common American values and under a mighty God, and the only acts of divisiveness and exclusion that day took place elsewhere in the nation’s capital.

For what it’s worth, the mainstream press is hopelessly obsessed with race, and in their efforts to be partisans rather than journalists, they too have abdicated any sense of objectivity or moral authority. The phrase “overwhelmingly white” was used in just about every news report of the rally I read, and I thought to myself, “How about overwhelmingly American?”

They wrote the words as if they were spitting something bitter out of their mouths, and I found their pandering to the lowest common denominator by emphasizing the racial composition of the crowd totally objectionable. They are fully complicit in the darkness that exists in the depths of America’s soul because their intent is not to report, but to segment and divide.

And thus ended my weekend with Glenn Beck and the Fauntroys. I am fortified by what took place in my life this weekend, and I know what my mission will be. A decade or so ago, I was reading a book called The Path by one of my favorite authors, Laurie Beth Jones. The purpose of the book was to help individuals develop their own life mission statement, just as companies develop mission statements to establish why they exist. I never finished the book because the exercises led me to a mission statement that I didn’t understand at the time.

I recently found the notebook in which I wrote the mission statement, and when I read them, I was momentarily awestruck. This is what it said:

Affirm, build and serve the cause of equality in race relations.

The more I move forward, the more I’m convinced that my task is to help write a new narrative on race in America, one that brings us together as children of the one true God and acknowledges the incredible blessings He has bestowed upon all of us as Americans.

God has placed us together in this great nation, black and white and every shade in between, so we may tend to His garden and bring forth the good fruit of unity in liberty. A garden needs pruning and weeding to grow, however, and we need to protect the garden from pests that would devour it.

From now on, we must prune and weed out the purveyors of race and separation, and defend America from their ravenous appetite for endless retribution over the sins of our forefathers. They no longer deserve the moral authority we gave them when they were once righteous in their words and deeds, and we can’t grow together as a nation until we revoke that authority and defang them once and for all.