"rally"; "restore honor"

[Ann Burlingham]

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 8:52 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "rally"; "restore honor"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Self-described rodeo clown Glenn Beck organized a gathering (he rejects the
> term "rally" as "political," though in my day "football rallies" were
> anything but) at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday to "Restore Honor."  That
> was the name of it, the "Restoring Honor" gathering.
>
> But it's clear that the object of the (dammit) rally was not to "restore"
> anybody's presumably "lost honor," but to "do honor to," i.e., give thanks
> to, members of the armed forces and others:

That reminds me: our local Tea Party advocates have been tabling
(hah!) at various local events displaying a flag embellished (all
right: defaced) with a phrase starting "In memory of our God, our
Nation, our Religions, our Freedom, our Peace, our Wives, our
Children, and our Fallen Dead..." The last time I saw them, I asked,
"'in memory of?' Are those things dead?" (They responded that they
soon would be, had the government its way.)

Googling just now, I found an image here:
http://helprescueamerica.com/ , though the one I saw has the writing
in the white lines of a US flag.

To me, "in memory of..." suggests only things that are dead. Further
googling tells me that this quote, in another form, comes from the
Book of Mormon, and one Captain Moroni. I gather it's known as the
Title of Liberty: "In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom,
and our peace, our wives, and our children". Still, I find the
formulation quite odd.

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