A parade of speakers encouraged a group of about 115 residents to get involved in local and national politics and "restore honor" to America at a tea party rally in Temecula on Saturday.

Saying "progressives" have taken over the U.S. government and are dismantling the country's founding ideals with their policies, speakers asked the audience to take a stand through a variety of methods, including get-out-the-vote efforts and in the courts.

"We have a duty to advance liberty," Bridget Blanton, one of about 10 speakers at the rally, told the audience of mostly retirees and families. "The time to act is now."

Keynote speaker U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-Georgia) offered what he called five "positive solutions" in his speech: never apologize for America, read the Constitution, fight big government spending, push for tax reform, and vote out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"We oughta be mad. We have a group of folks in charge right now who have hijacked (the government)," Price said of the Democrat-controlled Congress and White House. "We are at a crossroads."

Unlike other recent local tea party rallies, in which protestors lined busy street corners with a variety of political signs, Saturday's event on a grassy field at Butterfield Stage Road and Temecula Parkway was more relaxed, with attendees sitting atop haystacks and munching on kettle corn while speakers addressed them from a main stage.

Organized by members of the local tea party movement, it was put on to coincide with conservative radio and television talk show host Glenn Beck's 8-28 Restore Honor Rally in Washington D.C., where tens of thousands of tea party enthusiasts converged. Beck, however, insisted the main event at the Lincoln Memorial be nonpolitical.

Declarations of faith from the Washington event were echoed at Temecula's event, where the Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, talked about the necessity of being a nation of "good people."

"If we have to bury our faith in God, our republic will fail," he said.

The date of Beck's rally, Aug. 28, has come under fire by some civil rights leaders because he chose to hold his event on the same day, and at the same place, that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I have a dream" speech.

That criticism was broached in Temecula, when Niger Innis with the Congress of Racial Equality, a conservative civil rights group, chastised those who call tea partiers "racist."

"Am I black enough for you?" Innis asked. "Me and my fellow officers have been featured at dozens of tea party rallies. Stop lying to the American people about the tea party movement. ... Do these anti-tea party people know they are the real racists, and they betray all our ancestors?"

Organizers of the rally have said Saturday's efforts, locally and across the nation, are about working to restore honor to America, in its government, with its laws, at its schools, and on Election Day.

Environmental policies that hurt farmers, wasteful government spending, health care reform, corporate bailouts, political correctness and allegations of voter fraud favoring Democratic candidates were all panned at the Temecula rally.

"Are you all mad about what's going on?" Price asked the audience, to which they responded in unison "yes."

"Do you want to take it back?" Price then asked, referring to the government and the country.

Again, the audience cried back "yes."

"Can you hear us now?" Price said.

Several audience members said attending the rally was about getting involved and supporting a good cause.

"They're essential," Hemet retiree Ruth Shea said of tea party rallies. "We are being lied to every day (by the government and mainstream media)."

Temecula resident Jerry Gooding, 60, said the rally was a "good reminder" about what's important.

"America is a great country, and we need to defend it," he said.