The Tea Party and Race Relations
You know you’re really making an impact on local and national politics when you begin to be noticed and perhaps targeted by politicians like John Lewis, by organizations like the NAACP, and by liberal journalists like E.J. Dionne. And so members of the Tea Party find themselves in just such company with accusations by Mr. Lewis that he was the victim of racial epithets during the healthcare debate, with the NAACP passing a resolution “calling on all people to condemn racism within the tea-party movement,” and with Mr. Dionne’s editorial Friday calling for “an honest talk about the role of race and racism in the Tea Party.”
Should we then, Mr. Dionne, for equality and fairness, call for all people to condemn racism in the Democrat Party, in Mr. Lewis’ office, and at the NAACP and perhaps at the Observer or are we to believe that the Tea Party has an issue with some of its members being racists simply because these individuals and these organizations say it is so? Mr. Lewis, the NAACP, and Mr. Dionne either don’t know what the Tea Party stands for or they are trying to misrepresent the movement for political purposes.
I am a founding member of the Tea Party. Let me get out my membership card and show it to you…here it is…the Constitution of the United States of America. It’s a bit clumsy to carry around, but I don’t mind. You see the Tea Party is composed of individuals from all over the country who are concerned about one thing…freedom….freedom versus socialism and government control. The Tea Party, for many of us, has been simmering underground for decades as we’ve watched the federal government take more and more of our hard earned resources…first for unconstitutional programs like Social Security and then later for Medicare and Medicaid, and more recently, thanks to President Bush, for “Part D” prescription coverage. We knew the election of Barack Obama would hasten America’s movement to socialism and so the Tea Party boiled to the surface this past September with the “9/12” rally at the Capitol.
The “9/12” rally was an unbelievable event. On the Metro train, crammed in like sardines, you couldn’t help but talk to the people who were next to you. I met Americans from California, Washington State, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and even one man who drove 21 hours from Texas to attend the rally. In the hundreds of thousands of people who were there, in the young and the old and in black and the white, I never once saw any racist sign or heard any racist comment, and I didn’t see Mr. Lewis or Mr. Dionne there either.
I did see and hear Americans who were deeply concerned about losing their freedom to taking by the federal government…how surreal it was to walk by the building(The National Archives) housing the document(The Constitution) that along with God’s Grace created the greatest country on the face of the earth, and attend a rally at the Capitol where the politicians inside were doing their best to destroy it.
The DC rally the day of the healthcare vote was a similar gathering of Tea Party members. While the crowd was much smaller due to the short notice, the same type of individuals and the same signs were prevalent. At this event, rally attendees by the thousands visited their legislator’s offices to lobby for votes against the healthcare takeover. The Capitol Police, who were in attendance by the hundreds, made sure that order was kept and that crowds were managed. Not once did I hear any racist comments or see any racist signs.
So you see, focusing the public’s attention on racism in the Tea Party is an attempt to direct attention away from the true purpose of the party which is to raise the awareness of all Americans that we, as a people, are losing our freedoms and liberties to control by the government. In 1900 we worked an average of 8 days to pay our federal taxes….today that number is roughly 78 days…so we’ve lost a full 25% of our work year to taking by the federal government. And the President’s takeover of healthcare and the coming tax increases will accelerate this taking. Maybe these are the types of truths that if discussed and debated by the NAACP would truly benefit their members.
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