Tea Partiers of the World, Unite!

by Nick Rizzuto

In the winter of 1847, The Communist League met in London to sketch out a platform for the international communist movement. Previously, the communist movement was made up of disparate factions of various national, ethnic, and even religious flavors. What emerged from this congress of communist revolutionaries was a united movement. Following the meeting in London, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels took up the task of forging the preeminent radical polemic of the international socialist, the Communist Manifesto. Their movement thenceforth, and to the detriment of civilization, moved forward as a united international juggernaut. The communist’s drive to organize themselves into an ideological powerhouse was not the first of its kind, but one that profoundly influenced much of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Multi-national political movements are indeed an old concept. It should strike us as curious then that there has never been, as far as I can tell, an international movement focused on the tenets of individual liberty. Perhaps this is owed, in part, to the fact that those who advocate for liberty tend to be individualists, preferring self-sufficiency and individual effort to the collective mobilization that is inherent in large movements. Whatever the reason, it appears that while other, more destructive movements have risen to the international stage, the liberty movement has lagged in its ability to organize in such a way.

While there have indeed been revolutions inspired by the ideas of liberty they more often than not were limited to national stages and were of varying levels of success. The American Revolution, which acts as the primary inspiration for our current Tea Party movement, is the clearest example of the success of these ideas, but there have also been revolutions, similarly inspired, that failed to achieve the ends of they had set out to achieve. The French Revolution, for example, was inspired in large part by the same philosophy as the American, but it fell victim to revolutionary excesses and violence. Post-revolutionary France fell into a state of bedlam until the rise of the dictatorial Napoleon put the final nail in the coffin of their revolution.

While international organization might have been deficient for the liberty movement historically, it appears that that is on the verge of changing. For the first time, there appears to be a growing international liberty movement, springing forth from the roots of our current American civic reawakening.

In recent months, inspired by what they are observing here in the states, Tea Party organizations have begun to rise in up the furthest corners of the world. While these organizations might have different concerns, ones that are specific to their particular nations, it is clear that each has formed around the same concepts: limited governance and individual liberty.

Ironically it was England, who in the 18th century was at the unpleasant end of a Tea Party, which was the first outside of the US to hold a Tea Party rally, launching their national movement in February of this year. In addition, Tea Party organizations have popped up in Ireland, the Netherlands, Australia, and Japan. Most recently, we have learned that Israel is planning on staging its first Tea Party in Tel-Aviv.

This nascent international movement owes its rise to several factors: First, the financial collapse has sent ripples throughout the economies of most western nations. In doing so, many people have begun to question the ability of governments to effectively control their economies. Ideas like central banking, heavily regulated industries, and progressive taxation appear more and more to be the cause of our current crisis rather than the solution.

Second, modern communication has allowed us to transmit news and ideas in a way that is historically unprecedented. Our ability to network with one another has been a key to the national Tea Parties and is central to the growth of the international movement a well.

Finally, the international Tea Parties are most certainly a reaction to the international progressivism that has been the dominant force in politics for several decades now. Western nations have given in to the temptation of establishing generous welfare states that have caused the slow decay of society from within. The results of these policies can be seen all over Europe including states that are in what might be considered to be long economic dormancies, as well as those that are in danger of full collapse, as in the case in Greece.

Cumulatively, these factors have made the landscape ripe for a movement that rejects the precept that big governments are prepared to take on the burdens they currently shoulder.

An international liberty movement is an idea whose time has come. As a matter of fact, it is one that’s long overdue. We are truly living in interesting times.



Copyright © 2010 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

"People of color" at Tea Parties

Tea Party Tour Brings Out Array of Activism

Fox News

From a former Delta flight attendant to the mother of a fallen Iraq Navy SEAL, the activists and organizers aboard the Tea Party Express each seem to represent a slice of America. But who are these people who drop everything to spend weeks on the road on a bus talking about the Constitution and turning '60s-style activism on its head?

TUPELO, Miss. -- From a former Delta flight attendant to the mother of a fallen Iraq Navy SEAL, the activists and organizers aboard the Tea Party Express each seem to represent a slice of America.

Travelers on the tour, a three-bus caravan barnstorming the country in protest of the Washington establishment, claim to be brought together by common principles: small government, less spending and a fierce defense of individual freedom.

But a lot of Americans hold those values. So who are these people who drop everything to spend weeks on the road on a bus talking about the Constitution and turning '60s-style activism on its head?

Some are folksy, some are strictly business. Everyday Americans make up the bulk of those on board and at the rallies, but there's also a strong organizing factor that makes the cross-country tour, which is on its third run and starting to carry some political heft, what it is.

By some appearances, the highly coordinated rallies and pulse of the 42-city national bus tour have all the markings of a political campaign.

Staff members work 18-hour days, seven days a week, and the chief strategist behind the group, Sal Russo, is a longtime Republican consultant from California who began his political career as a personal aide to Ronald Reagan.

Russo, who is head of the Sacramento-based political action committee, Our Country Deserves Better, which is funding the bus tour, has 40 years of political consulting under his belt. In the mid-1980s, Russo joined forces with former Reagan campaign director Ed Rollins to start a political consulting firm, which took on clients like former Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp.

"It has all the intensity of a campaign, but more like an old-fashioned one," Russo said of his group as the bus rolled along a stretch of highway en route from Arkansas to Mississippi. "We don't have a high-paid staff."

"The Tea Partiers remind me very much of the Reagan crowds of 1966," he added. "But this is a movement, not a party."

The Tea Party Express set off on its first national tour last August to protest the tax-and-spend policies of Congress and to cement its message with the thousands of other Tea Party factions that had formed around the country, said Joe Wierzbicki, one of the group's founding members.

The second bus tour launched in October, largely as an effort to debunk rumors that the Tea Party movement was nothing more than a passing fad.

This time around, Wierzbicki said, the purpose of the "Just Vote Them Out" tour is more exact: "To start putting together the campaigns that will change who's in office in 2010."

He added. "And health care has created the perfect storm for that."

At the tour's weekend stop in Little Rock, Ark., Tea Partiers targeted Arkansas Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln in large part over her support for the health care legislation.

The money raised by the Tea Party Express is hardly loose change. Russo's PAC raked in more than $4.5 million since forming in 2008 to help John McCain's presidential campaign -- some of it from corporate executives and high-end donors like actor Chuck Norris. Russo said the Tea Party bus tour will cost close to $1 million by the time it concludes in Washington on April 15, tax day -- a hefty sum he claims was entirely paid for by "ordinary folks" donating to his PAC.

Roughly 15 staff members, four entertainers and a dozen speakers ride in the red, gold and blue buses that have meandered across the country. A colorful map of the 50 states is painted on each side with the group's mission statement printed clearly: "Stop the out of control spending! No government run healthcare! Stop raising our taxes!"

Some organizers have given up their regular lives to work full-time for the Tea Party Express -- like Tiffiny Ruegner, a massage therapist and single mother from Sacramento, Calif., who lost 90 percent of her clientele last summer after the economy crashed.

"You have all these people who are in different situations in life," said Wierzbicki. "Some of them are married with kids and they have to leave their families for extended periods of time and it's difficult for them."

Debbie Lee, from Phoenix, took to the road after she lost part of her family.

In 2006, Lee was celebrating her birthday with friends when she learned that her son, Marc, was the first Navy SEAL to be killed in Iraq. Now, four years later, Lee is a familiar face at Tea Party rallies, speaking before crowds about the sacrifices of military families.

She says her son's death inspired her to join the movement, which she described as a place for people "who have never before attended political rallies."

The everyday logistics aboard the Tea Party Express don't always run smoothly, a sign that the movement's not quite as polished as its critics would make it out to be. Working toilets, an adequate food supply and scheduling dilemmas are sometimes problems for the over-stretched staff.

"The toilet's clogged -- again!" snapped bus driver Raymond March in the middle of one recent leg.

But Russo said the movement, like others before it, is only for believers.

"You can't do this kind of thing unless you believe in the cause," he said. "Everybody who's involved in this feels passionately about what we're doing. It's not about the money and it's not about the hours."

Black Tea Party Activists Called 'Traitors'

Fox News

ALBANY, N.Y. – They've been called Oreos, traitors and Uncle Toms, and are used to having to defend their values. Now black conservatives are really taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement — and for having the audacity to oppose the policies of the nation's first black president.

"I've been told I hate myself. I've been called an Uncle Tom. I've been told I'm a spook at the door," said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group of black conservatives who support free market principles and limited government.

"Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks," he said.

Johnson and other black conservatives say they were drawn to the tea party movement because of what they consider its commonsense fiscal values of controlled spending, less taxes and smaller government. The fact that they're black — or that most tea partiers are white — should have nothing to do with it, they say.

"You have to be honest and true to yourself. What am I supposed to do, vote Democratic just to be popular? Just to fit in?" asked Clifton Bazar, a 45-year-old New Jersey freelance photographer and conservative blogger.
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Opponents have branded the tea party as a group of racists hiding behind economic concerns — and reports that some tea partiers were lobbing racist slurs at black congressmen during last month's heated health care vote give them ammunition.

But these black conservatives don't consider racism representative of the movement as a whole — or race a reason to support it.

Angela McGlowan, a black congressional candidate from Mississippi, said her tea party involvement is "not about a black or white issue."

"It's not even about Republican or Democrat, from my standpoint," she told The Associated Press. "All of us are taxed too much."

Still, she's in the minority. As a nascent grassroots movement with no registration or formal structure, there are no racial demographics available for the tea party movement; it's believed to include only a small number of blacks and Hispanics.

Some black conservatives credit President Barack Obama's election — and their distaste for his policies — with inspiring them and motivating dozens of black Republicans to plan political runs in November.

For black candidates like McGlowan, tea party events are a way to reach out to voters of all races with her conservative message.

"I'm so proud to be a part of this movement! I want to tell you that a lot of people underestimate you guys," the former national political commentator for Fox News told the cheering crowd at a tea party rally in Nashville, Tenn., in February.

Tea party voters represent a new model for these black conservatives — away from the black, liberal Democratic base located primarily in cities, and toward a black and white conservative base that extends into the suburbs.

Black voters have overwhelmingly backed Democratic candidates, support that has only grown in recent years. In 2004, presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry won 88 percent of the black vote; four years later, 95 percent of black voters cast ballots for Obama.

Black conservatives don't want to have to apologize for their divergent views.

"I've gotten the statement, 'How can you not support the brother?'" said David Webb, an organizer of New York City's Tea Party 365, Inc. movement and a conservative radio personality.

Since Obama's election, Webb said some black conservatives have even resorted to hiding their political views.

"I know of people who would play the (liberal) role publicly, but have their private opinions," he said. "They don't agree with the policy but they have to work, live and exist in the community ... Why can't we speak openly and honestly if we disagree?"

Among the 37 black Republicans running for U.S. House and Senate seats in November is Charles Lollar of Maryland's 5th District.

A tea party supporter running against House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Lollar says he's finding support in unexpected places.

The 38-year-old U.S. Marine Corps reservist recently walked into a bar in southern Maryland decorated with a Confederate flag. It gave his wife Rosha pause.

"I said, 'You know what, honey? Many, many of our Southern citizens came together under that flag for the purpose of keeping their family and their state together,'" Lollar recalled. "The flag is not what you're to fear. It's the stupidity behind the flag that is a problem. I don't think we'll find that in here. Let's go ahead in."

Once inside, they were treated to a pig roast, a motorcycle rally — and presented with $5,000 in contributions for his campaign.

McGlowan, one of three GOP candidates in north Mississippi's 1st District primary, seeks a seat held since 2008 by The National Republican Congressional Committee has supported Alan Nunnelee, chairman of the state Senate Appropriations Committee, who is also pursuing tea party voters.

McGlowan believes the tea party movement has been unfairly portrayed as monolithically white, male and middle-aged, though she acknowledged blacks and Hispanics are a minority at most events.

Racist protest signs at some tea party rallies and recent reports by U.S. Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Barney Frank, D-Mass., that tea partiers shouted racial and anti-gay slurs at them have raised allegations of racism in the tea party movement.

Black members of the movement say it is not inherently racist, and some question the reported slurs. "You would think — something that offensive — you would think someone got video of it," Bazar, the conservative blogger, said.

"Just because you have one nut case, it doesn't automatically equate that you've got an organization that espouses (racism) as a sane belief," Johnson said.

Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, suggested a bit of caution.

"I'm sure the reason that (black conservatives) are involved is that from an ideological perspective, they agree," said Shelton. "But when those kinds of things happen, it is very important to be careful of the company that you keep."

The 5 Craziest Attacks on Tea Parties

FoxNews

In case there are any residual doubts of how bad the tea partiers have been treated, here are the Top 5 ways the left and the media have abused a grassroots movement. The coverage has been so hateful and so biased, it was almost impossible to narrow the list.

5) Protesters are Anti-Government
The media and the left portray tea parties as “anti-government” because it undermines a patriotic grassroots movement. Tea partiers aren’t anti-government, they are anti-big government. That’s just not the story journalists tell. The “anti-government” theme is strong, cropping up in more than two dozen stories in The Washington Post and New York Times combined. Very few of them mentioned the word “big” in reference to government.

Instead, it’s NPR’s Liz Halloran claiming tea parties have been boosted by “restive Republicans who have found refuge in the year-old anti-tax, anti-government uprising.” Frank Rich of The New York Times compared tea partiers with Andrew Joseph Stack, the man who flew a plane into an IRS building. “Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a ‘Tea Party terrorist.’ But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner.”

Then there’s former CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen, who became the story when she reported from the Chicago Tea Party on April 15 last year. Roesgen rudely interrupted one of the protesters and slammed the event for being “anti-government.” After she bullied her interview subject, Roesgen concluded that “you get the general tenor of this” tea party. “Anti-government, anti-CNN since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox and since I can't really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing.”

CNN is more family friendly now. Roesgen no longer works at the network.

4) Tea Partiers Are Stupid
Calling conservatives stupid is typical left-wing strategy. The left labeled Reagan stupid or senile. George W. Bush was consistently portrayed as stupid by detractors in the left and the media. It only makes sense that tea partiers get the same treatment.

In the case of the tea parties, some of the biggest offenders were also some of the biggest mouths on the left. Last August, former Air America host MSNBC regular Janeane Garofalo let the venom fly during an appearance at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 21. Garofalo called tea partiers “functionally retarded adults.”

Bill Maher deployed the same strategy in February of this year during HBO's “Real Time” calling tea partiers “cultists. “The teabaggers, they're not a movement. They're a cult, and I'm going to prove it. You know someone has fallen into a cult if you see these signs: One. Cults have their own vocabulary. Now, I don't speak sh**kicker, but I know that in their world, freedom means guns, diplomacy means weakness, elitist means reader, and socialist means black.” In Maher’s world, stupid means anyone who is conservative.

3) Protesters are Nazis
Nazis are the ultimate villains both for the horror they brought to the world through conquest and their use of industrialized genocide. But while the left went crazy when Lyndon LaRouche fans carried Obama/Hitler posters to protests, they were quick to use the slander for their own devices.

Take MSNBC’s relatively obscure host Dylan Ratigan. In February, the host of “The Dylan Ratigan Show” began the program by doing what his network always does – attacking conservatives. “The Tea Party has a bit of an integrity problem, as everybody from birthers, to open racists, to outright Nazis are actually on the team. And no one involved, including its leadership, seems to mind that fact.”

Ratigan learned from the best, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who called the tea parties “Astroturf” before she went on to link them to Nazis. “They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare.” Later she backed off her complete attack and tried to latch onto tea party popularity claiming, “but, you know, we share some of the views of the Tea Partiers.” Sure…

2) Homophobic Slurs
To most ordinary Americans in early 2009, the term “teabagging” meant using a tea bag to make actual tea. Then entire world learned the term had an overt, oral sex connotation, thanks to the media and left-wing pundits.

Nowhere was the use of the term more pronounced than MSNBC. The day before the big tea party event last April, MSNBC's David Shuster made numerous sexual puns during a “Countdown” appearance. “It's going to be teabagging day for the right-wing and they're going nuts for it. Thousands of them whipped out the festivities early this past weekend, and while the parties are officially toothless, the teabaggers are full-throated about their goals,” he told viewers. He later used his Twitter account to attack “teabaggers” and their “teabag leader.”
Shuster lost out to fellow MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for most adolescent behavior. Maddow’s and then Air America radio contributor Ana Marie Cox used the word “teabag” at least 51 times in a in a 13-minute long segment of bad “teabag” puns.

It wasn’t just MSNBC. Journalists at numerous outlets used the derisive term. But CNN anchor Anderson Cooper went even farther during the April 15 “Anderson Cooper 360” program. CNN’s senior political analyst David Gergen said Republicans were “searching for their voice” after two electoral losses, Cooper followed up by saying, “It’s hard to talk when you’re tea-bagging.” The irony of this attack is that it allows lefties and the media to feel smart and act juvenile at the same time.

1) Calling them “racist”
Playing the race card has become the left’s favorite move. It trumps everything else and is virtually impossible to defend against. Naturally, with an African-American president, crying “racism” has become a routine occurrence. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is just one of the milder examples of someone who injects race into everything except commercials.

Whether it’s Colbert King of The Washington Post or loose cannon former comedienne Garofalo, racism is the left’s preference in attempts to undermine the tea parties.

Former funny lady Garofalo bashed the attendees at last year’s tax day tea parties by using several different attacks. The “Countdown” guest called party-goers “a bunch of teabagging rednecks,” adding “this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.”

At least she didn’t invoke the KKK, or talk about tea partiers wearing sheets. But she didn’t have to because Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., did it for her. Clyburn showed up in a column by The Post’s Colbert King that claimed “Today's Tea Party adherents are George Wallace legacies.” “It reminds me of that period in our history right after Reconstruction,” Clyburn said, “when South Carolina had a black governor and the political gains were lost because of vigilantism, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.”

He wasn’t alone. In February, “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann focused on suggestions there should be civics literacy testing for registered voters made at the recent Tea Party convention, which Olbermann referred to as the “Tea Klux Klan.”

Maddow had her own Klan spin. “And as you could hear, the tea party convention crowd erupted in cheers at the suggestion, although, to be fair, it was sort of hard to tell exactly what the sounds coming from the crowd meant. They were sort of a little bit muffled by, you know, the white hoods,” she mocked.

Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.