The Left Is Making a Mistake in Ridiculing the Tea Parties
By Frank Salvato
(posted at the author's request)
The political Left in the United States is
making a grave mistake in diminishing and dismissing the anger of the American
people. Where it may be common place for liberals, Leftists, neo-Marxists and
Progressive-Leftists to take to the streets over anything and everything,
including a change of wind direction, it is entirely a different story with
conservatives and Republicans. Conservatives and Republicans don’t march in the
streets for anything. The fact that they have now taken to the streets in
protest of massive government spending and government’s encroachment into our
liberties speaks volumes to those who would listen.
“Give Me Liberty or Give Me
Death!”
An amazing thing happened on the way to
America’s socialistic demise...a revolution has fomented. Born of a righteous
anger centered on wasteful and special interest government spending, lack of
honest representation in government, a move toward transforming the United
States Constitutional Republic into a Socialist Democracy, excessive taxation
and many more constitutionally based grievances, conservatives, traditionalists
and Republicans, as well as centrists, independents and Democrats, took to the
streets of just about every congressional district to protest a behemoth runaway
government run by an elitist and opportunistic political class. From Chicago to
New York, St. Louis to San Francisco, St. Paul to Austin and Miami to Portland,
hard-working, taxpaying Americans, who aren’t too often moved to taking to the
streets in protest, took to the streets to redress their government.
What makes this “protest” more important and
more potent than any petition drive, any email, letter writing or phone
campaign, is that it moved conservatives, traditionalists and Republicans to
take to the streets, something that in most every instance and in every
circumstance they are not wont to do. The question that is being asked now is
this: Will this movement grow and gather strength enough to affect real,
meaningful and constitutionally friendly “change” or will conservatives,
traditionalists and Republicans fall prey to their traditional boogey-man,
factionalism?
The Conservative Challenge
For decades– both in my political life and for
as long as I have been writing and publishing – I have contended that
conservatives and Republicans – the Right – aren’t cohesive. Since entering into
the new media publishing and non-profit educational venues I have come to
understand that they don’t financially support the organizations and
publications that carry the water for them; who defend the traditionalist
ideology from mainstream media and Leftist attacks. They employ ideological
litmus tests for their prospective candidates instead of selecting candidates
that would dedicate their public service to preserving their individual rights
to pursue their special interests. And it is obvious to anyone but those walking
around with eyes wide shut that it takes an act outrageous and egregious to
motivate conservatives and Republicans to the streets in protest.
While this analysis may sound harsh (and with
regard to the lack of financial support for those who carry the water for
conservatism it is meant to be), for the most part there is an underlying
philosophical reason for the differences between the pack mentality of the Left
and the individualism of the Right. Where the Left leans more toward identifying
our populace in the collective (what’s good for the country is good for the
individual), the Right identifies our populace as individuals who, together,
make up the whole (what is good for the individual is good for the country).
This individualist philosophy lends itself to self-sufficiency and individual
responsibility which leads to a community of people who believe that solutions
come from individuals and not government. This, of course, leads to a civically
responsible community.
A vulnerability that exists in extreme
individualism is that it leads to a community of individuals who always want to
be the leader. We’ve all heard the phrase, “Too many chiefs and not enough
Indians.” When everyone believes that their way of achieving things is the best,
factions develop that impede the whole of the community from being effective in
achieving common goals.
A prime example of this can be found in the
ideological litmus test for political candidates. Instead of supporting
candidates that would fight to protect an individual’s right to pursue
matters important to the individual, factions within the conservative community
threaten to withhold support if their individual special interests, the
subjects and issues most important to them, are not embraced by candidates.
Using the individualist philosophy in political pursuits instead of measuring
candidates on their dedication to preserving and defending the individuals’
rights to pursue their individual interests makes it next to impossible to
not only come to a consensus on a candidate, but slate a candidate that can beat
the Left’s cohesive, pack-mentality voting style.
Extreme individualism is also the main reason
that the Right continually falls to the Left in establishing and funding
political action and advocacy groups. It is the primary reason why, even though
there are people on the right side of the ideological aisle who have even more
money than neo-Marxist financier George Soros, there are no groups like
MoveOn.org, America Coming Together, Media Matters, etc. Those ideological
groups that do exist on the right side of the ideological aisle are almost
always extremely limited in what they can do to combat the Leftists because they
are so underfunded.
This is why the events of April 15th, 2009, are
so incredible and important in and of themselves. It would seem that the acts
outrageous and egregious have occurred at the hand of our government, so much so
and for so long that – to borrow a line from a Bob Dylan song, “...the times,
they are a changin’.”
The Beneficiaries of American Political
Apathy
The American Fifth
Column – an association of
one-worlders, neo-Marxists, Progressive-Leftists, Communists, Socialists and
anarchists, to name some of the more notable groups – has successfully intruded
into our daily lives by implementing a shadow set of societal laws in “political
correctness”; a shadow set of rules antithetical to the United States Constitution. This is true to such an extent
that elected officials are basing the creation of legislation on these tenets,
tenets directly taken from the Marxist-Leninist philosophy. From hate crime laws whose definitions are
open to ideological interpretation to the mass redistribution of wealth
currently being perpetrated upon the American people by the Obama Administration
to the government funded indoctrination of our children into special interest
ideology via the public schools system, the elements of our society that believe
government is the answer have infiltrated every avenue of our lives and they
have placed the importance of their ideology above even the proper execution of
representative government.
But most disturbing is that the American Fifth
Column has so successfully employed the tactics of Marxist “community organizer”
Saul Alinsky to achieve their goal – the radical transformation of
America's social and economic structure – that they have taken control of the US
government. Nancy Pelosi’s oligarchy in the US House of Representatives,
combined with the almost filibuster-proof Democrat majority in the US Senate,
place the Legislative Branch firmly in control of the neo-Marxist wing of the
Democrat Party. President Obama – who has talked unabashedly about “economic
justice” and the “arrogance” of the United States and who is a self-declared
“community organizer” in the mold of the Alinsky model – has populated his
administration with far-Left ideologues – many from the Clinton Administration –
including many members of the biased and agendized mainstream media.
It can be successfully argued that the
neo-Marxist Progressive-Left has become “the establishment” and traditionalist
Americans – those who believe in the sanctity of the US Constitution, in
freedom, liberty and personal and civic responsibility – have become the
“counter-culture.”
Enter the tea parties...
Goebbels Would Be Proud
As real, hard-working Americans from all walks of life –
rich, poor, religious, non-religious, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian,
Independent, white, black, yellow, brown, male and female – took to the streets
to send a message to their elected officials; those elected to office to
represent the best interests of their constituencies, not their political
parties, perhaps the most organized and vicious threat to our Constitutional
Republic took to the airwaves to discredit, diminish and otherwise smear We the
People: the mainstream media.
Make no mistake, while the neo-Marxists elected
to office are a threat to our liberty and freedom, to our Constitutional
Republic, they wouldn’t be able to come close to the success they have seen so
far if it weren’t for the propagandists in the mainstream media. The mainstream
media disingenuously and blatantly violated their constitutionally mandated
responsibility to act as citizen’s advocate by championing the Obama campaign in
the 2008 elections. By refusing to ask the tough questions and selectively
airing favorable coverage of the Obama campaign, while criticizing the McCain
campaign for even the most benign faux pas, they ensured a victory for Barack
Obama thus violating the public trust. True journalism is dead in the mainstream
media. It has been replaced by a propaganda dissemination mechanism that would
have made Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels envious. With regard to the tea
parties two examples stand out...
Radio talk show host, Bill Press, on FOX News,
April 14th, tried to float the idea that nefarious conservative organizations
were behind the organizing of the nationwide tea party assemblage, saying he
”didn’t see anything genuine or see anything real” about the protests. He advanced a
ridiculous theory that because advocate organizations and politicians
decided to get on board with the public outrage that they somehow were pulling
the strings of the total of protesters from coast-to-coast. Press may understand
protests on the Left to be funded by nefarious political and ideological forces
– George Soros, MoveOn.org, America Coming Together, Media Matters, the
Communist and Socialist Parties, etc. – but conservatives and Republicans aren’t
that adept at organizing “march-in-the-street” protests.
Another came from CNN’s Susan Roesgen who
displayed a level of elitism in her interviewing of tea party protesters in
Chicago heretofore unseen throughout the history of journalism. Roesgen questioned one
protester whose frustration with Barack Obama’s totalitarian governmental
style led him to equate it to the political stylings of a young,
pre-holocaust Adolf Hitler. Forgetting that fascism exists on the left
side of an accurate political spectrum, Roesgen chastised the protester
for being “offensive.” One must question how offended she was when the same
thing was happening to President George W. Bush. Then Roesgen, under the guise
of asking a question, lectured and entered into debate with another protester before
cutting him off and declaring that the entire protest was orchestrated by FOX
News and was, in fact, “anti-government,” “anti-CNN” and “not family
viewing.”
This blatant disregard for the public’s genuine
anger lends credence to the argument that the mainstream media is not only in
the tank for the Obama Administration, but that they have reached such a level
of elitism, possessing such an agenda-driven arrogance, that they have literally
become not only an enemy of the Charters of Freedom but an enemy of the people.
Overthrowing Men Who Pervert the
Constitution
According to the recently released DHS threat
assessment titled, Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic & Political Climate
Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization & Recruitment, my proclivity to
actively defend the US Constitution, to actively question a reckless government
that has strayed from the principles set forth by our Founders and Framers –
principles born of Natural Law and Judeo-Christian values, principles that
forged a Constitutional Republic, defines me as a threat to our nation.
According to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (please tell me
again what her qualifications for this post are?) because I am angry about the
government’s abdication of effective representative government I am a threat to
the nation, along with US soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and each
and every American who turned out for the tea parties across the nation. Both
Napolitano and President Obama – for his silence on the matter – consider We
the People “the enemy.”
As of this writing, there are 564 days until
the 2010 midterm elections. The questions that remains are these:
▪ Will
this truly patriotic movement continue to grow?
▪ Will those who
took to the streets on April 15th, 2009, continue to do so until the
totalitarian forces of the neo-Marxist Progressive-Left are vanquished once and
for all?
▪ Or will
conservative, traditionalists, Republicans, concerned centrists and honest
Democrats look at their singular achievement and say job well-done as they
retreat to the status quo?
To be sure, if the mid-term elections had been
held on the day of the tea parties I truly believe most incumbents would have
been ousted from office. The anger is that concentrated. But the past holds the
truth of the future and it shows that – traditionally – conservatives are hard
pressed to maintain cohesiveness over a prolonged period of time. Truthfully, I
hope I am proven wrong on this point. The fact is, our nation’s future depends
on me being wrong.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is credited with having said, "I fear all we have done
is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." If the Left
is smart – and that is truly being questioned by many Americans – they will form
a new-found respect for the admiral’s words with regard to the events of April
15th, 2009.
If the Right is smart, and in their awakening
it appears they are, they will realize this needs to be an ongoing effort, that
there is hard work ahead, that everyone must act cohesively and
that...
...the revolution starts now!
“We, the people, are the rightful masters of
both congress and the courts - not to overthrow the constitution, but to
overthrow men who pervert the constitution.” -– Abraham Lincoln
Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and
Director of Terrorism Research for BasicsProject.org a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and
education initiative. His writing has been recognized by the US House
International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention.
His organization, BasicsProject.org, partnered in producing the original
national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical Islamist
terrorism. He is a member of theInternational Analyst
Network He also serves
as the managing editor for The New Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on FOX
News Channel, and is a regular guest on talk radio including on The Captain's
America Radio Show airing on AM1220 WSRQ and on the Internet catering to the US
Armed Forces around the world and on The Right Balance with Greg Allen
syndicated nationally. His opinion-editorials have been published by The
American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times & Human Events and are
syndicated nationally. He is occasionally quoted in The Federalist. Mr. Salvato
is available for public speaking engagements.
He can be
contacted at
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