Demonizing Everyday Americans

There appears to be a concerted effort among the political Left and many mainstream media people to demonize and marginalize the expanding citizen-based movement known as the tea party movement. This effort flows from both a fear of what these tea parties represent and a contempt for everyday Americans. But those ordinary citizens are poised to be the ones laughing when it’s all over, when democracy takes its course.

There seems to be a consensus now among the liberal elite when it comes to the tea parties. Senior administration officials deride them, as do liberal congressional Democrats. These elitists characterize the tea partiers as extremists, some drawing analogies between these ordinary citizens and right-wing militias, fanatics, and religious zealots. Some members of Congress are even saying that these tea party people are racist, which is pretty much the worst label that can be slapped on you in modern politics.

And many leftist talking heads in the media parrot this message, with their own biting editorial, adding that some in the tea party crowd are dangerous. Some talking heads, including some Hollywood actors and others who don’t seem to have any credentials as policy analysts but are nonetheless given air time, are really playing up the racism angle, and even suggest that some tea party attendees may be domestic terrorists.

Agents of big government and their boosters in the mainstream media seem determined to throw cold water on this growing grassroots movement that is a reaction to the Obama administration’s power grab of the growth and expansion of this country’s central government.

There’s a great deal of diversity among tea party people. Some just want lower taxes, and some also want less regulation. Still others are pro-life voters or Christian conservatives that also want fiscal responsibility. Many others push for conservative judges, while still others hold up signs calling for a restoration of American sovereignty, or protecting America’s borders, or defeating cap and trade or card check.

But they all have two things in common: They all want smaller government, and oppose the trampling of the Constitution embodied in these efforts to radically expand the size and scope of government. And as part of that desire, they want this utterly-ludicrous spending binge to end before it bankrupts all of us.

There’s nothing extremist about that agenda, because common sense is never extreme.

Are there some people attending tea party rallies who are intemperate in their remarks? Sure. Whenever you get tens of thousands of regular folks together, you’ll always get a few who makes comments that they should reconsider. Even then, nothing we’ve seen is worse than the truly outrageous statements that we’ve heard from the Left in recent years about President Bush or Republicans.

Having been engaged in many gatherings of the tea party crowd, it’s offensive that many in the mainstream media are engaging in a systematic effort to marginalize American citizens who are simply trying to take a stand for individual liberty—a stand in opposition to big-government expansion. Also one of us speaking as an African-American (Blackwell), it’s especially insulting to suggest that these people’s opposition to President Obama is driven by racism.

America’s history of grassroots activism goes back to the founding of our republic. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people includes as a necessary element those same average, ordinary people being able to gather and speak out. This freedom to assemble was considered so essential to a free nation that our Founders put it in the First Amendment, right alongside the freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Ironically, these rights are set side-by-side with the freedom of the press, as well. The leftists in the media would do well to remember that their liberty to be a free press comes from the same constitutional amendment as the tea party crowd’s liberty to gather together.

And our elected leaders would do well to remember that the First Amendment exists to protect average people from the government, not the other way around.

Blackwell and Klukowski are the authors of the forthcoming book, The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, on sale April 27.

The solution is to create alternate sources of information to compete with the leftist-controlled media.

I'm a former news guy too and had the same inside-out view as you. The real problem is with the Marxist-run universities that pump out fully indoctrinated little comrades who have no knowledge of American history nor traditional American values. Their only mission is to bring about the socialist "Utopia," and they control all aspects of most American media.

I watched dumbfounded as a couple of good conservative friends blissfully allowed their kids to be university-indoctrinated despite my efforts to tell them what was going on. They ended up thinking I was the bad guy, even after the kids emerged as raging radical America-hating Leftists who despised their parents' values and beliefs.

There's a kind of strange psychology at work here -- blind trust in our institutions? -- that runs counter to facts and logic. I don't know if there really is a solution at this late date. The termites have destroyed the structure from the inside. It appears strong and sound but the slightest little push -- as we've seen since Obama's election -- may start it toppling down.

Thank you for your interesting reply.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the left has been able to do what it has done by following, in part, the admonishment by Gramscii to take the “long march through the institutions” and subvert the organizations that teach culture into leftist enclaves. They’ve done a good job taking over academia, the media, religion, and government.

Here’s my response. I’m an English teacher right now at a high school. I’m taking a long march through THEIR institutions. Whenever I can, to whomever I can, I use my position to teach the virtues of liberty, freedom, American exceptionalism, and limited government. The left hasn’t changed the teaching standards, all of which say I am perfectly within my job description to teach those things. I can teach Solzhenitsyn to demonstrate the insanity and cruelty of communism. When a precocious freshment comes into my classroom filled with Marxist drivel, I can give him a copy of the Federalist Papers. Whenever I can, I counter the crap handed out by the left.

I have tenure, too, and as long as my students do well on the standardized tests - which they do - my principals don’t bother me. The students and parents generally like me, too.

A poor, stupid bastard like Gramscii had no clue that his ideas are mere strategy. Those ideas can be used against the left. So can the strategies of Alinsky. It took them 80 years to tear down American culture. It’ll take us just as long to erode their structures. Just don’t give up. Teach your kids. Subvert the left. Nothing is permanent, especially those who preen like tyrants.

Good luck and have a great Sunday.

I find your views very interesting as well. I applaud what you're doing as a teacher. I hope tens of thousands of like-minded others join you! The path ahead of you is long and grueling but it may be the only real way out of this crisis. I just hope a change in teaching standards -- and gulags -- don't arrive too soon.

As you say, Gramscians and other Marxists now dominate all key elements of our culture and government. You're right that the tables can and must be turned with the reversal strategy you've outlined. But conservatives generally haven't shown much enthusiasm for that approach. They lack the fervor, patience and sense of purpose shown by the Opposition.

I was a kid during WWII and saw the ravages of totalitarian rule under Hitler. I wasn't lured into the Soviet dream either. I read Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" and "The God That Failed" while still in high school. Those and Orwell's "1984" were all the warning I needed about Marxist totalitarianism. His image of a future with a boot heel crushing into our faces is still vivid.

Liberty will eventually prevail. I just hope there won't be a long excruciating interlude of darkness.

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