What the TV and press pundits haven't yet recognized, along with the current administration and their Chicago-style political machine, is that the same desire for individual liberty and less government control (and voluntary, not coerced, concern for our neighbors' needs) is fanning the flames under this new teapot.
By Pat Boone
Posted: February 20, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern
© 2010
Double, double toil and trouble …
"Macbeth," Act 4, scene 1
In Shakespeare's famous classic, the Bard depicted three Scottish witches incanting over a boiling cauldron, conjuring up a powerful potion of foul ingredients including poisoned entrails, eye of newt, toe of frog and other despicable things, portending double toil and trouble for the man who would be king – Macbeth.
On March 7, a year ago, in this space I called for "
A New Boston Tea Party." Though I hadn't heard anybody else proposing it, I soon learned that others were spontaneously and independently calling for the same thing. In a matter of weeks, there were local and regional demonstrations all over the country, hundreds of thousands of American citizens crying loudly, like Peter Finch in the movie "Network," "We're mad as hell, and we're not going to allow this administration to ruin our lives, to take over the country and tell us what we can and can't say!"
I don't think there has been a phenomenon like this "Tea Party Movement" since the first one in 1773, the one that keynoted the looming American Revolution. What liberals and party bosses and jaded people in the media can't seem to comprehend is that nobody started this, nobody organized this, no secret big money funded it, and nobody is orchestrating it now!
Just today, before I sat down to write this, I saw Anderson Cooper on CNN and Bill O'Reilly on Fox trying to figure it out … and missing the point entirely. Anderson, a very smart man, was asking Ron Paul why "the tea party hasn't endorsed your son, running for Congress?" I didn't wait to hear Paul's answer, but I was laughing at Cooper's lack of understanding of the "tea party" itself. It's not an organization, a political "party"; there are no paid flacks laying out strategies in a back room, painting signs for out-of-work folks to parade in public places, hardly knowing what the slogans are about. It's not a long planned, well laid out agenda aimed at toppling some party or promoting another – or even creating a new one.
Bill O'Reilly was expressing his concern to Sarah Palin that the New York Times was painting the whole thing as a revolt of "extremists," just a fringe thing that would soon be written off, discounted and forgotten. He was asking Sarah what she thought, and how the "few kooks and loonies you can find in any movement," as he put it, could be silenced and kept from making the whole tea-party thing look loony and irresponsible.
Sarah did a pretty good job of explaining there is no governing authority, nobody presuming to tell the huge, disparate, diverse horde of citizens what they have to say or not say. If some "partners" make controversial signs or take an extreme position on some issue – so be it; they have a right to be heard, too. This is democracy in action, undiluted with political second-guessing, expensive polls or predetermined agendas. This is the people of America speaking out, making their desires clearly known, demanding that their government serve them, not the other way around!
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