The liberal media’s newest meme is to claim that the tea party movement is made up exclusively of John Birchers, militia types, racists, and “birthers.” Politico, for instance, had an extensive story about how legitimate conservatives are coming to realize that they’ll have to conduct a Buckley-style purge of the extremists if they expect the tea party groups to be taken seriously. Of course, the left has had its extremists for decades, unlike the right has never conducted any such purges, and has also benefited from a news media that has never highlighted the left’s worst nuts.
The whole idea that conservatives have to purge their wackier, more fringe members is something that at one level is obvious but at another is proof that the left and the Old Media are nothing but hypocrites. At still a third level there is part of the attitude exhibited by some of these far right elements that is a root motivation of the tea party movement, fringe or no.
As clownish left-wing commentators such as Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, John Stewart or Stephen Colbert point fingers and guffaw at the fringes of the right and as the New York Times and Politico stroke their chins and look down their noses at the unruly tea party movement, it must be noted that none of these folks ever uttered a cross word against the Code Pink wackos, the communist infiltrators, anti-war hippies, Stalinist apologists, pro-abortion extremists, Euro-trash half-wits, eco-terrorists, and outright anarchists that have filled the left’s ranks since the birth of the new left after WWII.
At every lefty protest representatives of these hatemongering groups abound. They can be found on the campus of every American college and university, as well. But are these dangerous extremists ever discussed in our Old Media outlets when they highlight lefty movements? Never. The left’s extremists are simply never mentioned. It is as if every left-wing group in America is filled with conscientious old grandmothers and idealistic young folks innocently avowing their rights as citizens of the world. Never are the violence-prone, the hateful nutcases, or the drugged-out losers that fill the American left ever highlighted.
But watch out. Should one guy with a misspelled sign, a few goofy guys dressed as founding fathers, or one guy with a gun show up at a tea party and even conservatives start quaking in fear the their movement can’t be taken seriously.
All sorts of left-wing sources are attempting to tie the Tea Party movement to extremists. Bob Cesca of Huffington Post is sure that “teabaggers” are “right-wing fascists,” even though fascism is a left-wing ideology — remember the Nazis called themselves the National Socialist Party. The Washington Post rushed to say that IRS building destroyer Joe Stack was just like members of the Tea Party movement, linking this killer to folks in the movement despite that there are no ties to them. Of course, there are dozens of examples of the Old Media attacking the Tea Party movement. The Media Research Center has a great round up of many of these media slams on the movement from April 15 of 2009 and the attacks haven’t stopped since then.
Still, there are some serious questions that must be asked about what the tea party movement means, who should be “allowed” into it, and how its affairs should be conducted. William F. Buckley, Jr. well understood this when he conducted in the early 1960s the purge from his new conservative movement of members of the John Birch Society.
Even as House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio tells the media that he thinks the tea partiers are “great patriots,” some media types like former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson are warning that the tea party movement is in danger of being defined by its “worst elements.” Consequently many conservatives are looking to Buckley’s example in order to distance the tea party movement from militia types and the so-called “birthers” that have set upon Obama’s birth certificate as its cause célèbre.
This is not to say that the tea party movement should simply stand by as weirdos take over their movement. Certainly conservatives are right to try and oust today’s John Birchers. But let’s be honest about one aspect of “extreme” sentiment that lies at the basis of the tea party movement: its essential anti-government sentiment.
The key difference between the left and right is that the left sees government as the answer to its dreams while the right sees government as the problem, not the solution. Leftists are fascists at heart and they want to use the iron fist of government to drive their policy goals. So, when the left protests it protests that government isn’t big enough, that it isn’t being used ruthlessly enough.
The tea party movement is different. It is at heart driven by a quintessentially American sentiment. That sentiment is a deep mistrust of big government.
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