PrintApril 16, 2009
Tea Parties about Far More than Taxes
Many writers have dubbed the Tax Day Tea Parties as inconsequential, a fad that will die quickly, and of foolish origins that have nothing to do with the American patriots of revolutionary days. Patriots dumped a ship full of tea into Boston Harbor, these folks contend, to protest one thing: taxation without representation. We modern patriots have representation and are therefore insane to protest, or so this line of argument goes.
Folks who believe that the American Revolution was over nothing but taxation -- a penny more for a cup of tea or sugar or any of the other fees and taxes that the British were constantly adding to colonists' backs -- are as dimwitted as was King George in his day. The tea tax may have been the single match that started the fire, but the British had been soaking their American colonies in tyrannical kerosene for a long, long time.
Now, the Tea Parties occurring in the present day may indeed represent a brushfire that quickly extinguishes itself. Only time will tell.
But the message in grassroots Tea Parties today is of exactly the same character as its historical inspiration. The Tea Parties represent a growing anger against encroaching tyranny by a federal government that pays far more heed to billionaire financiers, union bosses, special interest lobbyists, and those on the bottom who pay no income taxes, than it does to all the folks in the middle, who work hard to pay their taxes and all their other bills.
The Tea Parties represent real citizens' anger over watching powerlessly for the past two months as a president, who ran as a moderate to get elected, has taken the fastest, boldest leap to the far left of any president to date. Not only has President Obama upped the ante on the failed policies of FDR and Lyndon Johnson, he has gone on an apology tour of Europe, bowed to a Saudi King, and promised billions more of our hard-earned money to global entities over which we have absolutely no control.
At a time when we Americans in the vast middle write checks to our federal government as we try to balance household budgets already stretched to the max, we read about the Obamas flying in a pizza chef and Michelle hiring her own full-time makeup artist to go with her already full-time hairstylist. We're stunned by a $150-million plus price tag on an inauguration carried out at the same time this president was telling the rest of us we needed to put our "own skin into the game" of saving America from the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression." We're shocked to see a president using tax dollars to pay for cocktail parties, elaborate entertainment and $100/lb. Japanese steak as he continues his campaigning from the White House.
And we're stuck with a mainstream media complex so in bed with the new administration that they fête us to nonstop commentary on the Obamas' new dog, the swing set on the White House grounds, the organic garden of the new First Lady and the exploits of the first mother in-law. We get stories on Reggie Love, the personal gopher of the president, and how this closest-of-closest intimates to the Commander In Chief, always has Nicorette gum and mints and specialized water for the self-anointed one. We are treated to prime time press conferences galore that are nothing more than scripted campaign stops, complete with pre-selected questioners and not a word spoken by our President without a teleprompting device.
Yet, from these members of the fourth estate, we see next to no interest in this administration's fumbling, bumbling, giveaway foreign policy. We see only the lamest of excuses for the ever-increasing numbers of tax cheats and lobbyists -- handpicked by this "new kind of president" -- filling up the administration. We hear no cries of collusion, even though this president kowtows to labor bosses while he imperiously fires the CEO of GM.
We're told by this same media that we're selfish and rotten if we don't support national healthcare as a new entitlement, and that we're purely fanatical anti-science idiots if we don't support our tax dollars being used to kill babies in the womb and new wave Dr. Megele's experimenting on human beings at embryo stage.
This is the media complex who gives more coverage to a paltry little group of ACORN agitators bussed to an AIG exec's house than it has to the hundreds of genuine grassroots Tea Party protests preceding yesterday's national outpouring. And to top it all off, our own tax dollars go to support the agitating work of the ACORN folks and other leftwing, non-taxpaying groups who believe they are entitled to money they have not earned.
We, in the modern-day Tea Party movement, are being billed by the leftist press as greedy, insane, rightwing zealots who not only hate the poor, the minorities, the women and all the little children, but are now seen as a terrorist threat to homeland security.
Tax Day Tea Parties may merely be the tip of a growing-by-the-day iceberg of anger experienced by millions and millions of Americans who see the overreach of a federal government drunk on its own power. The American people know tyranny when they see it and they see it all around them now, threatening to finally extinguish what little liberty we have remaining.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is an independent journalist and a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver@gmail.com.
