Remember in November

Good often comes from bad, as seems to be happening after the election of November, 2008. The left took over our federal government and started implementing their socialist agenda - driving America into bankruptcy and turning a recession into depression. Americans realized what the left wants: a huge central government controlling every aspect of our lives, and the backlash began. By April, 2009, what we know now as the “Tea Party” was born. It’s called the Tea Party by those of us favorable to it, but it’s called the “Tea Baggers” by those who hate it - a slang term denoting a kind of sexual practice I cannot describe in a family newspaper.

What the Tea Party actually is, most aren’t sure. It’s still amorphous, but if you look at their huge rallies in Washington, DC and cities across the country, you see ordinary people. Many wave or display American flags. They’re unhappy with what Republicans and Democrats have done to their country, but they’re especially mad at Democrats for tripling the national deficit since January of 2009 and expanding the power of government beyond what the Constitution intended. A few things about the Tea Party are becoming clear: they’re conservative, they see government as more a problem than a solution, and they’re unimpressed by those who consider themselves the “intellectual elite.”Their most recent gathering was last Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial. Some say 300,000 were there. Some say 500,000. Congresswoman Michelle Bachman said there were 1,000,000. Glenn Beck, organizer of the rally, was expecting 100,000. He told people to leave their political signs at home because “America today begins to turn back to God.” This is the kind of thing that scares the elites in media, academia, and politics. To them, anyone who seriously professes a religious faith must be a rube - one of those simpleton Americans President Obama said, “. . . get bitter and cling to guns or religion.” They’re the kind of Americans the New York Times’ Ross Douthat describes as: “middle-class white Christians--square, earnest, patriotic and religious.”

If you look at Beck’s crowd singing “Amazing Grace” to bagpipe accompaniment, you see average people - the kind who pay their taxes, volunteer in their communities, put money in the collection plate, bring their kids to scouts, aren’t ashamed to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and get a lump in their throat when they sing “America The Beautiful.”

Liberal TV networks played down the rally any way they could, describing it as “predominantly white” as if there were something wrong with that. That shouldn’t be a surprise considering almost 80% of the country is white and 90% of black Americans vote Democrat. It’s even more understandable when one considers what the Washington Examiner reported: that Obama and other Democrats got 88 percent of 2008 political contributions by TV network executives writers, and reporters. It’s what liberals do when they have no arguments to make, no facts to cite, no points to make - they cast aspersions of racism, homophobia, hate, bigotry, or some combination thereof. There’s clearly a huge disconnect between ordinary Americans and elitists in government, academia and the mainstream media. They’re in one world, and ordinary Americans live in another. No wonder the mainstream media is hemorrhaging money and viewers while Fox News and talk radio are thriving.

The “Reverend” Al Sharpton staged a counter rally at a nearby high school and got 3000 people. Representatives from from Code Pink and the SEIU (Service Employees International Union, whose thugs have been accused of assaulting Tea Party people at several congressional district town meetings) spoke, including Jaime Contreras president of the SEIU-32BJ local, who gave his own “I have a dream speech.” He said [about the Glenn Beck rally across town]: “Shame on them. We still have a dream. We are here to let those folks on the Mall know that they don't represent the dream. They sure as hell don't represent me. They represent hate-mongering and angry white people. The happy white people are here today. We will not let them stand in the way of the change we voted for!”Contreras’s local SEIU-32BJ, however, doesn’t even know how to spell American. They proudly carried posters on which it’s spelled “AMERCAN.”

President Obama was golfing on Martha’s Vineyard that day, and told NBC’s Brian Williams he ignored Beck’s rally. According to the Washington Examiner, however, his close friend and Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan who spoke at Sharpton’s rally, sent an email to his employees three days before the event, saying: “ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the ‘Reclaim the Dream’ rally and march.”

I wonder if our Education Secretary noticed the misspellings. Be hard to miss in such a small gathering.

Mainstream media reports gave as much or more coverage to Sharpton’s rally though he got less than one-one hundredth the turnout Beck did. Rather than being annoyed though, I’m hoping the political/media elitists and public-employee-union parasites continue their arrogant condescension when referring to the Tea Party. I hope they keep it up right on into the first Tuesday in November, because that will drive even more patriotic Americans to the polls. “Remember in November” is one of their slogans.