The convention of unhinged right wing radicals called the "Tea Party" concluded its facts be damned idiocy with it's heroine, Sarah Palin, the one who gave us a "he pals around with terrorists" description of President Obama and "death panels" to scare the intellectually incurious concerning any reform of a failed health care delivery system, reading cheat notes
written on her palm. One would think a speech to a movement built on repetition of words until someone believes you wouldn't be difficult enough to require any cheat notes. But dignity may not have been required for a convention that had the feel of a rally for John Birchers, "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing">Know Nothings", white supremacists, and corporate manipulated Jethro Bodine types.
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/02/02/we-the-tea-partiers/">Matt Taibbi had it correct when he said,
These are people who’ve been gouged for years by the deregulated banking, mortgage lending, and commodities trading business, and when Obama sends down very weak, watered-down regulations to deal with those problems, they howl that he’s against “private enterprise” because that’s what they’ve been told to think by the Glenn Becks of the world.
The convention had everything an ignorant frightened bigot could dream for such as thinly veiled racism and the "birther" movement, homophobia, McCarthyism, theocratic ramblings and a total misunderstanding of both Constitution and the flawed economics behind the recession. On its opening night, it had former
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/tea-party-speaker-tom-tancredo-rips-john-mccain-obama/story?id=9751718">Rep. Tom Tancredo (R) CA., suggesting that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws">Jim Crow type laws should be brought back such as a
a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country
probably not realizing the irony most in the convention hall probably couldn't pass it. Of course all this was directed towards the group's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia">xenophobia of Latin American immigrants while calling tolerance of the cultural differences between people
the cult of multiculturalism
.
Tancredo went on to to express a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism">McCarthy like favorite among rightwing types that the overly corporate friendly Obama administration was
a committed socialist ideologue in the White House ... Barack Hussein Obama
which is a popular unreality in the minds of the convention attendees who's minds have lost the ability to process information in a logic based manner due to rightwing media.
He continued his ramblings by saying that this country was founded on a culture based on Judeo Christian principles whether people like it or they don't and if you don't like it, don't come here and if you are here, go home. Would Thomas Jefferson have to "go home"? Afterall, Jefferson's words would make him "unAmerican" by opinion of this convention with quotes such as,
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
And there is this from the treaty with Tripoli of 1796 which was written under the Presidency of George Washington and signed into law by President John Adams,
the government of the United States is "in no sense founded on the Christian religion
In fact, the Constitution of the United States does not mention "Christianity", "Judeo Christian", "Jesus", "the Bible", etc. which would be strange if the country was indeed founded on its principles. It is not mentioned just as corporations are not mentioned despite the hard right Roberts Supreme Court recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations are persons entitled to the Bill of Rights and that their money is "free speech".
http://blogs.nashvillescene.com/pitw/2010/02/at_tea_party_gay-bashing_ten_c.php">The Ten Commandments Judge, Judge Roy Moore was also at the Tea Party Convention and said,
Obama has ignored our history and our heritage, arrogantly declaring to the world that we are no longer a Christian nation. He has elevated immorality to a new level, setting aside the entire month of June to celebrate gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pride. He now threatens to change our law to allow homosexuality in our military ... He's apologized to the Arab world for our past, subjugated our national sovereignty by bowing down to the king of Saudi Arabia. He has pursued a socialist agenda by taking control of private companies and pushing a national health care plan with a public option. ...
They must read from a different Constitution such as the one the Bush Administration and it's Dept. of Justice made up when they were breaking our laws and treaties.
Noam Chomsky said in a November,
2009 interview with Diane Krauthamer, the following,
So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It’s very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that’s not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it’s kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I’ve never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, “I’ve done everything right all my life, I’m a god-fearing Christian, I’m white, I’m male, I’ve worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I’m supposed to do. And I’m getting shafted.” And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there’s nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered – it’s the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don’t care about you—they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.
Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren’t we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany. Hitler was appealing to groups with similar grievances, and giving them crazy answers, but at least they were answers; these groups weren’t getting them anywhere else. It was the Jews and the Bolsheviks .
While I agree with Chomsky of the dangers we currently live in, especially since the U.S. enacted its own version of the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933">Enabling Act called the "Patriot Act" and suspended habeas corpus during the Bush administration, I'm not sure these people can still be reached without first somehow exposing the fraudulent rants of Limbaugh, Hannity, Fox "News" and the like as the crazy train seems to have already left the station. I'm reminded of the reaction to Galileo's revelations in his time and his subsequent jail sentence. But I guess people who are educated and know reality must still try or lose all which is dear to us.
http://americancommentary.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/the-weekend-orgy-of-ignorance-and-hate-that-was-the-tea-party-convention/">Original
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