A terrorist is defined as:
A person, group, or organization that uses violent action, or the threat of violent action, to further political goals; frequently in an attempt to coerce either a more powerful opponent, (such as a citizen or group targeting a government), or conversely, a weaker opponent, (such as a government, or even an internal citizen or group, being targeted by a larger government).
And that is what our President and his party have now labeled the millions of ordinary Americans in the Tea Party movement who want to see government live within its means and under the law.
They couldn’t ignore us, or dismiss us as irrelevant, so the demonization of the Tea Party has been ongoing for a couple of years now.
The “Astro-Turf” charge didn’t stick because we were too decentralized, too independent, and we gave Republicans and Democrats fits.
Cries of “Nazis” or “brownshirts” didn’t persuade the general public of the Tea Party movement’s fascist tendencies, so “racists” became the favorite buzzword, one that black liberals still cling to because they have nothing else to offer, in policies or pejoratives.
I confess I’m always amused by how well-coordinated and disciplined the liberals are when it comes to their propaganda campaigns. Someone from on high issues an edict and, like good little Komsomolets, the faithful go forth chanting the latest insult en masse. It reminds me of the material I used to read as an intelligence officer about Soviet dezinformatsiya campaigns.
All the drones chanting about the Koch Brothers in 2010 and 2011 probably never heard of them before, and probably own Koch Industries stock in their mutual funds and retirement accounts. They needed a bogeyman to project onto conservatives as their George Soros , so they picked two brothers, businessmen who support politicians and policies that benefit…business.
Oh, the scandal! But I digress.
The terrorist meme directed at the Tea Party movement isn’t new. I remember the Department of Homeland Security in the winter of 2009 dispensing with the threat of radical Islamic terrorism and training its sights on “right-wing extremists” in the United States.
You wouldn’t have known that, less than eight years prior to the report’s issuance, the World Trade Center had been reduced to rubble, the Pentagon damaged, peaceful farmland near Shanksville, Pennsylvania scarred by a passenger plane originally destined to be a missile striking the U.S. Capitol or the White House, and nearly 3,000 Americans murdered by Islamic terrorists.
No, the biggest terrorist threat to America in 2009, when the report was released, was home-grown and included groups which were “mainly anti-government, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”
Those women and children bused in from the local church to join the March for Life? Take cover, my friend.
Those families who came to Washington on their own dime, brought their children with them, held peaceful rallies, cleaned up after themselves and thanked the local police for providing security? Hide your kids, hide your wife!
What a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars, and an insult to law-abiding and hard-working citizens – well, at least when they still had work.
Last time I checked, the First Amendment was still in place, and the right for citizens to speak, assemble and petition their government was still associated with liberty, and not terrorism.
That this report came out during the early days of the Tea Party movement made the Obama Administration’s tactics against the American people, the ones they sought so hard to lead in the 2008 campaign, utterly transparent and shameful.
At the April 15th, 2009 Tax Day Tea Party in Annapolis, Maryland, I spoke out against this garbage posing as analysis. You see, as a member of the Bush Administration’s Homeland Security Transition Planning Office, I helped to create the Department of Homeland Security. I never dreamed this organization would turn away from the threat of radical Islamic terrorism to label and demean as potential threats the decent Americans that stood before me.
In my book, SELLOUT: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch, I described the scene that day:
The rally in Annapolis was organized by Aaron Jones, a young man and small business owner from Salisbury, Maryland, who, with his ponytail and goatee, was a somewhat unconventional looking organizer for an anti-spending, anti-tax, pro-free market rally. He was just another reminder to me of the true grassroots, mainstream nature of this movement, and what it lacks in formal organization or leadership, it more than makes up for it in commitment and passion.
Unlike the mild, sunny weekend day that greeted our first Tea Party, it was cold and the wind was driving the rain into us like bullets. The water whipping off the Chesapeake Bay only made matters worse. I was not dressed appropriately for the weather, so I was wet and shivering by the time I left two hours later.
The weather didn’t discourage people from showing up. Over 2,000 stood there as the wind and rain pounded us and more were coming from the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium where they parked and were to be delivered to the City Dock by bus. The mayor of Annapolis, apparently not amused by our rally, had only two buses running to deliver people to the rally site. Undaunted, many of them walked from the stadium to the City Dock. Families with children, students, housewives, businessmen – we were as mainstream a crowd as you could imagine. They came carrying homemade signs, American flags or the emerging banner of the Tea Party movement, the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. All of us were energized by our newfound voice in the political arena despite the nasty weather.
There’s your terrorists for you.
Maybe that’s why TSA is groping businessmen and housewives, and forcing an elderly woman to remove her adult diaper, at airport security checkpoints. To them, terrorists look like everyday Americans, and this direction comes straight from the top. After all, the Vice President of the United States himself called us “terrorists.”
I am so disgusted with and distrustful of them that I’m not even sure the inspiring appearance of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords last night to cast a vote on the debt ceiling compromise wasn’t part of thedezinformatsiya campaign.
On June 8th, her staff gave a blunt “no” when asked if she was close to returning to the House floor, and they spoke at length about her many challenges in communicating at even a basic level.
Yet a press release from her office on the day of the vote, the first one supposedly in her own words since the shooting, reads like this:
I have closely followed the debate over our debt ceiling and have been deeply disappointed at what’s going on in Washington. After weeks of failed debate in Washington, I was pleased to see a solution to this crisis emerge. I strongly believe that crossing the aisle for the good of the American people is more important than party politics. I had to be here for this vote. I could not take the chance that my absence could crash our economy.
I’ve no doubt someone wrote it for her, and she approved it. Perhaps she really wanted to be there. And the man in me is moved by her triumphant return.
I’m so cynical about the leadership of her party, however, that I don’t put it past them to think of this as a way to remind people of the whole “Tea Party terrorist” charge from the horrific Tucson shooting.
Such exploitation of tragedy is in their nature. How long did it take them to label Andres Behring Breivik a right-wing, Christian terrorist when by his own admission, he has not accepted Christ as his savior?
“If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God.”
The lengths to which our government, the media, academia and the entertainment industry will go to discredit everyday Americans for believing in individual liberty, free markets and limited constitutional government is incredible to me.
Do they despise that deeply the principles of government spending only as much as it takes in, performing only those functions designated to it under the Constitution, and getting out of the way of the free market so the economy can create more taxpayers and, therefore, more revenue for the government?
Apparently, these ideas are so repulsive to them that they’re terrified.
I’ll tell you why they’re terrified. They’re terrified that they can’t bamboozle hard-working, taxpaying citizens like they can the Republicans in Congress.
They’re terrified that ordinary Americans expect the same from their government that they expect from their own families – living within their means.
They’re terrified that mothers aren’t going to tolerate their children being saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt each before they’re even out of high school.
They’re terrified that, for once, the American people are asserting their control and ownership of the government they elected, and that they might have to answer to someone outside of the bizzaro world of Washington, DC.
And you know something, my liberal friends? Insulting us doesn’t win you elections; as Gallup has shown time and again, there are more of us than of you.
Your name-calling just makes us angrier and stronger. We are more determined than ever to introduce you in 2012 to the unemployment lines you’ve created for us with your growth-killing policies.
That should really terrify you.
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