The tea party movement in this country is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Koch Brothers, et.al., money men who are the real power in the country, who bend government to their will by means of money, gifts, intimidation, and incessant lobbying. Until the American people realize that and rise up in disgust at what their country has become, there seems little hope for political reform.
But while the tea partiers are owned and financed by the Koch Brothers and their allies, the origins of their political philosophy, such as it is, have long been perfectly clear to me and, I suspect, to many people who grew up in the South. An article in Salon.com today delineates those origins in graphic form. It traces the roots of the tea partiers' radical political beliefs to "white Southern extremism." It's an extremism that has its beginnings in racism and intolerance for anyone who isn't "one of us." I grew up with it and I can smell it like mendacity on a politician's breath.
Salon's graph shows the location by region of the members of the tea party caucus in Congress.
That one member from the "northeast," by the way, is actually from Maryland, which is classified by the Census Bureau as northeastern, but it is hardly that. In fact, ALL of the tea partiers are from the South, Midwest, and West (mostly the area around Orange County, California), and 40 of the 62 are from the South and Maryland which I would consider a Southern border state. That's roughly 65 percent. Again, Salon's graph shows it most starkly.
Contrary to what you will hear and read in the mainstream media, this is hardly a nationwide movement. True, it has some sympathizers in all regions, although they are virtually invisible in the Northeast, but then the secessionists of the 1860s who wanted to protect the "Southern way of life," their code words for slavery, had their sympathizers in other regions as well.
These people are not patriots. They are the opposite of patriots. They are out to destroy America and remake it in their own intolerant image. We would do well to wake up to that fact and to fight back before it is too late.
But while the tea partiers are owned and financed by the Koch Brothers and their allies, the origins of their political philosophy, such as it is, have long been perfectly clear to me and, I suspect, to many people who grew up in the South. An article in Salon.com today delineates those origins in graphic form. It traces the roots of the tea partiers' radical political beliefs to "white Southern extremism." It's an extremism that has its beginnings in racism and intolerance for anyone who isn't "one of us." I grew up with it and I can smell it like mendacity on a politician's breath.
Salon's graph shows the location by region of the members of the tea party caucus in Congress.
That one member from the "northeast," by the way, is actually from Maryland, which is classified by the Census Bureau as northeastern, but it is hardly that. In fact, ALL of the tea partiers are from the South, Midwest, and West (mostly the area around Orange County, California), and 40 of the 62 are from the South and Maryland which I would consider a Southern border state. That's roughly 65 percent. Again, Salon's graph shows it most starkly.
Contrary to what you will hear and read in the mainstream media, this is hardly a nationwide movement. True, it has some sympathizers in all regions, although they are virtually invisible in the Northeast, but then the secessionists of the 1860s who wanted to protect the "Southern way of life," their code words for slavery, had their sympathizers in other regions as well.
These people are not patriots. They are the opposite of patriots. They are out to destroy America and remake it in their own intolerant image. We would do well to wake up to that fact and to fight back before it is too late.
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