The Real Tea Party Story: Community Builders Vs. Community Organizers

by Kyle-Anne Shiver - March 14, 2010 - American Thinker

In less than a year, the MSM has gone from ignoring Tea Parties to mocking and insulting their participants, to grudging coverage with ridiculing overtones and has finally arrived at giving wide attention to the movement, albeit grudgingly and ungraciously. A once highly esteemed fourth estate, they have become talking-head dilettantes on a mission to save the disgruntled masses from democracy itself.

David Brooks, token toy conservative at the NYT, wrote his explanation for the Tea Parties without ever mentioning them by name, even. He wrote a whole diatribe on the meaning of it all. It's a knee-jerk reaction by us commoners, you see, against the "educated class." It has nothing to do with real issues, don't you know. This whole wave of discontent is simply a revolt by the common man against his intellectual betters.

What a bunch of myopic poppycock.

The real Tea Party story is quite simple and an eloquent tribute to democracy, a genuine movement of ordinary people rising to the demands of their all-American principles. It represents a fundamental difference between those who seek to provide for themselves, opposing those who see government as provider of all material goods.

From the earliest days, the surprise of the TEA Party movement has been its aggregation of numerous groups with only limited common interest. Nevertheless these various interest groups have shared the common interest this article describes above. Freedom to provide for your own wants as you see them, versus a redistribution of wealth through the standard abuse of government, the barrel of a gun, aimed at the people by those who have garnered power.

The comparison of the attitude towards America of De Tocqueville as compared to the attitude towards America of Saul Alinsky is a brilliant juxtaposition. Volunteerism in the improvement of a society versus volunteerism in the destruction of a society. The key difference is that the second requires a level of deceit that is antithetical to American greatness. It is not surprising that two different groups of people currently in the news, the TEA Party groups versus ACORN, are almost exactly aligned in this improve versus destroy dichotomy.