Tomorrow is April 15th, the day your income taxes are due.  It is also being touted as the Nationwide Tax Day Tea Party, the day average citizens across America will be protesting Obama’s ‘grand plan’ to fix the economy.  

First, let me say I’m glad to see Americans getting off their duffs and actually exercising their rights.  I hope this trend continues.

But let me be clear:

Attaching the term ‘tea party’ to a series of benign protests means squat.

Especially when the list of ’sponsors’ running down the right-hand side of the website, it reads like a who’s who of conservative Republican websites.

Can we say agenda anyone?

At least conservatives can no longer deny the political colors of Fox News, who have co-opted and supported these events with tongue-wagging fervor.  Fair and Balanced?  I don’t think so.  Media Matters has documented the lop-sided support Fox is providing these events and by default the fringe groups attending as well.

REPORT: “Fair and balanced” Fox News aggressively promotes “tea party” protests

Fox News takes ownership of tea parties, and, therefore, their extremist rhetoric

 And it gives MSNBC the chance to unfurl its political flag as well with Rachel Maddow’s seven minute tongue-in-cheek report about Teabagging Obama:

Is it any wonder that Andrew Sullivan over at The Atlantic called it a Tea Tantrum? 

These are not tea-parties. They are tea-tantrums. And the adolescent, unserious hysteria is a function not of a movement regrouping and refinding itself. It’s a function of a movement’s intellectual collapse and a party’s fast-accelerating nervous breakdown.

Yes, the Republican Party has gone down in flames.  What will arise from the ashes, especially now that the evangelical base has conceded defeat?   Fascism?  I don’t joke.

In Joachim Fest’s biography Hitler, Fest speaks of Hitler blaming communism for destroying the economy in Russia and saying the results were an “approaching scourge” that was “also coming upon Germany.”  It matters not that Fascism had ties to Marxism.  Hitler railed against it under a different name and fomented the anger and frustration of the German population for his gain.

Hitler also said:

All great movements are popular movements. They are the volcanic eruptions of human passions and emotions, stirred into activity by the ruthless Goddess of Distress or by the torch of the spoken word cast into the midst of the people.

I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.

And a few more:

As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.

It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.

So I have a couple of questions for all you Sam Adams wannabes:

  • Is having Fox, and others with an agenda, latch on to your frustration helping your cause or hurting it?
  • When Washington sends some crony out with a prepared statement about understanding the concerns of the citizens but then goes about business as usual, what then?
  • Are you willing to take then next steps toward open revolt against your government by not paying your taxes?
  • Do you believe that what the government is doing so wrong as to risk jail-time and possible violence?

Because our government will call your bluff.

Because those with an agenda will use you as long as it benefits them.

Because if you aren’t prepared to face imprisonment, violence, or even death, you have no right to invoke the name of the Boston Tea Party.

Good Luck.

-mike