I can remember when Ron Paul supporters started the tea parties during his campaign. For a moment I thought, "Yes this is it. This is going to wake up the sheeple. It is going to take a few years, but this movement is going to work. I may not fully agree with RP, but this is still good." Then the dreaded day came when Rick Santelli announced /advertised /supported a Chicago tea party. He encouraged everyone to attend and start up tea parties. This was the beginning of the end of the real tea party movement. Neocons were quick to jump on the tea party bandwagon with the Obama administration newly in office. The tea party soon became an astroturf movement created by MSM advertising and pandering to angry McCain/Palin supporters. The movement was no longer about a bulletproof ideals of liberty, but about the same old neocon crowd angry with the democrat's candidate winning the presidency. Now the tea parties are full of hatred, racism, nationalism, war mongering and the status quo etc. They are far from peaceful movements arguing for liberty and civil rights. My point of this is, we should have seen this coming. I can not help but think that this was a planned hijacking. We must be every vigilant to continuously come up with fresh ideas for our movement. We must stay one step ahead of the MSM. We have the advantage of being a smaller more closely knit group that is easy to change and adapt. We must use this advantage so our movement is not hijacked again. On the other hand, we should not be discouraged about attending these tea parties to share our libertarian/paleoconservative/anarchist ideals with the neocons. Perhaps we can use the MSM advertising to our advantage and educate the necons...only IF they are willing to listen.
Submitted by Charles (not verified) on February 9, 2010.
I can remember when Ron Paul supporters started the tea parties during his campaign. For a moment I thought, "Yes this is it. This is going to wake up the sheeple. It is going to take a few years, but this movement is going to work. I may not fully agree with RP, but this is still good." Then the dreaded day came when Rick Santelli announced /advertised /supported a Chicago tea party. He encouraged everyone to attend and start up tea parties. This was the beginning of the end of the real tea party movement. Neocons were quick to jump on the tea party bandwagon with the Obama administration newly in office. The tea party soon became an astroturf movement created by MSM advertising and pandering to angry McCain/Palin supporters. The movement was no longer about a bulletproof ideals of liberty, but about the same old neocon crowd angry with the democrat's candidate winning the presidency. Now the tea parties are full of hatred, racism, nationalism, war mongering and the status quo etc. They are far from peaceful movements arguing for liberty and civil rights. My point of this is, we should have seen this coming. I can not help but think that this was a planned hijacking. We must be every vigilant to continuously come up with fresh ideas for our movement. We must stay one step ahead of the MSM. We have the advantage of being a smaller more closely knit group that is easy to change and adapt. We must use this advantage so our movement is not hijacked again. On the other hand, we should not be discouraged about attending these tea parties to share our libertarian/paleoconservative/anarchist ideals with the neocons. Perhaps we can use the MSM advertising to our advantage and educate the necons...only IF they are willing to listen.