I'LL SKIP THE TEA PARTY, THANK YOU
I was standing next to the kitchen in a sports bar last Friday afternoon, crammed in against the wall, trying to hear Glenn Beck.
That's when the guy came around handing out talking points.
I took them and thanked him and turned around and threw them in the trash.
I'm an American, I don't need talking points.
I'm an American, I think and speak for myself.
And that's why I'm not going to a tea party or sending in a tea bag or donating a dollar or any other of these things that have popped up as people have tried to capitalize on conservative upset at the ruling junta in Washington.
I'm not a sheep to Barack Obama, and I'm not a sheep to some conservative manipulator either. I'm a free American and I'll stand on my own.
That's why I'm not supporting the tea parties.
That's why I won't endorse any of these groups.
That's why I'm not putting them on my shows or sending people to their websites.
Because I don't trust anybody who volunteers to be my leader.
The event Friday was Glenn Beck's “We Surround Them” broadcast. I went out to the sports bar because I knew several people were going. I knew some people had reserved a room at the bar and that a few were going to attend. The morning of the event I asked my producer to contact the bar owner and see if he wanted me to publicize it – if they had the room and capacity to handle a big crowd.
They did, so I did. And about four times the number who had signed up showed up.
It was good to see these people. There were salt-of-the-earth Americans. A higher-than-usual concentration of veterans and family people and gun owners and small-L libertarians. People who just plain love their country and the freedoms it guarantees them.
And they mostly seemed to like what Glenn Beck had to say. There weren't a lot of specifics, it was kind of general and diffuse, but I think mostly people felt good to be together, to hear the Constitution praised, and to know that they weren't alone.
But the group people weren't content.
One lady gave me the third degree about why I didn't support her group's particular tea party or tea-bag stunt, and another guy said his group was slowly bringing me along. Both seemed to be demanding an explanation of why I wasn't supporting them.
The reason, of course, was because they were idiots.
But that's not the excuse I gave.
Because you don't have to give an excuse. You owe nothing to self-appointed leaders. No one has claim on your loyalty or support for their self-aggrandizing pipe dream.
And that's what most of these groups have seemed like lately. Somebody's scheme to make money or make themselves out to be some sort of leader. They all seem to be about money and ego, and I'm not interested in helping anybody get either one.
You've seen the e-mails. Each one rants about something or the other that Barack Obama and the Democrats have done. Many throw around words and phrases from the Revolution. All lay out a plan of action, telling you what to do, or where to send your money.
They have popped up like weeds over the last few weeks.
And they all smell to me.
I can't put my finger right on it, but there's something fishy about them.
Because they seem to be doing exactly what the political parties are always doing – exploiting people's feelings for their own gain.
That's what the parties do – Democrat and Republican. They don't solve a thing – for anybody. They don't help liberals and they don't help conservatives. They promise to, they tell boogie-man stories about each other, and paint themselves as voters' only deliverance from the evils of the other party, but at the end of the day all they do is drag things out. If they actually solved problems, they would lose their leverage to get votes and money out of us.
And so when the Republicans held power, they did little to address issues conservatives cared about. And now that the Democrats hold power, liberals are finding that leaving Iraq doesn't really mean leaving Iraq and closing down Guantanamo doesn't really mean closing down Guantanamo.
They don't solve the gun issue or the abortion issue or the health-care issue or the Social Security issue or any other issue, they just toy with them to keep us on edge and to make us easier to control and exploit.
They don't exercise leadership, they practice manipulation.
And that's the same feeling I get out of these tea-bag people, and the tea-party people. I smell opportunism. I smell an effort to marshal this angst to their own benefit and purposes. They declare themselves leaders and the rest of us followers.
And I don't go for that.
They can take a leap for all I care.
I don't have an answer, and I don't have an alternative. But I'm not going to jump just to jump. I'm not on their bandwagon and I don't intend to get on.
Rather, I am going to do what I think Glenn Beck said to do – learn and live. Learn more about our country and its founding, and live my life with those principles at the core. I see that as a preparation stage. Maybe down the road there will be another stage, a take-action stage, but at this point I think Glenn Beck suggested we read and learn. I intend to do both.
But I won't be falling for any gimmicky e-mail forwards. I won't be dancing to anyone else's tune.
And I hope you won't either.
Because the point is we're free Americans.
And we go our own way. We think our own thoughts, we speak our own words, we make up our own minds.
If we form an organization together, and we vote on our leaders and we vote on our objectives and we vote on our tactics – like the Minute Men did – that's a different matter. But none of these organizations has done that, so none of these organizations is worthy of your support.
Remember that the next time somebody hands you a sheet of talking points.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2009
