Where there's smoke...

I considered myself, at least for a short time, a tea party activist. This is largely because my very first overtly political act was to attend an anti-tax rally in the spring of 2009. Since then I've attended one organized tea party event as well as protested, with a loosely organized band of activists, the passage of the health care reform abortion.

I say that this was for a short time mostly because I don't join any group or cause as a rule. I've been a Libertarian for nearly thirty years yet have never been a member of the Libertarian party. It's just not in my nature to join things. I couldn't tell you if my four year stint in the Marine Corps was merely anomaly or catalyst for this aversion.

From what I can tell, this is the case for most of the early participants in the tea party movement. These were people awakening to political activism because they had simply had enough of the lies and drunken spending sprees that are a staple of Washington politics. These were libertarians, independents and moderates who felt that the eight years spend fest of "compassionate conservatism" under Bush the younger, combined with the thinly veiled socialism of the current administration, warranted a call to action. While this remains the case in general, the movement has steadily been co-opted by disaffected conservatives who share, at least in part, the disgust of these other political neophytes.

While my acceptance of the movement is tepid at best, specifically because of the moralizing and selective application of liberty championed by some of the speakers at these rallies, my support of the movement grows with each attempt by the administration and its mouthpiece, the mainstream media, to demonize its participants. Clearly the movement is having an affect on directing the discussion. If this were not the case, we wouldn't have the ministry of truth and other agents of big brother so aggressively attempting to silence this growing voice of the people.