What was once extreme is now mainstream to the mainstream media

There’s one piece of advice I’ve given my kids that I hope sticks with them throughout their lives.  Don’t let anyone else define you.  That may sound like odd advice given all the other pearls of wisdom a father can give his children but if people are allowed to define you then they’re allowed to control you.

That’s basically what’s happened to the tea party movement.  The mainstream media have defined the tea party as some extremist movement along the lines of the KKK.  In fact, the hopelessly leftist Southern Poverty Law Center has designated Tea Party Nation as a hate group.  You see, anyone or anything that opposes the socialist/leftist agenda is considered a hate group.  Yours truly was, at one point, designated a “hate speaker” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for my opposition to amnesty for illegal aliens.  I, of course, don’t allow anyone to define me, least of all a bunch of pathetic liberals like the SPLC.

So, what is so hateful about the tea party?  Understand that the tea party is not a party, it’s a movement.  It’s a movement like civil rights was a movement.  The civil rights movement had some obvious goals; among them equal public access for blacks and elimination of discrimination in hiring and admissions to universities, not to mention desegregation of public schools.

The tea party movement has goals, too.  Among them are fiscal responsibility, a constitutionally limited government and free market economics unencumbered by government over-regulation.  In fact, if you’ll read the founding documents you’ll understand

exactly what the tea party movement is all about.  Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Ben Franklin, were they alive today, would be part of the tea party movement.  They were the original tea partiers but somehow that’s too radical for today’s political landscape.

That’s because the political landscape has been warped into something our founding fathers would scarcely recognize.  The amount of debt we’ve accumulated as a country would, no doubt, frighten our founders.  The bounds to which our constitutionally limited government have been stretched would probably infuriate the founders to the point they would insist we dissolve this republic experiment.  In fact, they fought a war over far less intrusive and restrictive government.

And the free market is now anything but.  Wall Street, like a heroine addict, is now dependent on the slow drip of smack coming from the federal reserve in the way of quantitative easing.  People assume that what’s best for Wall Street is best for the country forgetting that Wall Street is a whore and doesn’t really care if the infusion of cash is coming from a Twitter IPO, the fed chairman or the federal government.  That doesn’t mean that capitalism has failed.  It simply means the free market is no longer free.  The “free” part means free from outside manipulation.  

So, when the government is controlling the market it’s no longer capitalism but socialism or worse.  Many folks, including our current president, don’t like our country as currently constituted.  They feel if they can just change it - i.e.: do something about this pesky capitalism - it’ll be a great place.

These people need to understand one thing.  Capitalism and the United States are joined at the hip.  If you are anti-capitalist you are, by definition, anti-American.  To say that America would be a great place if we could only do away with the free market system is to miss what this country is all about.

When someone says they despise the tea party that should tell you all you need to know about them.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.