as published on examiner.com

Conservative and liberal “commentators” (read: opinion hacks who pretend they are journalists) love a good scandal, controversy, or public disagreement. When they can’t find one, they make one up with the old stand by of “X is raising eyebrows”, all the while  conveniently failing to identify any actual individuals whose eyebrows have been set high upon the forehead.  The Left is aghast at Conservatives at Fox and other outlets who are atwitter over what Conservatives view as the latest in a long line of poor reasoning and outright poor taste from the White House. Of course,  one must ask when aren’t Conservatives incensed over the actions of liberals?.

The political and media Left wishes to have the public believe that First Lady Michelle Obama’s White House  invite to hip hop artist Common, and his subsequent visit, is just one of those ginned up controversies.

The Liberal left insists that Common’s visit is a non sequiter.  Online supporters of this view go so far as to suggest that the invite was a baiting game: invite the most innocuous black artist one can find so as to drive those big old bigots on the Right into a tizzy.

In 1967, Professor Arthur A. Ekirch (1915-2000), announced that the American Left was on life support with his publication of The Decline of American Liberalism. In “Decline..”, Professor Ekirch, himself a Liberal, described the chaos and inconsistencies within the framework and the philosophy of American Liberalism, yet he offered no explanations and no solutions which might save the Left. I would like, in the wake of N.P.R.’s firing of Juan Williams, to say that there were and are no solutions, and to announce that as a political force and as ethical and philosophical theory, American Liberalism (and its underpinning, Progressivism) is no longer in decline. The plug has been pulled on the patient by the Left’s friends. Liberalism is dead.

We, The American Tea Party Movement – the Republic’s defenders against injustice, tyranny, and Statism, have had enough. We are ending this phony dialogue on motivations and our identity. We have allowed a year of unwarranted and unprovable attacks on our character, our identity, and our motivations to go unanswered in the vain expectation that our opposition would be rational enough to see that schoolyard taunts are not the same thing as intellectual argument. We expected our opposition to act in their own interest and cease the nonsense when it became apparent to them that no one was buying what they were selling. We assumed that our silence would be understood. On that, we were mistaken. As a result of the NAACP’s ridiculous “vote” on our character and their demand that we apologize for each and every individual within our movement who might hold racist thoughts or opinions, we have been forced to respond.

Our response is this: We are school teachers, firefighters, shopkeepers, elected officials, homemakers, retirees, students, bankers; we are police, business leaders, husbands, wives, small town merchants. We are the voice of every American who believes that his life is his own, and that his neighbor is not responsible for or entitled to either his failures or his successes. We are the voice of every American who believes that he answers to the dictate of his own conscience, not to the demands of the barrel of a gun. It matters not whether that gun is held by the hands of a street thug, or a thug in Washington, our response is the same, a gun is not an argument.

We have been stoic in the face of the intellectual equivalent of the barrel of a gun as an argument. Namely, unprovable smears that racism is the motivation for our opposition to the “fundamental transformation” of America. The fact that this transformation is coming via the hands of a black president does not change the fact that it is a transformation into Statism, which we abhor. We do not care that the vessel for that transformation is a black president, we oppose the change, not the man.

As to the man, we do not withdraw our recognition that he is a radical, regardless of his race. We do not withdraw our assertion that his past and current associations with radicals matter, and should not be ignored, regardless of his race. We do not withdraw our acknowledgment of his accomplishments or his achievements, regardless of his race. We do not believe race and identity are equivalent, though many of our opponents do.

As to our identity, we define it, we do not allow the Alinsky method to define it for us. To that end, it is interesting that we have been painted as ignorant and incompetent on one day, and well coordinated astro-turf the next. It is interesting that we have been portrayed as violent extremists one one day, and passive social security recipients the next. It is interesting that those who comment on our motivations frequently surmise that we must be unemployed layabouts while we are actively opposing policy that would make such a life untenable. It is utterly fascinating that our opponents are unable to use reason and logic. Finally, it is beyond comprehension that they have not yet figured out who we are.

We are the voice of reason in an irrational world, and we will not be silenced or muted into submission by accepting an unearned guilt. We are the choir which is the combined voices of America.

For those who have demanded that we repudiate or apologize for the small fraction of racists who may believe that they are tea party members or that they hold our values,; for those of you who demand that we do the logically impossible and, by default, prove our lack of racism – we say: are you serious? We can not, of course, prove a negative, except by implication. So we call out those who believe without evidence that we are motivated to oppose the radical that has inherited the sixty plus year old Progressive agenda at the peak of that agenda’s success, because that President happens to be black. We will be happy to engage on the merits of that argument, and on the merits of our ideas for the future of our Republic. We will not, however, continue the absurd distraction that is identity politics. We are too busy and have too much to do to engage in such nonsensical distractions.

We are too busy transforming America back to the vision our founders had for her to distract ourselves by engaging with those who wish to alter our identity in the minds of our fellow citizens, when those citizens have not yet met us face to face.