IS THE TEA PARTY RACIST?

Salvage, a frequent commenter on this blog, has sent me a link to YouTube videos (click here) purporting to show Tea Party racism, hate and any number of terrible other things. He sent these at my request as a rebuttal to videos I posted a few days ago showing the complete, at least in my opinion, insanity among some on the left.

I'll post one of then below because I've seen this one making the rounds lately anyway.



You be the judge.

A couple things come immediately to mind. Are there racists, haters and all sorts of other people involved in Tea Party activities? I would assume there are because they're everywhere. Have I seen any examples of them personally when attending Tea Party rallies? No. But then I've not seen any craziness from the left, either. Mostly I've seen a bunch of good natured bantering back and forth.

And really, a big part of the signs in the video above have nothing to do with racism or hate. They are legitimate expressions of political belief, protected by the First Amendment.

Of course, that doesn't mean that crazy stuff doesn't happen. The video below from here in St. Louis on 8-6-2009 when SEIU members attacked Kenneth Gladney at a Russ Carnahan health care bill event. Gladney is black, which I don't think had anything to do with the attack, even though one of the attackers can be heard using racial slurs. I don't think he even was there because of political affiliation. He was just selling some Gadsen flags, trying to make a buck. But that was enough to piss off the thugs on the left.



So does evidence of violence and racism on the left make the case none of the same exists on the right? No. That being said, the media has been looking for any way it can to smear the Tea Party with racism. Remember the staged perp walk that Pelosi and the Democrats did the day of the healthcare vote? And do you remember that charges were hurled at Tea Party members accusing them of spitting at the Congressmen and screaming racial insults and anti-gay slurs? It was plastered all over the papers.

Well, guess what? It turns out that there was no proof of any of this happening, even in this day of massive news coverage of the event itself and all the camcorders that were there. Andrew Breitbart over at Big Government even went so far as to offer $10,000 to anyone that could bring evidence of the assault. No one has collected yet.

With all that being said, I look at the video above and videos like it with a somewhat jaundiced eye. We know from the Pelosi incident that some on the left are more than willing to lie when it comes to charges of racism and other slurs to tarnish the Tea Party and we also know that the main stream media will gladly publish those charges as fact without doing their due diligence. Now, if the photos in the video above were real, and verifiable, doesn't it seem fairly likely that we'd see them trumpeted across the front page of the New York Times and being presented as the lead story on NBC Nightly News?

There's also the issue of Tea Party opponents acting like racists and infiltrating Tea Party events. How many of the photos in the video above are reflective of that?







So I guess this is where I come down on the issue of Tea Party racism. There are racists in the Tea Party but the Tea Party is not a racist organization, if it can even be called an organization. While some pretend to speak for it there really is no central controlling authority.

I know that pictures exist purporting to show racist sentiment at Tea Party rallies. I've never seen it personally and I know that when someone has shown up at rallies in St. Louis with any sort of hateful message they've been asked to leave by others in attendance:



My personal experience in talking with people on the left tends to support as relatively normal the reaction of the protesters in Portland that I posted the other day. I've been yelled at, called names and been threatened many times by people that disagree with me on political issues. The debate from the left seems to be more emotionally driven than intellectually driven for most so emotions come to the fore rather quickly. Do I know this is a fact? No, but my experience leads me to that conclusion.

Again, I think that if the various photos of Tea Party racist signs were real and verifiable we'd be seeing them all over the news; but, we don't. So while they could be true I don't believe they are. There is ample evidence of lying on the part of the left that leads me to suspect that these photos are just another example of it. If they're real and if they truly represent the majority, or even more than a minuscule minority opinion of the average Tea Party supporters then I'll admit I'm wrong.

But I'm from Missouri and you'll have to show me.