IT'S ALL PERCEPTION, BABY!

The left is busily and to some minor effect, attempting to paint The Tea Party as a bunch of right wing crazies, unintelligent, intolerant and generally worthless human beings. While we all know that they are full of excrement and fulminating cretins to boot, I think we need to spend a few minutes talking about what caused the Tea Party to blossom into the massive movement it has become and why it is a mindset that can be ignored only at your peril.

One of the things that I have found utterly frustrating over the past ten or so years is the intolerant and rancorous rhetoric being employed in the public discourse. I have always blamed it in part on the rise of James Carville, a man for whom I harbor neither liking nor respect. But I don't think I've been totally fair to the man. As a friend of mine here in Virginia would say "He jest talks thata way!" And where I'm going with this is, we need to stop judging each other.

In the first place, we've already been forewarned by The Judge of us all that we ought not judge, lest we ourselves be so judged. It's good advice and advice that should be heeded.

The new norm now is that if someone says something to you with which you don't agree, and if you are a person of the Left, your default position is to shriek and yell and denigrate that person until they either hit you upside the head, walk away or respond in kind. This accomplishes nothing. And freedom of speech cuts both ways.

I personally think that Joy Behar is a blithering idiot, but I respect and will defend her right to say whatever wrongheaded, crazy, bigoted thing she wants to say. Unfortunately, she does not afford the same consideration to others and that's where the problem lies.

This is the climate in which the Tea Party Movement flourished and rightly so. For a long time, we calmly went along until the elected officials in the current administration decided that "We the People" needed to be told what to do, when to do it and how to do it. We the People decided that the pinheads in Congress needed to get out of our way and let us be the people we have always been - resilient, capable, creative and hard-working, and above all, self-reliant. We made our feelings known to the Congress and the President and they decided to ignore or denigrate our beliefs, our preferred direction for our nation and our belief structure and life choices. Ergo, the current revolution (and make no mistake, that is precisely what the Tea Party Movement is accomplishing, a revolution).

The concern of some of us, sitting on the sidelines to some extent and examining what is happening out there, is that having achieved their aims, the Tea Party Movement will become complacent or neglectful of the revolution they have created, thus allowing it to stagnate and die. We must make certain that those who have replaced the Old Guard of fusty time-servers remember always who is the employer (us) and who is the employee (them). We must encourage them to have other job choices to which they will return and that public service is not now, nor should it ever be, a career choice. That wasn't what our Founding Fathers envisioned and it shouldn't be what happens today. Those who are elected must possess a spine. They must not go along with the possible choices of the old, failed candidates, the likes of Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and others of that ilk. We must bring new blood to the mix and a Sarah Palin candidacy should be encouraged.

The Old Guard of the Republican Party must be eased out - by force if necessary - so that nonsense such as what has happened to Tea Party candidates in this election cycle shall not and will not ever happen again. Christine O'Donnell may not have been THEIR choice, but she is OUR choice and thus should be supported. Perhaps, as many of us have done in this cycle, contributions should be made to specific candidates rather than to the national party. And we will not, for the President or anyone else, go to the back of the bus - now or ever!