Demonizing Everyday Americans

Are there some people attending tea party rallies who are intemperate in their remarks? Sure. Whenever you get tens of thousands of regular folks together, you’ll always get a few who makes comments that they should reconsider. Even then, nothing we’ve seen is worse than the truly outrageous statements that we’ve heard from the Left in recent years about President Bush or Republicans.

Having been engaged in many gatherings of the tea party crowd, it’s offensive that many in the mainstream media are engaging in a systematic effort to marginalize American citizens who are simply trying to take a stand for individual liberty—a stand in opposition to big-government expansion. Also one of us speaking as an African-American (Blackwell), it’s especially insulting to suggest that these people’s opposition to President Obama is driven by racism.

America’s history of grassroots activism goes back to the founding of our republic. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people includes as a necessary element those same average, ordinary people being able to gather and speak out. This freedom to assemble was considered so essential to a free nation that our Founders put it in the First Amendment, right alongside the freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Ironically, these rights are set side-by-side with the freedom of the press, as well. The leftists in the media would do well to remember that their liberty to be a free press comes from the same constitutional amendment as the tea party crowd’s liberty to gather together.

And our elected leaders would do well to remember that the First Amendment exists to protect average people from the government, not the other way around.

Blackwell and Klukowski are the authors of the forthcoming book, The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, on sale April 27.