Friday, December 9, 2011

Let's Tea Party like it's 1959

Jerry Mitchell, the award-winning investigative reporter for the Clarion-Ledger who's life's task has been to expose the craziness that exists amongst us, wrote an excellent article the other day about the Mississippi Tea Party.

Folks have been calling the Tea Party leadership nuts for quite some time, few more enthusiastically than I. They are hard shell, unrepentant, unreconstructed "conservatives" who seek to roll American society back at least 50 years. They've never met a federal government program or initiative they like (especially things like the Department of Justice and the Voting Rights Act). The Mississippi Tea Party leadership has generally been smart enough to keep those views out of the media, however, affording themselves plausible deniability.

Well, no more. Mississippi Tea Party Chairman Roy Nicholson, no doubt high on Election Day results which saw Tea Party candidates help Republicans gain control of the Legislature, decided to let his freak flag fly in the Tea Party's 2012 Legislative Agenda. To begin with, Nicholson takes aim at federal laws he doesn't like, and declares "We do not want lawsuits challenging these laws - but nullification and/or interposition." Yes, you read that correctly. The discarded legal theories used to support slavery and subsequently segregation are the weapons of choice for the Mississippi Tea Party.

Then, improbably, it gets even worse. The Mississippi Tea Party wants a legislative Un-American Activities Committee. Yes, you read that correctly. They want a committee established to "to make a study of un-American activities in this state and to report its findings." According to the Clarion-Ledger, Mississippi had a General Legislative Investigating Committee years ago, and this is what the Tea Party wants resurrected. The GLIC (that's what I'm calling it, anyways) was to investigate:
un-American activities includ(ing) those "intended to overthrow, destroy, alter, or to assist in the overthrow, destruction or alteration of the constitutional form of government" in the U.S. or Mississippi by "revolution, force, violence or other means" not authorized by the state or U.S. Constitution.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Are we really going back down the Red Scare/McCarthyism road? And besides, wouldn't the GLIC be forced to spend an inordinate amount of time studying the very proponents of the legislation reenacting it?

MS Tea Party Chairman Roy Nicholson's idol, Sen. Joe McCarthy

3 comments:

Kingfish said...

So you think it is ok to pursue a revolution against the government? Why are you against protecting the government and freedom?

Louis K. said...

I think a photo of Ross Barnett would be appropriate here as well

James Parker said...

It's rather surprising the number of people who think the tea party(s) actually had noble motives before being 'co-opted' by the GOP.

I'm thinking that had these same people observed or participated in the rallies, even early on, they would have found an extreme element to the activities and views of the average participant.

Thank you for raising awareness to the true motives of this operation as they unfold.