Why I Ignored the RSVP of the TEA Party

  [ Originally written and posted on MySpace on  Jun 17, 2009 ]
   
Like millions of other people on the edge of the conservative movement, I received an invitation to the local TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party.  The following excerpts taken from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette of June 16, 2009, tell why I declined to attend:
 

" [Tom] Cox, 45, told a crowd of 600 at Little Rock's second Arkansas Tea Party rally that he intends to challenge Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., by seeking the Republican nomination."
 

So far, so good, but further on in the article we are told that "Cox discussed his goals of cutting payroll, small-business and capital-gains taxes."  Note his emphasis on the taxes that businessmen pay.  This is not surprising because "Cox owns Aloha Pontoon Boats and Waco Manufacturing, Inc."
 

Yet further along in the article, this item leaps out:  " In July, Cox's Waco Manufacturing plant  at 3700 Crutcher St. in North Little Rock was raided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.  Thirteen employees, mostly from Guatemala and Mexico, were arrested and charged with using fraudulent identification documents to get jobs.  At the time, Cox said he didn't know the employees were illegal aliens, and he was not prosecuted. "
 

Mr. Cox, who is identified as the leader of the Arkansas TEA Party, is all too typical of the kind of conservatives who control the GOP.   For them, conservatism is limited to conserving an economic system.  They are even willing to expedite the ongoing destruction of whatever ethnocultural  identity remains of the historic USA.  What Sarah Palin called "the real America" is a matter of indifference to them as long as their businesses are not threatened.  In their eyes, illegal alien workers are preferable to workers from Palin's "real America."

Anyone who is interested in finding out what a true conservatism is should read the anthology of the writings of the late Samuel T. Francis entitled Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism (Columbia:  University of Missouri Press, 1993).