By Teresa Eaton
Kelly Miller, in an April 15 letter to the editor (“Tax protests were fake outrage being aimed at invisible issues”), characterized the Tax Day Tea Parties’ organizers as believers in an “extremist ideology.” I was an organizer of the local Tax Day Tea Party, and the beliefs that drove me to help organize this event are freedom, less government and lower taxes. If that’s an extremist ideology, then I proudly embrace it, since this also was the extremist ideology of
Miller mistakenly asserts that the organizers of the local Tax Day Tea Party followed the lead of Fox News. In fact, we, like thousands of our fellow citizens across
The local Tea Party organizers met in late February to discuss what was happening in
Miller opines about supposed conservative “heroes” like Bush and Cheney, asserting that Tea Parties are “really a move to fire up conservatives AGAINST the current administration.” First of all, conservatives don’t worship politicians; we cherish freedom. Second, if conservatives take to the streets, it’s because their freedoms have been threatened. And third, if President Obama is the leader of a government bent on burdensome regulation and taxation, conservatives will not shy away from holding him accountable for the subsequent erosion of freedom.
Miller objects to “a news network like Fox leading a protest and lying to its constituency.” Elected officials, not news networks, have constituencies, and those elected officials have been lying to people a whole lot longer than news networks have. Conservatives cast a wary eye at all “news” media and simply turn off their TVs if they think someone is lying to them. Unfortunately, lying elected officials who tax and spend their constituents into bankruptcy are not so simply turned off.
However, it is touching that Miller is worried about Fox News lying to unwitting conservatives. Maybe she should write to President Obama about that, and maybe he’ll yank Fox News off the air. Then we could all go back to the good old days of national unity when CBS’ Walter Cronkite assured us every evening, “And that’s the way it is.”