Notes From The Tea Party Convention

by digby

I just received this in my email from World Net Daily, reporting the highlights of Joseph Farah’s speech at the convention:

“Some people say it’s not important where Barack Obama was born,” said the
founder and CEO of WorldNetDaily.com. “Some think the Constitution is just an
archaic old document. … It’s the glue that holds us together, that binds us to
the people as a nation-state, and we abrogate and abuse it at our great peril.”

Each time he mentioned the eligibility issue, explaining to the crowd that the
president refuses to produce documents proving he meets the Constitution’s
natural-born citizen requirement, the crowd cheered wildly, whistled and
applauded.

Citing the recent rapid sales of his prescient 2003 book, “Taking America Back,”
which presaged the current grassroots uprising against Washington’s intrusive
policies, Farah revealed the nefarious roots of another, lesser-known strategy.
One that mirrors the White House playbook.

“The question has been asked many times in the last year: “What is Obama doing?
Surely he is not dumb. Why is he doing what he is doing knowing that these
policies have never worked in the past, are not working now and could never work
in the future?” Farah said. “The shocking answer is that they are not supposed
to work the purpose of the policies is, for the most part, to increase misery
and to create crises.”

Then Farah cited the plan devised by Richard A. Cloward, a Marxist Columbia
University professor, and his assistant, Frances Fox Piven. It was first
unveiled in a May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. The title of the plan pretty much
says it all: “The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis.”

Under the canard of ending poverty, Cloward and Piven openly calculated
“bringing the capitalist system to collapse through a series of escalating
demands that could never be met,” Farah said.

“When these entitlements were no longer able to be covered by government
agencies,” he continued, “the new dependent class would riot and rebel and
create chaos that would create a real crisis for the system.”

Cloward’s and Piven’s influence proved profound on first George Wiley, who then
turned Wade Rathke on to it. Rathke in turn employed it as the founder of ACORN,
“the organization Barack Obama would serve as an attorney and as a trainer of
its leadership,” said Farah. ACORN’s purpose? Overwhelming the voting rolls with
registrations, “multiple entries, dead voters, random names, contrived names,”
he continued. “When it all became impossible to police, the lobbying for minimal
identification standards for voters would begin.”

Pulling no punches, Farah claimed the power structure’s real disdain is for
the Constitution, and America’s Judeo-Christian rooting that rights and
liberties ascend from God not government.

“Once upon a time, the U.S. government was the envy of the whole world,” he
said. “It presided over the greatest freedom the world had ever known. But as
Washington’s power and reach grew well beyond its constitutional restrictions,
something happened. It started to supplant God.”

“Government wants to be your one and only god,” he said, decrying the false
assumption the Constitution is a “living document,” with meanings always open to
interpretation.

· “Can Congress constitutionally require Americans to buy medical insurance?” he
asked.

· “Does Obama have the constitutional power to appoint unaccountable czars to
rule over virtually every aspect of our lives?”

· “Does Congress have the power to kill or inhibit freedom of speech of
talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh?”

“No!” the crowd enthusiastically boomed each time.

“Do we have the right to bear arms or not?”

“Yes!” they responded in unison.

“Our leaders are a judgment on us,” Farah warned. “We’ve got to get our
spiritual priorities straight. We’ve got to recognize our government is either a
blessing or a curse on us.”

I think Boehlert understated the degree to which the reporters punted. Ignoring this major speech when the all the networks were present and broadcasting from the convention was malpractice.

The projection is astonishing.

.