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A Little Tobacco with Your Tea?
by Jeff Fullerton
[email protected]

Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

Heard the latest conspiratorial rant about the Tea Party?

Apparently we've been around for quite a while with ties to the evil tobacco industry going back to the 1980s.

Sounds like a tinfoil hat with a built in Cuckoo Clock!

In an ironic way the Progs are right, though way off the mark in estimating the depth of the roots.

There has long been a Tea Party brewing under the surface of American life ever since the slow, piecemeal betrayal of the Revolution began; before the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence. The current manifestation of anti-government sentiment rose to prominence because the establishment republicans in the Bush-Cheney years so ruined the GOP brand and then President Obama and the democrats pushed a hard line progressive agenda that woke a lot of people up to the fact that we are fast running out of freedoms to give up

The Freedom Movement of today goes back to the FDR Era. Conservative democrats and republicans who opposed the New Deal on grounds of unconstitutionality and its gross governmental intrusion into private life. It was a lot like today with the "go along, get along" Chamber of Commerce republicans who just wanted to keep their place at the table and continue slopping at the public trough. They have predominated their party thru much of the modern era, punctuated by the unsuccessful attempt by Barry Goldwater to sell the more libertarian brand of conservatism and later Reagan who's speeches helped bring the idea of small government back to the forefront of public consciousness and cast a stumbling block to slow the progressive juggernaut; at least for a little while.

Then again, it's becoming more apparent that the wave of economic prosperity attributed to Reaganomics, just masked the pain of the continued creep of government into our private lives and there were still enough areas of personal freedom left unassailed to make the process seem less alarming. Even through the worst deeds of Clinton and both Bush Administrations.

As for the claim of the Tea Party being in bed with Big Tobacco: that's just the latest attempt by the Progs to paint us as a monstrous corporate astroturfing plot. If anyone is in bed with the tobacco industry it's Big Government. Considering that they are giving tax breaks and subsidies while at the same time waging war on tobacco makes the whole thing look like a domestic abuse case alternating between sweet tender lovemaking and battery!

That's your tax dollars at work.

Let's face it—the Progs will always go out on a limb to make anything or anyone they don't like into a pariah! And it's quite obvious the same people who want to ban smoking, along with oversized soft drinks, SUVs, guns or anything else declared illegal, immoral or fattening—would want to make the Tea Parties and others desiring limitations on the power and scope of government—as marginalized and despised if not more so than smokers who've been taxed, and regulated, defamed, hounded and exiled to the fringes of society. So much for the "progressive-liberal" champions of diversity and tolerance.

This latest guilt by association ploy is actually a golden opportunity for the Tea Partiers and other like-minded people to rise to the occasion and distinguish themselves as defenders of everyone's freedom to pursue happiness in their own way. While we're at it; there are lots of ways for all of us to have fun thumbing our noses at authority too. Take a few puffs for the tobacco nazis and wash it down with a Big Gulp Drink for Mayor Bloomberg! Or do a little time on a shooting range in honor of Governor "You don't need 10 bullets to kill a deer" Cuomo. Then tell the anti-smokers and fellow travelers who uphold other forms of prohibition to go blow smoke up their posteriors and get a life!

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