I've used this analogy many times before. Do you remember the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"? In one scene the local sheriff has gathered a crowd of men around a platform trying to organize a posse. After a while, a man in the crowd joins the sheriff on the platform and applauds the effort.
But then, before his very eyes, the man usurps the sheriff's effort at gathering a crowd and turns the discussion into a sales pitch for a new invention, the bicycle. Pretty soon the entire crowd has lost interest in the sheriff's effort to get the bad guys and are enamored with the bicycle salesman. The follow-up to that scene shows Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) riding around the house with Etta Place (Katharine Ross) on the handle bars to the sounds of B.J. Thomas singing Burt Bacharach's "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head."
I believe that the modern TEA party followed a similar incarnation. A few good people gathered a crowd in order to go get the bad guys, the democrats who controlled Congress and gave us the Bailouts and the Stimulus Packages and who controlled both houses of Congress which was in lock step with a far left progressive President.
But soon, having gathered a crowd and gotten their attention, others jumped on the stage and usurped the momentum. First it was Libertarians looking for a vehicle to propel Ron Paul forward. Then it became the political parasites who needed jobs and lusted after attention who began chanting what the crowd wanted to hear.
Then the democrats and Obama saw a use for the TEA party and began to fan the flames of discontent with the help of their buddies in the media in an effort to divide the republican opposition to their plans for "transforming" America.
Now it's those who want to see Sharia law in America.
Tea Party circles in East Tennessee might seem an unlikely environment for launching a Muslim organization. Will Coley, a 31-year-old Tennessee native, Muslim convert and Tea Party activist did just that.
His one person outreach project to Tea Party conservatives and libertarians grew into the first national organization countering Islamophobia on the Right.
Their message: Islam is compatible with an anti-big government or libertarian philosophy. They do not denounce sharia, but defend it within a libertarian framework.
"Our approach is different," says Coley. "We use principles within sharia like maqasid (primary goals) to show their connection with John Locke's principles of life, liberty and property."After speaking with fourteen Tea Party chapters about Muslim beliefs on liberty and sharia (Islamic religious law code), twelve of them agreed to reject anti-Muslim appeals. They even publically supported a petition opposing a proposed "sharia ban" in Tennessee.
Coley's efforts drew the attention of members of the small but growing community of Muslim libertarians, especially after an initial article on the anti-Islamophobia website Loonwatch.com.[Illume Magazine]
I tried to warn you. Be careful who is stirring your tea.
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