Documentary on the Tea Party

This is an Aljazeera English Fault Lines episode, Politics, Religion and the Tea Party YouTube date 12/13/2011:



I especially like the way this report discusses the Tea Party in the context of Christian Right domination of the Republican Party. Our political press in the US developed the habit of talking about the Tea Party as though it is somehow distinct and separate from the Christian Right. This documentary puts in a more realistic context, which is that both the Tea Party and the Christian Right are separate but near-identical manifestations of the Republican base.

I would add that both manifestations are obsessed with the same key enemies: black people, hippies, foreigners, gubment programs that might help some black or brown person somewhere somehow, to name some of the more prominent ones. Of course there are Muslims and the Kenyan radical anti-colonialist Marxist President who wants to impose Sharia law, Jews who don't celebrate Christmas, George Soros, liberals, Democrats, gays and lesbians, Nancy Pelosi, etc., etc., etc.

The report does pick up one favorite but incorrect piece of the Christian Right's founding story. What started the Christian Right in the organized, political form that we know it today was not the abortion issue. It was the Carter Administration's decision to deny federal tax breaks to racially segregated schools like Bob Jones University.

Tags: christian right, tea party

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