Tea Party Preempts NAACP

The NAACP has apparently decided to call 20 million American patriots “racists” for advancing liberty and economic opportunity. Their evidence? Attendance at a Tea Party–anywhere, anytime. Specifically, according to the Kansas City Star (via Jim Hoft):

The resolution, scheduled for a vote as early as Tuesday by delegates attending the annual NAACP convention in Kansas City, calls upon “all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”

At midnight, the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition sent a resolution condemning the NAACP’s false and defamatory statement to the organization’s Washington bureau. We took this action because we will not stand for their lies.

The Tea Party’s principles are simple and clear:

• Smaller federal government
• Lower taxes
• Fiscal responsibility
• National security
• Federalism

Those are precisely the tools to lift all Americans out of poverty. They’ve worked every time they’ve been tried. In America, we just haven’t tried them in awhile, due in large part to the NAACP’s advancement of socialism.

Each of these First Principles protects the rights of every American–the rights inherent in our humanity, not phony “rights” invented by a bureaucrat. We stand for rights given by God that no man, no government, can justifiably deny or diminish. Our principles are the very same principles that the NAACP stood for in 1909 but has wandered away from since the 1970s.

When you look at the crime and poverty and family breakdown of the African-American community, where median household income is below that of illegal aliens, you see a half-century of failure by the NAACP. When you consider that the NAACP blocks every effort to educate the poor through school vouchers, you realize that the NAACP is all about power for a few, not opportunity for everyone. When you see that the NAACP refuses to condemn New Black Panther Party calls to murder police officers and babies, you understand how far that organization has fallen.

None of those persistent problems was caused by the tea party movement, yet the principles of the tea party are exactly what’s needed to wind down the multi-generational destruction in the African-American community. As I have said repeatedly, we measure compassion by the number of people lifted out of poverty, not the number who remain trapped. We promote hope and achievement through liberty, safety, and pursuit of happiness. That’s all we want.

The NAACP was once a vital weapon in the war against segregation and oppression. All that’s left is abigoted and malicious shell that does far more harm than good for people who need a break.

The NAACP should give reason and decency a break by withdrawing its false and defamatory attack on the tea party movement.