Jeffery Lord, Gladwell and the American Tipping Point

Last week, on Hannity’s radio show he discussed a recent column by Jeffery Lord/The American Spectator, called  American Tipping Point. In it, Lord discusses Malcolm Gladwell’s book Tipping Point and makes comparisons to America’s tipping points at different times in our history and the rise of conservatism and the Tea Party.

Lord says that:  Thanks to the Tea Party movement, Conservatism is on the verge of a major victory that dwarfs the technical and actual realities of whatever the details of the resulting deficit deal passed last night. Yes, there is a long, long way to go. But the idea that America doesn’t, in fact, have to be governed for eternity as a debtor nation with a mammoth, out-of-control, ever-expanding government is winning the day. It is tipping the balance with increasing decisiveness against an idea that has become so much a part of conventional wisdom that even some conservatives, startlingly including, inexplicably, the Wall Street Journal, have displayed the wobblies at the thought of confronting the Leviathan. The WSJ’s attacks yesterday against Jim DeMint, Michele Bachmann and Sean Hannity, saying “sooner or later the GOP had to give up the hostage” — follows another editorial in which the paper railed against Tea Party members as “hobbits.” The paper, sounding like cranky British Tories in 1775 Boston rather than the bold, forward-looking paper that championed the much-derided ideas of Ronald Reagan​, wildly bought into the liberal notion that the Tea Party from Hobbitville is somehow holding the government hostage, instead of the other way around. In fact Big Government liberalism has spent decades holding and trying to hold the average American hostage to all manner of outrageous tax rates, taxes and regulations on everything from capital gains to sex (in Harry Reid’s Nevada) to soda, SUVs and poker.

Lord chronicles the rise of conservatism from Senator Robert Taft’s strident opposition to FDR’s mega New Deal in the 30’s, through William F. Buckley to the great Ronald Reagan to Mark Levin’s landmark best seller and Tea Party bible, Liberty and Tyranny and how all these little, or sometimes large events, are causing a tipping point in American history. He says that conservatism is spreading almost like a virus: in Gladwell’s vocabulary, “connectors” — “people with a particular and rare set of social gifts” who have the ability to “spread” an idea like an epidemic, a Tipping Point is in the works. Henry Regnery, for example, published and made a star of Buckley, who befriended Reagan who inspired Limbaugh, who was befriended by Buckley and placed on the cover of National Review, with Limbaugh in turn aiding Hannity and Levin and Levin’s book inspiring the Tea Party etc., etc.

Reading Lord, once again gave me hope. And reminded me that in Beck’s words, we are not alone. Most of America is conservative to some degree. Most of Americans want to be or remain at least, middle class and we see that vanishing under Obama’s ideology. Most of America finds communism (call it socialism or European socialism but it’s still a form of communism) to be antithetical to the fundamentals of our beliefs and our founding. And most of America will fight it.

I hope they don’t think for a minute that we will forget being called racists, nazis, homophobes, Hobbits and terrorists. We will not. The real revolution will occur on November 6th, 2012 – bloodless, gunless and in a voting booth. They are being fore warned and to disregard the tipping point signs will be at their own peril.

It’s a must-read by Lord and I hope you will take the time to read it.

Great column from the WSJ and some little known TEA party facts

William McGurn

. . . [M]oralizing about the ugly motives of the American people has become common. Whether it’s a federal judge declaring there exists no rational opposition to same-sex marriage, a mayor railing against those who would like a mosque moved a few blocks from Ground Zero, a Speaker of the House effectively likening the majority of her countrymen who did not want her health-care bill to Nazis, or a State Department official who brings up the Arizona law on immigration in a human-rights discussion with a Chinese delegation, the chorus is the same: You can’t trust ordinary Americans.

We’ve been called Nazis, racists, evil mongers and haters. We’ve been compared to the klan. Our attorney general has called us “a nation of cowards.” We are labeled homophobes and xenophobes. We’ve been accused of not only inciting violence but wanting it, as well.

And none of these epithets or accusations have anything to do with what ordinary Americans are really concerned about. We want to return to constitutional government, less taxes, smaller government, more fiscal and moral responsibility. So, again, what do any of these issues have to do with homosexuals or with race?

Absolutely nothing but the narrative has been written for us by the Obama loving liberal media and it’s a real uphill climb to overcome it.

Does it matter that there have been no arrests of any TEA party members at any of their events? Or that no one has been able to come forward and claim a $100,000 reward with proof that anyone called a black politician the N-word? Of course it doesn’t matter because those little facts don’t fit the liberal narrative.

March 2010 TEA party in Searchlight, NV

It’s a little known fact but over 70% of TEA party members have some college or are college graduates. You won’t read that in the liberal media because they prefer to paint us as stupid white rednecks who “cling to our God and our guns.” An educated grassroots movement doesn’t fit in the tapestry that the MSM is weaving about us.

The TEA party is composed of 75-80% white Americans. The general population of white America is 75%. The total population of Black and Hispanic Americans is 27%. There are 24% of TEA party members who are minorities.  How far off, really is the demographics of the TEA party from the general population of America? (24% is a surprisingly high number when you consider that we have been labeled as racists from the get go.) But do we see these numbers anywhere in the media? All I had to do was a google search to find them.

The media will not report these numbers. They will continue to spread the narrative of older white male, gun-toting, angry TEA party members and that is what a great many Americans are still believing about us. It’s going to be a real climb for us to prove them wrong but we have to persevere, hold fast to our ideals and agenda and come November, make them eat their words.