ED JONES: Tea party's message is about individual rights, liberties

2009 was a strange year for me. It was the first time in my adult life that I enjoyed Tax Day. This is not because I suddenly became a socialist and decided that the government knows how to spend my money better than I do. In fact, the complete opposite happened; I spoke at my first tea party that year. As I looked out at the crowd of Americans, individuals who are fed up with their loss of liberty by an ever-growing government, I was incredibly uplifted.

You will notice that I said “individuals” rather than lumping them into groups and labels. This is an important distinction that modern liberals don’t understand. The people who attend the tea parties have different political affiliations, come from different socio-economic backgrounds, practice different religions, and come from different races and ethnicities. The thing that brings them all together is that they are fed up with the overpowering government.

Believers in limited government and personal responsibility are individualists. The collectivists on the left do not get this and insist on lumping people into groups. That is why they always talk about “the rich,” “the middle class,” “blacks,” “whites” and others. They don’t see people as unique individuals, just collective groups. In their attempt to explain and marginalize the tea parties, they have lumped them under the label “racist”. They care about the president’s skin color, so they assume that the people at tea parties also do and that they oppose him for that reason. Their reasoning is that since Obama is black, other blacks must like him, and anyone who doesn’t only dislikes him because he is black.

The “racist” label is further confirmed in their minds by the disproportionate number of white people at these rallies. As a black conservative, I am (usually) immune to the “racist” attack. Rather, they call me “Uncle Tom,” “sell-out” and other unpleasant things. Some black conservatives are even afraid to speak out at these events for fear of being called these vile things.

Yet, the message of most tea party members: limited government, sound fiscal policies, personal responsibility, and increased personal liberty, are ideas that transcend all races and classes. They are about individual rights and the right to pursue happiness. Most people at tea parties just want to be left alone to live their lives, raise their children, make their communities better and work to achieve their goals and dreams. These are not ideas that are race-specific, however, they are a threat to the collectivists who want the power to run your life. They have to group us and divide us in order to maintain this tension between the races and classes.

The collectivist left has convinced people that they are the protectors of minorities. However, their policies have kept minority children in failing inner-city schools, created quota programs that discriminate against white people while telling black people that they can’t make it without special advantages, and torn apart minority families. These policies have hurt minorities because the left sees them as collective groups rather than unique individuals.

I am proud to see that many black conservatives are standing up for their beliefs and seeking public office this election. There are 34 black conservatives running for Congress across the country, including Ryan Frazier right here in Colorado, in the Denver area’s 7th Congressional District. Many are running in the South and traditionally Democrat states. Fourteen of these candidates stand in great positions to win.

Many black conservatives would be delighted to see a black president, but they didn’t want this president. They oppose President Obama for many of the same reasons that the people who attend tea parties oppose him. They couldn’t care less about his race; it is all about his policies and his agenda. They judge him by the content of his character, not the color of his skin.

Jones, of Colorado Springs, is a former El Paso County commissioner and a former member of the Colorado Senate.