Editor’s note: This open letter to Sound Publishing, which publishes the South Whidbey Record and dozens of other community newspapers in Washington, was recently posted on the website for Whidbey Island Tea Party Patriots by Terresa Hobbs.

Hobbs notes: I’ve chosen to post this letter here and link to it because it’s over the letter limit for publication in the LTE section of the paper, and the editors at Sound Publishing have shown themselves to be either biased or incompetent. In other words, I don’t trust them to edit a letter any more than I trust them to edit an interview. The impetus for this letter is the inane comments, editorials and endorsements I’ve seen in the local papers, besmirching the Whidbey Island Tea Party Patriots, by staffers and readers who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about and are obviously talking (as my dad would say) “out of their a**es.”  In Liberty, Terresa

Open Letter to Sound Publishing

I’d like to address the issue of the Tea Party being maligned regularly and consistently in your publications by people who are afraid to post using their own names and who, at best are simply ignorant, and at worst are deliberately using lies and half-truths to smear people with whom they disagree.

First the pejorative term that some claim is used by Tea Partiers to describe themselves; tea b***er. I’ve been a member of the Tea Party since its inception and can assure you, no Tea Partier has ever used it to describe him/herself. The first time I heard the term was when it was used by the odious Janeane Garofalo on a left-wing cable talk show, in conjunction with the “racist” label. Not being a member of the homosexual community, I had no idea what it meant and had to “google” it. Now when I see or hear someone use the term I want to ask “does your mother know you talk like that”? I have to assume that whoever’s using it knows what they’re saying and is using it deliberately as an epithet, as the “F” word is used. If you don’t already know what it means, stop using it until you do know.

Second, ideology has been ascribed to the Tea Party that just isn’t there. We don’t want to get rid of all government. We’re not anarchists, though anarchists have opportunistically attempted to attend our rallies and forums. We’ve had to ask the party-crashing followers of Lynden LaRouche to leave our events because of their offensive signs and petitions … they’re the ones who attach a swastika to everything and everyone. Ugh.

We DO want government to function effectively, and only within its proper role, starting at the most local levels and ending with a Federal government that does not try to control every aspect of every individual citizen’s life. That means all of us need to get off our rear ends and be involved. What is crazy or radical about respecting individuals?

We’re not racist, we’re not violent, and we’re not ignorant. Are there some frustrated individuals among us? Yes….but to date, the majority of racist, violent and ignorant actions have been against members of the Tea Party, not by Tea Partiers against anyone else. Out-of-control progressives touting peace have attacked and injured rally participants. Union thugs have confronted black Americans at Tea Party events, physically beating at least one.  Tea Partiers respect others and their property enough to leave a rally point cleaner than they found it, while the same definitely cannot be said for gatherings of SEIU, Code Pink or Moveon, for example.

We’re not anti-union; some of us are union members. We simply believe that the union members have responsibilities as well as rights. Many in  the union leadership are as corrupt as those with whom they bargain, and the constant demand for more, more, more has gone beyond reason and is driving the job creators out of business or out of the country. Yet these same leaders are re-elected over and over to positions with huge salaries and perks as they drive the nails into the coffin of a free market economic system. We think SEIU and all other unions should admit they have internal problems, stop listening to the demonization and clean out their own houses.

We do know the difference between a Constitutional Republic and a Social Democracy, we know how the governance of this country was established, and we’ve gone out of our way to study history as it happened,  warts and all, not as it’s been rewritten. We know that while societies may change, human nature does not, and that our government of laws was designed, with checks and balances, precisely because the Founders knew it also. We also understand how hate speech, demonization and name-calling is being used to divide the country by way of race, gender, economic status, age and culture in order to keep united Americans from digging our heels in and stopping the headlong rush to exchange our Constitutional Republic for a social democracy in the name of ‘progress’.

We’ve been maligned by the elitists who think they’re the smartest people in the room, though the things they believe defy common sense:  “The government creates jobs,”  “We have to abandon free market principles to save the free market,” “We have to  borrow more money to get out of debt.” We’ve been maligned by people who are terrified they might hear something that will force them to change the way they  live. By those who want to be taken care of so that they can follow their bliss no matter whom it hurts. By those who just don’t want to think anymore because it’s hard, or those who were never allowed to think for themselves and so don’t know how.

But mostly we’re maligned by people who’ve never talked with us, or listened to what we’re saying. To my mind, they’re idiots and you really can’t argue with an idiot.