A
celebration of a movement
� and a warning Don't
misread the tea leaves
In 2010, leading up to one of America's most historic midterm elections,
everybody's got an opinion about the tea party movement.
But when Joseph
Farah speaks and writes about the movement, people listen � or should.
It
was Farah who predicted the development of the movement seven years before it
materialized in a bestselling book called "Taking America Back."
He was even more
specific in 2008 in his book "None of the Above," in which he forecast the
election of Barack Obama would be the trigger for such a movement.
And it was Farah,
once again, who served as a keynote speaker, along with Sarah Palin, at the
first national tea party convention earlier this year, with a return engagement
planned for the second convention next month.
Now, he has written "The Tea Party Manifesto," which he says is both a
celebration of the movement as well as a warning. Officially the book releases
on the Fourth of July, Independence Day, but it's available right now �
personally autographed � at the WND Superstore.
"The tea party is the
most dynamic and powerful grassroots political movement witnessed by modern-day
America," writes Farah. "It arose spontaneously � and in the nick of time � to
save this country from an advancing, fatal drift away from self-government,
liberty and the promise of greater prosperity for future
generations."
That's the good news, says Farah.
But he also has a
warning to share with the movement: There are efforts under way to hijack it �
and they must be resisted.
"There are politicians and 'conservative
activists' and even new media entrepreneurs out there who are trying to take
over the tea party movement, to grab the reins, to set the agenda, to limit its
course of actions," says Farah. "Rank-and-file tea party members need to
understand what's at stake. This book explains why their instincts are right and
the would-be hijackers are wrong."
There are some, Farah says, who are
suggesting the tea party limit its focus to economic or materialistic issues.
That, he explains, would be a huge and fatal mistake.
"America is not
just in an economic downturn," Farah says. "It is in a freefall when it
comes to discernment about right and wrong, about the nature of freedom, about
who our enemies are and about how to reverse the trends that got us into this
mess. You can't do that by looking at the problems facing America through purely
materialistic eyes. The good news is that the tea party movement, for the most
part, does not do that. It should not do that. It must not do that."
