Tea Party believes in taking

A good summary of the Native position on the Tea Party movement:

Tea party cry ironic given history of ancestors

By Elizabeth Cook-LynnThe theory is that anyone coming here since 1900 is not eligible. When White Europeans made up the census of newcomers, when Africans were considered barely surviving slave populations, and indigenous peoples were thought to be inferior and vanishing, it was a world, then, the settlers said, for the "taking."

Today, it is about the need of America to see itself as an all-white majority regime. It is about losing the white-only power maintained for 200 years.

It's about a black president in a white-power country. Tea partiers expect Barack Obama to "show his papers" (birth certificate) in public over and over again because he is a black man who they believe has no right to the presidency.

It is about segregating Indians in 1880, and African slaves in 1860, and "taking" whatever white power has wanted.

Today, it is about despising the notion that America might like to envision itself in the coming centuries as a socialist democracy with real equality for everyone, rather than equality for a few in a continuing thuggish, capitalistic democracy.

Most of all, it is about race and skin color.

Sadly, the tea party gives us the narrative of the offspring of the early immigrants who are coming to the sad conclusion that they can no longer "take" the land and the resources as their forebears did. But their belief that they are entitled to do so is a strong belief in the idea that any worthwhile history in this country is their history.

To "take back America," the cry of the tea bag party, means what it has always meant to early settlers: that they have the right to take America.Comment:  Yep, Ms. Cook-Lynn has nailed it. We didn't hear one word from these people about taking about America until we elected Obama. Are we seriously supposed to believe the country has gone wrong since Obama took office in 2009? The Bush wars, deficits, and recession continue at roughly the same levels, so what's the big change?

Oh, yeah...a black president is signing legislation that may hurt rich white people (financial regulation) and help poor brown people (healthcare reform). We can't have that. Let's take back the country...from the blacks, Latinos, gays, atheists, and others who are trying to take it from us.

For more on the subject, see Angry White Christians Want Country Back and White Conservatives "Angry About Racism."