Yesterday there were hundreds of “tea parties” held across the country. These were touted as “anti-tax / anti-spend” protests that were held to complain about excessive taxation and wasteful government spending.

I decided to head to our state capitol here in Denver to see what went on. I was expecting only a few dozen people to show up, but I was surprised to see what I estimated to be about two to three thousand people there.

But, what was described as being an protest against tax and spend policies in fact was what I can only describe as an anti-Obama rally. I took a series of photos of the protesters and some of their signs, and whereas there were many signs that did in fact complain about taxes or spending, at least 1/2 of them referenced various right wing agenda items.

This is a sampling of the signs I saw there:

“STOP SPENDING”

There were dozens and dozens of signs that claimed that Obama and the Democrats were socialists, Marxists, communists, or any one of a dozen other “ists” out there. I’m wondering when they’ll start saying Obama is a stylist, or a manicurist, or a pedicurist.

I don’t mean to make fun of them, but I find the whole idea of a Obama being a socialist pure poppycock.

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating public or state ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equality for all individuals, with a fair or egalitarian method of compensation. (Wikipedia 04/16/09)

Now, I can agree that Obama respects the idea of equality for all individuals and the goal of a fair or egalitarian method of compensation. In fact, I don’t know of any politician who wouldn’t give lip service to these as laudable goals. I suspect that if you asked any of the “tea party” demonstrators if they also supported equality, fairness, and equal pay for equal work they would probably agree. So, that leaves the first part of the definition to examine.

I’ve never seen President Obama, or any Democrat leader, call for the state to own the means of production and distribution of goods in this nation. I understand that the government is bailing out AIG, and we’ve taken a majority shareholder stake in Citigroup and other large banks. But, this has never been described as anything but a temporary step with the goal of stabilizing the credit markets. It’s always been said that these assets would be sold back to the private sector as soon as possible.

I spoke with one protester there who was holding a sign saying “Stop Obama’s Socialism” and asked him about his views. He said that the USA is already a socialistic nation, and that he was there trying to take it back for the people. I found this to be a strange dichotomy, but I continued talking to him. I asked him how he defined socialism, and he said it was government control of business. I told him that my understanding of it was that it referred to government ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods. He said that yes, that’s what he meant and that’s what was happening in the USA today.

I asked him if the US government owned Wal-Mart, the world’s largest public corporation. He said no. I asked if the US government owned Exxon, Chevron , or ConocoPhillips, the largest oil companies. He said no. I asked about General Motors. He jumped on that and said that we’d given them enough money to own them. I asked about Ford, GE, Bank of America, AT&T, Berkshire Hathaway, JP Morgan Chase, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Koch Industries (I had a list - I came prepared).

He said that the government owned the banks, AIG, and GM. I said these were temporary “receivership” situations, similar to what we’d done during the Savings and Loan crisis in the ’80’s and what we did with the railroads in the 1970’s when they went bankrupt. I said that in both cases they were returned to private hands very quickly.

He said it didn’t matter. Obama was still moving us towards socialism.

I asked him if he supported Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. He said they were going bankrupt too. I said that yes, they needed some adjustments, but did he support them in theory or did he support abolishing them entirely. He said that he supported the idea of them. I pointed out that these were, in essence, socialistic. He didn’t have an answer for that.

I guess what I took away from the entire episode is that these weren’t really anti-tax and spend rallies. They were actually anti-Obama/Democrat rallies.

The final observation I made is that the makeup of the crowd did not represent the demographic makeup of our city at all. I did not see a proportionate representation of the minorities in our city there in any way.

I fully support the people’s right to demonstrate and freedom of speech. I’m very happy to see these folks out being engaged and participating in the democratic process.

But, I don’t think these folks really know what they’re talking about when they complain about socialism, and I don’t think they represent much more than a fringe element that simply dislikes President Obama and the Democrats.

~ SamSez