Black TEA, white TEA

by Blake Seitz Many on the Left have tried hard to marginalize and villify the TEA Party, and to distort its aims and goals. They claim Tea Partiers are backwoods hicks or else whitewashed suburbanites; they claim Tea Partiers are uneducated, bigoted, and angry. For a while, I believed this. I saw a few signs and a few screaming, ruddy-faced activists. I wrote the movement off as populism at its worst, and even conceded that racism might be a motivating factor behind its actions. No more. As coverage–and debate–has intensified around the Tea Party, it has become clear to me that the movement’s motives are pure. The Tea Party is fusionism at its finest: libertarians…