It didn't work, though. The NAACP still saw the costumes as part of a disturbing, nationalist impulse:
"The Revolutionary War-era costumes, the yellow “Don’t tread on me” Gadsden flags from the same era, the earnest recitals of the pledge of allegiance, the over-stated veneration of the Constitution, and the defense of “American exceptionalism” in a world turned towards transnational economies and global institutions: all are signs of the over-arching nationalism that helps define the Tea Party movement."
So, by the NAACP's logic, it would appear that Barack Obama is an over-arching nationalist, and perhaps a racist, antisemitic nativist as well.
That, or the left has been engaged in three years of juvenile character assassination to protect a guy who never got the memo about the worrisome deeper meaning of regimental coats and tricorner hats.
[quote Of course no one has yet to accurately identify what the Tea Party stands for and what might be wrong with it.[/quote]
I thought the tea party stood for white suburban Americans fear and the need to pressure their representatives in government to create laws to kick the mexicans out and make America back into the tried and true white men rule country of our ancestors.
Kind of like the LDS church. No wonder democrats don't feel comfortable as members.
The NAACP quote is perfectly sensible. It's more or less true. It isn't saying that reciting the pledge or wearing American patriotic gear for a July 4th parade (!) by definition makes you intensely nationalistic. Rather it is citing a variety of factors that point to the over-arching nationalism that characterizes many self-described tea-party people. If you wear an American flag shirt 300 days a year, you probably are accurately described as either suffering a mental illness or intensely nationalistic. Saying that doesn't imply that anytime anyone is photographed with an American flag that points to the same degree of nationalism.
The Gadsen flag is the odd-one out in their list as that tends to draw plenty of people who are expressing something that doesn't necessarily endorse and often can oppose nationalistic thinking. People sometimes forget that the tea party grew out of a schizophrenic mish-mash of Ron Paul revolution types and the right wing of the Republican party.
Bc, I heard that those tea party people were a bunch of kooks who listen to too much AM radio and own a lot of cats. They also idolize a guy named Glenn Beck and can be found frequenting E-Bay looking to buy the erasable ink markers that Glenn used to doodle with on his show. They believe that sniffing the ink from these markers will help them see around corners.
