Britannia Radio

Boxing tea party in with dollar  signs unwise, author says 'Economic issues and materialistic issues' panned as 'the Left's turf'

The fiscal-obsessed factions of the tea party jockeying to define the movement’s scope solely with dollar signs unwittingly are pulling a page straight from "The Communist Manifesto," warns the author of a brand new and very different manifesto. "Since when are we concerned only about economic issues and materialistic issues? That's the Left's turf. They know this turf. They defined it. Marx and Engels. 'We live in a materialistic world. Everything's material. Everything's economic.' And now the right is going to fight back exclusively on that ground?" Joseph Farah, author of "The Tea Party Manifesto," said Wednesday during an interview on KION's "Wake Up Monterrey" in Monterrey, Calif.  "Our strength," Farah continued, "is the morals and values. The people that know that they're accountable to a God in heaven so they're self-governing individuals who police themselves. They don't need the tyranny of the state to do that." In the interview with Mark Carbonaro, Farah confessed personal motivations to the Left Coast audience, describing how persistent reader feedback at WorldNetDaily.com prompted the "activism" that led to him author the book that presaged the tea party movement, 2003's "Taking America Back." His latest, "The Tea Party Manifesto," is dedicated to keeping that movement vibrant and effective by encouraging its members to establish a strong spiritual core. To interview Joseph Farah or to receive review copies, please contact Tim Bueler at (530) 401-3285 or email media@wnd.com Even now, he said, the "economic-only" wing of the tea party movement remains so afraid of frightening potential constituencies that they shy from any strong stance on issues with social implications – even ones in which staggering costs remain evident. "These same people, I want you to recognize how extreme they are," he said. "They don't believe illegal immigration is an economic problem for this country." Carbonaro asked Farah to identify just who in the tea party movement struck such a position. "Dick Armey and FreedomWorks," Farah said. FreedomWorks, Farah explained, forged the national federation of tea party groups and organized, "to their credit," a mass march on Washington. But the narrowed vision is actually a retread of familiar and failed Republican campaign slogans. Carbonaro's personal experience with California-based tea parties reinforced that view. "One tea party group that I've worked with, they felt that they wanted to keep their focus on economic issues because they felt that was the biggest tent they would put everybody under and there would be less dissention within the group," he said. "The rationale was 'Look, if we cut back the size of the federal government and we stopped the funding, if we cut back the money that's being spent, everybody is going to get what they want. The anti-war people are going to get less money spent on war. The people that are pro-life are going to have less money available for abortion services and Planned Parenthood and organizations like that.' "The whole idea," Carbonaro continued, "was make the government smaller and there's less money for all these things that are so spiritually corrupting the government does." Heard that one before, replied Farah, who described himself as "an economic libertarian to the extreme" when it comes to federal spending. "(This is) what the so-called economic conservatives have been telling us for decades," Farah said. "How they're going to starve the beast. … Except when they get in power, what do they do? They spend bigger than the Democrats do. "The point is, these folks, this is their rhetoric, and they don't even follow it when they have an opportunity," Farah continued. "All of the sudden they find all of these pet projects they want to start funding. How many times have we been through this … the big tent?" Founding WorldNetDaily.com 14 years ago to conduct investigative reporting and meet the Framers' constitutional intentions of the free press serving as a watchdog on government and the powerful, Farah started recognizing a common thread in reader feedback. "'Farah, thanks for telling us all these horrible things that are going on. Now what do we do about it?'" he recalled. "That question, at first I'd brush it off. I'd say, 'Well, it's not my job to tell you what to do about it. It's my job to tell you want happens.' After a while, that excuse would begin to ring hollow in my own soul. "That's why I wrote the book, 'Taking America Back,' which I’m gratified to say was not a best-seller out of the chute by any stretch of the imagination," he said. "It came out during the Bush administration and nobody wanted to hear that we were going down the path to socialism and tyranny in 2003, right at the Iraq war was beginning. But since then, that book has sold almost 100,000 copies." With the Obama administration accelerating the slide into socialism, the tea party movement represents the "last best hope" and must remain clear of distracting and destructive limitations, he said. "I don't say this lightly, but I will just say it, it's our last chance," Farah warned. "It's our last chance to preserve any vestige of liberty that this country has inherited from our Founding Fathers. The tea party movement, I have to tell you, this is our nly chance. It's our last chance, to turn this country around." To interview Joseph Farah or to receive review copies, please contact Tim Bueler at (530) 401-3285 or email media@wnd.com About the Author Joseph Farah - founder, editor, and CEO of WorldNetDaily, the world's leading independent Internet news source - joined Sarah Palin as one of two nationally televised keynote speakers at the first national Tea Party Convention in Nashville in February. His 2003 bestseller, Taking America Back, prophesied the movement today known as "the tea party." The former daily newspaper editor has authored, co-authored, or collaborated on more than a dozen books, including Rush Limbaugh's "See, Told You."