Constitution Day Tea Party Crashers

Yesterday, I attended the Constitution Day Tea Party on The Guide sponsored by The Bellingham Tea Party. It was windy and chilly, threatening rain, and turnout was less than usual. The people who attended were very enthusiastic, as was the reception by passers-by. We had a lot of honks and waves, along with the usual number of extended middle fingers (from those who disapprove of The Constitution, I guess).

The crashers were interesting, though. They were in their late teens or early twenties. A young woman was carrying a sign that said, "SATAN loves you, just the way you are". A young man, wearing green eyeshades (they weren't glasses, exactly) had a sign that said, "I [heart] Dick" (I assume he wasn't referring to his good friend Richard). He spent a lot of time having simulated sex with his sign. The signs and behavior were obviously intended to attract attention, and to offend as many people as possible. They must assume tea partiers are a bunch of board-up-the-butt fogies that would be easily offended. Really? Most of us were raised on Monty Python, Saturday Night Live, National Lampoon, to name just a few. We were all young once, if not now, and we've seen it all, and done a lot of it ourselves.


(Crashers toned down their rhetoric and antics for this video, courtesy fellow tea partier)

If they object to tea party principles, it was impossible to tell how, or what. Their protest was too generic. So what was on display by the crashers was a complete lack of perspective and maturity, and complete lack of gratitude for the rights that they were abusing. I think our public schools are responsible, for not teaching young people about the brilliance of the form of government that the tea party was assembled to celebrate. If We the People fail to uphold and defend The Constitution, these crashers' generation will lose, within their lifetime, the right to poop on the very document that they mock.