Tea Party follow-up [update 2]

You won't be finding any commentary on yesterday's Tea Party protests in the local media (too much time spent talking about how they covered themselves in glory in the Veitch affair), and as Chris Richards at CATO points out, even the mainstream US media is doing its best to ignore them, or to smear them.

Fox News and MSNBC are having fun with the taxpayer tea party protests today [while the rest concentrate instead on Obama's new dog] . Fox News is playing up the protests, while MSNBC hosts are making jokes about “tea-bagging,” while pretending that the protests were all orchestrated by Sean Hannity. I’ll be attending the protests in D.C. today, and I’m hoping that the message isn’t just anti-Obama because the Republicans are every bit as guilty as the Democrats for the government’s fiscal mess. MSNBC hosts who think that the colonists didn’t mind taxes, but were just upset about the “without representation” part, should read Alvin Rabushka’s massive tax history leading up to 1776, Taxation in Colonial America.

So in the absence of local coverage, I'll try to do the job for you on the coast-to-coast Government-is-out-of-control protests by posting some related commentary, links and resourcers from people I like, or who are still doing their job (and don't forget all the pics and links I posted yesterday).

• Penn Jillette (from Penn & Teller) talks to Glenn Beck at the Alamo Tea Party, talks down Republicans, and talks up Atlas Shrugged.
  
  
• Rational Jenn talks to 16,000 people at the Atlanta Tea Party.
  
  
• Ari Armstrong has compiled pics and interviews with protesters at the Denver Tea Party, which gives you an idea of the sort of people protesting: the same sort of people, I think, who turned up in New Zealand last year at John Boscawen's Democracy Rationing protests.
  
  
• On Tax Injustice Day, Edwin Locke takes on the real enemy: Altruism vs. America.
  
  
• Walter Williams reminds readers "Democracy and majority rule give an aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny. The founders of our nation held a deep abhorrence for democracy and majority rule."
  
  
• Thomas Sowell writes on Tax Cuts and the "Trickle Down" Economics Straw Man. "Spending creates deficits -- and it is big spenders who fight hardest against cutting tax rates."
  
  
• Jeff Scialabba at the Ayn Rand Center reckons "supporters of the upcoming tea parties need to base their protest on a consistent intellectual framework.
  
  The protests are right in spirit, but are lacking the clear and consistent principles necessary to sustain a real change in the culture. I referred readers last week to an elaboration on what those guiding principles should be: avideo presentation, “Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence.” The Ayn Rand Center has added a new page to our website with content that explores these issues further.
  
  It looks great.
  
  
• A CNN reporter at the Chicago Tea Party is confronted by a protester about her style, her choice to highlight only the crazies and the wingnuts, and her claims that everyone there is nuts.
  
  
• Jeff Perren has a slogan he wishes he'd thought of: "Obama Economics, Chains You Can Believe In."
  
  
• Briggs Armstrong from the Mises Institute attended the Auburn, Alabama Tea Party and "for the majority of the time when Republicans were speaking, I couldn't help but think 'where were you for the last eight years?'."
  

What else have you got?

UPDATE: Is this the sign of the day? It is at least the short answer to all those who claim that Alan Greenspan was carrying out some sort of Objectivist agenda at the Fed:


And here's a couple of collections of links, the first from Noodle Food, the second from the Titanic Deck Chairs blog, which includes several plum Rand references from 'round the Tea Parties. I loved this one in particular from the Dallas Tea Party, where the organiser

concluded by quoting John Galt’s oath: I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.'

Stunning.

UPDATE 2: Terrific speech here by historian John Lewis at the Charlotte, North Carolina Tea Party.


And don't forget to check out the Ayn Rand Tea Party blog for more, including this post-speech interview with Lewis.