Thursday, September 26, 2013

Allen West: Tea Party Statist and no friend of Liberty or the Constitution

The below article is from 2011, but since Allen West is trying to make some kind of a comeback I feel I should warn Tea Party Activists that he is a Tea Party statist, a fake conservative and no friend to Liberty and the Constitution. He defends the Patriot Act, which portions of it destroy our Constitutional Civil Liberties. And he defends the NDAA that allows indefinite detention of Americans, though he does this by saying the NDAA bill does NOT allow for indefinite detention of Americans when every politician says it does. Denial anyone? Or subterfuge?

ARTICLE STARTS HERE:
As a black conservative and Republican, Allen West is not your typical Tea Party member. West rode the Tea Party wave all the way to the U.S. House last November from Florida’s 22nd congressional district. He is the first black Republican to represent Florida since Reconstruction.
But in addition to being a member of both the Tea Party Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus, Allen West is also a Tea Party statist.
Before his election to Congress, West was a lieutenant colonel in the army until his retirement after an investigation into his harsh interrogation techniques while fighting in the Iraq War resulted in a $5,000 fine. After his “service” in the military, West worked for a defense contractor as an advisor to the Afghan National Army. He run unsuccessfully in 2008 for the congressional seat he now holds. After speaking at CPAC in 2010 and being endorsed by Sarah Palin, West won the 2010 election against the same Democratic candidate who had earlier defeated him. He was the keynote speaker at the recent 2011 CPAC. West is a favorite of Tea Party members for his attacks on President Obama and government spending and his support for the military and the war on terror.
I have never been too impressed with the Tea Party movement, especially when it comes to issues like the war on drugs and U. S. foreign policy. And although most Tea Party supporters claim they are opposed to big government, in poll after poll a majority of Tea Party Republicans say they have a favorable view of former president George W. Bush. The George W. Bush who doubled the national debt, gave us the first trillion-dollar deficit, drastically expanded Medicare, and not only began two wars that unnecessarily shed American blood and drained the treasury, but waged another war on the domestic front””on the Bill of Rights.
I don’t know how West feels about Bush, but I do know that he is a Tea Party statist who supports the welfare state, the warfare state, and the national security state.
I want to briefly look at these in reverse order, focusing mainly on the welfare state that West would claim to oppose. Read the rest here and read about all the big government stuff Allen West supports.