Doc Thompson and his radio partner Skip LeCombe stopped by Matt Clark’s WAAM broadcast in Ann Arbor, Michigan while filming a nationwide documentary on the Tea Party movement as it stands in 2013. I am scheduled to appear in that documentary so it is always fun when all these different elements combine in a rare broadcast interview with so many people who I work with at different levels. Doc reported to Matt about his preliminary findings as his film crew has scoured the country working for The Blaze under the guidance of Glenn Beck—and his feeling has been a good one. He is encouraged by the passion he is seeing from crowds of people everywhere he goes—and how upset they are at the state of the current government. The documentary is set for release around the second quarter of 2014, but you can listen to that interview below.
Doc works fast and loose these days—allowing his spontaneity to shine, which Glenn Beck is obviously tapping in to. Doc has been given under his employment at The Blaze free rein to fight on the liberty front not only on the radio, but in cross-country tours with public speaking engagements which are unprecedented. The Blaze has not held back in their support of Doc Thompson and Skip LeCombe—and the results are showing dramatically. It was out of this experience that the documentary about the Tea Party movement was born.
Most of the time during the first Revolution—the one in 1776, the patriots were always behind the much more powerful, and well-funded British. In this new Revolution—the one against progressivism and the tyranny of collectivist cultures parasitic in nature—the same holds true. The Tea Party patriots of 2013 are learning of the levels of deception they have been exposed to for a long time—and they have a bit of sticker shock. As each day moves past us, they are learning of more aspects of that sticker shock—so they are not yet acclimated to what needs to be done. But they are attending the many gatherings Doc has been conducting all over the nation. Since The Blaze hired Doc and Skip a year ago, I doubt there are more people with more frequent flyer miles than those two guys applied directly to the cause of liberty anywhere in the world.
Doc pointed out in his broadcast with Matt he had recently learned that during the Boston Tea Party of 1773 the patriots there did not sneak onto the British vessels in the secret of night covered by silence—the shores were littered with people watching—knowing full well what was going on. The people of Boston knew a Revolution was afoot and they were watching it unfold. Many people weren’t sure that success was even a possibility so they stood on the shore and watched others do the first work of the liberty movement which launched our country. Much the same thing is happening now, people are coming to Doc’s public speeches and they are watching from the shores of their own inner comfort level—not yet willing to cross the line and join the rebels—but they are thinking about it.
As bad as things appear today, at least the spirit of what traditional America has always been is slowly coming to the surface. A few years ago Doc Thompson was on the mainstream radio station 700 WLW and I was his frequent guest. I was living the kind of life where I could pick up the phone and speak to entertainment producers and mainstream press personal. Once it became known that Doc and I were not going to take the squishy middle position—and had convictions that we were willing to stand behind—even at the cost of personal career gain—we were both quickly blacklisted and exiled in much the same way that Glenn Beck was cast out of Fox News and Judge Napolitano was removed from his show on the Fox Business Channel. The same thing occurred during the first Revolution. Many of the people at the Boston Tea Party knew they would not be invited to any more British social engagements. They knew they would not be quoted in the British newspapers, and certainly would not be given safe passage to travel back to London for any visits. They knew they would be cast aside from the established society which was behaving in a tyrannical fashion. The people watching from the shore had not yet decided that they could handle being blacklisted from the English. They wanted to sell cloths to the British troops, wood for British ships, food to British soldiers, and needed to appear neutral in the conflicts so they could make a living for their families—yet they showed up in silence to watch the Boston Tea Party—their closed mouths their endorsement of the activity.
Doc and I knew what we were getting into. Doc was in fact married to the mainstream media. His wife Yuna Lee was the popular news anchor from Richmond, Virginia that many WashingtonD.C. employees comfortable from their suburban homes watched every night—and enjoyed. She fell in love with Doc and his rebellion and left behind her comfortable job to follow him to Cincinnati to take a job at Channel 2 in Dayton. This was prior to Doc’s blacklisting from Clear Channel where he was exiled blatantly in favor of radio personalities who were more “middle of the road.” Yuna is still very much a part of the establishment, but she is not one of the silent types standing on the edge of the shore during the Boston Tea Party. Rather, she is the wife who supports her husband and his travels all over the country in her own way—which gives him wind beneath his wings—doing the difficult job of being a front man for the liberty movement—where everyone you meet knows your sensibilities forcing them to make a hard decision. If they speak to you, or are caught doing so, they risk being blacklisted in their own businesses, churches, and social groups—and most people can’t handle that type of exile.
These are the silent costs of liberty—and the pursuit that brings it about. The same type of pressures existed in colonial times from the British Empire—and people behaved pretty much the same way. They supported the push for liberty—but feared letting their opinions become known because it might mean they could not make a living for their families—or might even be thrown in jail for dissention. Doc Thompson struggled for over a year to get a job after being tossed off the ship at 700 WLW and his career was at risk more than once—and his wife’s career who stood by her husband resiliently. So Doc has every reason in the world to be bitter—but he’s not—he’s hopeful. That is a very good indication of the state of the world. Doc stated on Matt’s show more or less that he knows he’s a member of the modern Tea Party, and he’s throwing over the barrels of tea into the metaphorical harbor. But he also sees the people on the shores watching curiously, and the numbers are much larger than the elements of statism would care to admit.
Without question it will be these elements which will make up the documentary that Doc and Skip are producing. The results will likely show the view of the Tea Party that nobody in the mainstream establishment cares to acknowledge. They blacklisted all the reminders in their social circles so that they wouldn’t have to see the reality of their actions—yet the inevitable course of their lives is about to intersect with that undeniable reality. The two ideologies, the one of statism, and the one of freedom are about to collide—it is inevitable—and it will be violent. It may not come to literal bloodshed, but lives will be destroyed as a result and the people who have been blacklisted—and made the decision to pursue that consequence ahead of time—have much less to lose. Those who are protecting their established order have everything to lose, which leaves them watching the Tea Party from the edges of the harbor—wanting to participate, but unwilling to make the commitment to become fugitives in doing so. But silently, they support the Tea Party—but fear saying so out loud because they aren’t willing to end their lives of comfort within the establishment—even though they root against it in the quite of their distance fantasies.
As much as many wish the Tea Party movement has fizzled out—they are sadly mistaken. All that has happened is that the most vocal voices, those like Doc’s, mine, Glenn Beck, Matt Clark and many others—have been blacklisted out of the mainstream in hopes that if the establishment does not see the problem—that it does not exist. But it does. It is this existence from which Doc and Skip’s new documentary will be focused, a new Liberty Tree where people gather to push for a new type of Boston Tea Party—one not so literal—but more allegorical. The new Liberty Tree is not an actual thing that the British can cut down this time to remove the symbol of freedom that it once represented—it is in the voice of people like Doc Thompson, Matt Clark, Skip LeCombe and their resilient efforts at freedom while the rest of the world watches quietly from the shores and secretly hopes that they will be successful.
Click here to learn more about the Liberty Tree, and how I see the current movement. If you want to meet the new Son’s of Liberty, listen to Doc Thompson on The Blaze Radio Network, and Matt Clark on the Clarkcast.com. These are the John Adams, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Paine’s of our day—and we are lucky to have them. When it is wondered what the Tea Party means, for me it is summed up perfectly in the old Disney film Johnny Tremain. If that is threatening or malicious to anyone—then the premise of that accusation needs to be checked—and the real threat to human existence will quickly be revealed.
Rich Hoffman
