Today I am a redskin. Well, that's not accurate; I am a white male pretending to be another white male who is pretending to be a redskin. And instead of being in class, I am spending my day next to a man wearing a macabre shirt that reads, "Abort Castrobama."

This is the Cincinnati Tea Party, which traces its spiritual roots to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. The original tea party was not about higher taxes on imported tea; those taxes were cut with The Tea Act of 1773 that made imported tea cheap. In fact the tea was so cheap that it started to undercut the smuggled tea and hurt small business. The men who dressed up like Native Americans to toss it in to the harbor were these smugglers. This of course pulls at my ironic heartstrings because in essence they were protesting tax cuts and engaging in an act of protectionism. Cincinnati's protesters on the other hand laude the value of free markets.

This is not the only contradiction in the movement. First of all the activists will continually tell you that they are an organic grassroots movement. In truth they are about as organic as a TV dinner. They have been promoted ad nauseam by talk radio and Fox News. Some of them even received funding from organizations like FreedomWorks.

Calling these tea parties a protest is also a little bit untrue, it is more like an anger orgy. For it to be a real protest, there must be a clear goal. In this instance vague and contradictory ideas are tossed around with a fair share of homophobia and racism. It is really a prime example of the angry white man syndrome. (It is important to point out that the only minorities at the event were the ones working at the soda booths). An estimated 4,500 middle-aged white people are protesting because the good life seems to have passed them by. So here they are gathered, a veritable ship of fools, sailing with no direction. But they have figured out a couple things. 1.) Obama within 86 days has ruined their lives and the lives of their children. 2.) Socialism is bad and 3.) The United States needs to return to the values of Thomas Jefferson.

Their chief concern about Obama is that he is raising taxes and spending too much. I talked with several teabaggers and none of them claimed to make more than $250,000 annually. Those are the only people who are seeing an increase in their income tax. It is being raised from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. All this does is return it to where it was under Bill Clinton. God forbid we return to the communist days of Eisenhower when it was at 91 percent, Nixon at 70 percent or Reagan at 50 percent for much of his tenure.

They have also linked free markets to Christianity. One of the speakers at the event, Greg Knox said our country should return to God, and there were several signs with Bible verse and declarations of our Christian foundations. They endorse free markets and condemn "punishing success," in the same breath as praising Jesus. I never envisioned Christ as a real free-marketer given his feelings on usurers and that whole, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." This sort of spiritual booze is central to the Tea Party movement. "If 10 percent is good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for Uncle Sam," one protester said about the almighty's feelings on tax reform based on tithing. The problem with that plan is that it would only raise enough revenue to fund the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Teabaggers are very concerned about the stimulus and the bailouts. Knox said we should have let the banks fail, and then new ones would pop up. He urged America to let capitalism work. Of course any rational being would understand that if we let them fail, new ones would pop up in around 20 years. In the mean time we would be trading in sacks of potatoes.

And as far as Obama's budget goes, none of the people I asked could point to a specific spending proposal that was a problem. "All of it," a couple responded when asked what to cut. Should we cut the combined $4.8 billion in military financing to Egypt and Israel? Should we cut No Child Left Behind at $21.2 billion? No one I talked to had any idea; they just knew we were spending too much money. One of the guys I went with screamed, "Cut defense spending!" which caused many a protester to turn around and give a disappointed headshake. But he has a point. This year we will spend $799 billion on national security and the military, and we will spend $383 billion on everything else.

Housing for the disabled and for the elderly was cut 32 percent and 27 percent respectively; the EPA was cut 4 percent. Social good is always the first victim of tight budgets. But don't tell that to these people, we have been taken over by a socialist conspiracy.

Any of these people would tell you with a straight face that America is now a socialist state. Sadly my education still isn't gratis and in a couple weeks when I graduate, I will have to buy health insurance.

My "Better Dead Than Red!" scream got some positive response, but if these people really are afraid that we are becoming socialists, maybe they should ask where farmers get their money or how their parents pay for healthcare. One protester was holding a sign that said "No Taxation Without Representation," and another that said, "Marxism NO Capitalism YES." I asked the man why he felt he wasn't being represented given he has a senator and a congressperson. He said democracy was about more than just electing someone every once in awhile. Marx wrote, "Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament … (Government should) betoken the tendency of a government of the people and by the people."

Clearly this man had no idea what Marxism means, even though on this point he would have agreed with him. This particular teabagger instead wanted to return to the days of Thomas Jefferson. The protesters are not that far off with their admiration of Jefferson, they want the people to play a larger role in government, so did he. They call for revolution by holding signs that say, "Insurrection, Anyone?" and Jefferson said, "God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion." They rally against what they call generational theft and Jefferson said in a letter to James Madison in September of 1789, "… no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of it's [sic] own existence."

However the teabaggers are not the only people who have borrowed from our third president. He and Lenin are almost identical in their idea of an ongoing revolution. Jefferson wrote that after the revolution the society needed to change by developing new skills, knowledge and habits. Che Guevara called for the same thing naming it "The New Man." This is the problem of trying to apply 200-year-old ideas; they can be interpreted a myriad of ways.

Don Quixote tilted at windmills he thought were giants, these protesters are attacking similar delusions. They are trying to bring back the red scare and pick their quotations from the Founding Fathers in an a la carte manner. They call for free markets and non-intervention, when intervention is the only thing that can rid markets from forces such as the unions they hate so much. They decry the opening of our border, but complain about factories moving where labor is cheap. The Tea Party "movement," is really cheap theatrics playing on the fears and insecurities of people who haven't been fearful or insecure in a long time. It is this kind of irresponsible fear mongering that replaces responsible discourse with people calling Obama an obnoxious Marxist with proclivities toward infanticide. They say he is anti-American and some even believe he is the Antichrist. I am by no means advocating we sit back and allow our elected representatives go unchecked, but I am advocating that we raise the level of debate from Mr. Knox's wanting to storm D.C. with pitchforks. It is time to dismount Rocinante, put down the lance and think about how to grow as a country together.