It was exactly one year ago, on April 15th, that the T.E.A. Party held its first series of rallies. While the first indication of our overall effectiveness cannot be judged until this November; the continual excoriation heaped upon us by the progressive left says we've already struck a nerve.

One year ago, small groups of concerned citizens gathered in State Capitols and County Seats across the country. These groups were mostly made up from people who had not been fooled by the soaring rhetoric provided by Barry Sorento and a smattering of independents that were already experiencing buyer's remorse over the November 2008 elections.

By word-of-mouth the theme had spread. We were Taxed Enough Already. Most of us had never done anything more radical than scream invective while throwing stuff at the television: After all; unlike the hoards that descended on the Mall during the Presidential Inauguration, we actually had jobs. But after the left excoriated George Bush's deficits all during 2008, we saw what progressives had in store for the country now that they owned institutional power in Washington.

First there was the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. This provided $700 billion supposedly to purchase troubled assets from major financial institutions. Although created under the Bush Administration, it was under the Sorento Administration that the mailed fist of the Imperial Federal Government made itself felt. We observed how the new government forced these institutions to take that money, whether they needed it or not, then used those government loans to bludgeon those same banks into dancing to the administration's tune.

On its heels came the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This $787 billion nightmare was passed on January 28th by a strictly partisan vote in the House; exposing for all to see how the new Congress intended to wield its newly acquired power.

There followed several months of administration half-truths and outright lies as they tried to prove how this boondoggle was actually 'stimulating' the economy. Money spent in fictitious congressional districts, millions spent to supposedly save three or four jobs, and tens of millions more in taxpayer dollars that just simply vanished.  Meanwhile; the unemployment rate continued to climb into the stratosphere.

As the spring progressed, the administration began publicizing its initiative on health care. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act offered neither protection nor affordability. It was an indecipherable 2,400 page work of fiction offered up by the progressive left. By this time the T.E.A. Party had attracted hundreds of more participants. On July 4th, 2009 there was a national T.E.A. Party Rally in Washington DC. The crowd was estimated at over 300,000.

It was shortly thereafter that the vilification from the progressive left began in earnest. Outspoken members of the progressive camp including Janeane Garofalo, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, and others tried insulting the T.E.A. Party membership as a bunch of homophobic, tea bagging rednecks. This insult was actually lost on the majority of us. First off; it was such an inside joke because absolutely no one other than the hurlers of this insult themselves had any measurable practical experience with such an activity. Second; once we became aware of what was actually being described by such a play on words, the first thing that struck most of us was that the words tea bagging and homophobic were mutually exclusive; another nuance apparently lost on these people.

Although the MSM and the congressional leadership tried their level best to write us off as just a few bought and paid for professional rabble rousers, it became clear during the congressional summer recess that we were not just a group of malcontents regurgitating rehearsed slogans. Congressmen were sprinting in horror from town hall meetings across the country, having been confronted by citizens who knew more of the details of the pending health care legislation than the politicians that were supposedly being paid to actually analyze it.

While I cannot speak for other party affiliates; it was after this we began to ask "What next?" Although there was some talk about forming a third party, that idea was discredited early on. Third parties are never successful and, more often than not, guarantee an electoral win for the opposition.

In Garland County, Arkansas we began a systematic process that resulted in our placing over thirteen candidates in county, state, and national races, as part of a genuine attempt to steer the Republican Party back to its conservative roots.

Back to the national level: The T.E.A. Party has become such a phenomenon that the progressive left has shifted all of its destructive mechanisms into high gear. As an aside, you can really tell when you're making progress by how intense the progressives become in attempting to destroy and/or marginalize your movement. The main stream press constantly pillories T.E.A. Party activists with what they believe are their most vile accusations. We are called gun rights activists, fundamentalists, lock-step conservatives, red necks, unruly mobs, racists, homophobes and, horror of horrors, Christians.

The progressives have taken to deliberately taunting assembled groups of T.E.A. Party activists hoping to get some kind of aggressive response that they can point to in order to prove their claims that the group is comprised of nothing but militant subversives. A strategy, I might add, that has to date failed miserably. I mean, how likely is it that any assembled group of Congressmen would, out of the clear blue, just decide to stroll across the Mall, through an assembled group of protesters, to cast a vote for an almost universally despised piece of legislation? Yet this is exactly what they did on March 21st of 2010. While there were wild accusations of homophobic remarks, racial slurs, and crude behavior; there were, oddly enough, no recorded evidence of such things. There was certainly enough press coverage that if anything approaching such had happened there would have been miles of undeniable video footage playing 24/7 in the media.

The T.E.A. Party movement has become such a threat to the progressive left that first they tried to copy it by instituting a Coffee Party. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. But exactly like the progressives attempt to imitate talk radio with Air America, the Coffee Party fell flat. In order for the left to really get behind a movement, they have to be offered something tangible. The overwhelming majority of the progressive left believes they already have a lock on the future of the country, so their interest flags easily.

Now a portion of the more committed progressives have decided to attempt to infiltrate the movement in order to discredit it. Mr. Jason Levin is the leader of a movement called Crash the TEA Party. He says; "Our plan is not to shout them down, but to infiltrate them and push them farther from the mainstream." He said that by making the tea parties sound like a gathering of crazy people — his group's goal — the movement will lose its power.  What Mr. Levin is counting on is a sympathetic press to highlight his looney agitators. He's also made a fatal flaw in his reasoning from the standpoint that the T.E.A. Party is not mainstream.

Well, I've a news flash for Mr. Levin. His infiltrators will stand out like sore thumbs. You see, we are hard working, tax paying, normal citizens of this country. While a person may be able to show up at a T.E.A. Party rally, they cannot automatically assume a persona they've eschewed for their entire lives. The web site says; "Whenever possible, we will act on behalf of the Tea Party to exaggerate their least appealing qualities (misspelled protest signs, wild claims in TV interviews, etc.)" These crashers will identify themselves as outside the group by their particular behavior. That, plus the aforementioned fact that such protestors soon lose their focus because they really don't have their hearts in it. This will serve to single them out immediately.

The T.E.A. Party movement may only be one year old today, but its effects are just now really beginning to be felt. The T.E.A. Party is the organization that gives the average citizen his/her best opportunity to regain a voice in government. Happy Birthday all you T.E.A. Partiers! May there be many more!