'Tea Party' Goes Back To School On Fourth of July

'An understanding of the Constitution can lead to electing people who will uphold it'

BEALETON, Va. — "Tea party" activists across the nation tried to put the "independence" back in Independence Day this weekend with festivals and other gatherings focused on the Constitution — and how to use it for political gain.

Coupled with an upsurge in organized classes and book clubs, the trend reflects a growing effort among conservatives to teach supporters how to do political battle using an inviolable weapon: the nation's founding documents. It's a change in emphasis for a movement that rose to prominence with spirited and sometimes unruly protests across the nation.

But it's one that organizers hope will yield real political results by arming supporters with the detailed knowledge to back only those candidates who are loyal to their ideals.

"The rallies were a start, but the goal now is to get people to stop and really think about things," said Kerry Scott, an organizer of the Alexandria Tea Party, one of several hundred conservative activists who attended "An American Event," a Fourth of July festival for "God and country" staged by a local farmer on rolling farmland in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains this weekend.

Amid Civil War reenactors, a reading of the Declaration of Independence and booths selling Native American artwork, Scott handed out strips of white paper, each printed with quotations from such American luminaries as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington.

"With knowledge, there is power," she said. "And having an understanding of the Constitution can lead to electing people who will uphold it."

The view that the Constitution does not permit such federal actions as the passage of health reform, the regulation of the environment or the imposition of educational mandates on the states is, of course, a controversial one. Where the tea party sees an encroachment of states' rights, the left sees a valid interpretation of the mandate, described in Article 1, Section 8, to provide for the "general welfare."

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