With due respect to the opinion that leaders of the Tea Party movement should not dignify the NAACP’s insults with a response, I rise to disagree. If a political organization with any degree of clout calls you out for a fight, you do yourself no good by ignoring the call.

For too long, al Qaeda declared war on the United States, and attacked U.S. installations and people, while the U.S. stood by and refused to dignify the attacks with an all out retaliation. That approached emboldened the terrorist organization, which struck with wanton abandon on 9/11/2001 and killed more than 3,000 Americans.

The NAACP, and political organizations which with they are aligned, can, if given free rein, do more damage to the United States, than al Qaeda or any organization or country that uses violence as its weapon.

The NAACP has long abandoned any legitimate civil rights agenda and replaced it with a purely political agenda – specifically the maximum redistribution of wealth through government programs and benefits.  The once-great civil rights organization accomplished all of its legitimate civil rights goals, and rather than either disbanding or turning its attention inward to solve internal problems within its target population, turned its attention to a purely political agenda that is indistinguishable from the so-called “progressive” agenda that is socialism by another name.

Racism, or charges thereof, is now a tool of the NAACP, rather than its enemy. Institutionalized racism has become extinct in our laws and institutions. Individual racism still exists, as does some semi-organized racism in private fringe groups, but that racism has no power or influence over the lives and livelihood of minorities.

Since battling institutionalized racism would be like battling a disease that had been wiped out, the NAACP needed either another mission or a well-deserved retirement. It chose another mission, but pretended to continue the same mission. It is apparently fooling some people, because veteran ABC Newsman Sam Donaldson told me repeatedly on Wednesday this week that he believes the NAACP’s adoption of a resolution hanging a “racist” label on the Tea Party movement is nothing more than an effort to oppose racism within the Tea Party Movement.

The problem with that theory is that there is no racism within the Tea Party Movement, and no one can produce any evidence that there is. The Tea Party Movement, while it does not have a specific leader, does have a core curriculum. It is independence, low taxes, less government spending, and support for small, constitutional government. Put another way, it is opposition to the dependence agenda – opposition to the advancement of statism in the United States.

It is the opposite of the NAACP agenda. Therefore, to try to marginalize the growing effectiveness and influence of the Tea Party Movement, the NAACP pulls the only arrow from its quiver, the accusation of racism, and tries to brand the movement as racist. Their only evidence is the presence of some hand-made signs at Tea Party rallies that insult the president, as if insulting a black president constitutes racism, and an allegation by a black congressman that someone used a racial epithet against him as he walked through a Tea Party rally crowd after passing the Health Care bill. The video of that incident provides no corroborative evidence of the congressman’s claim, and no independent witness has corroborated the claim.

Even if the Tea Party Movement representatives, activists or leaders could be responsible for all of the millions of Americans who have attended the rallies, there is scant evidence that even a few of those millions have displayed racist views in any form.  The accusation is totally void of merit, evidence or substance. It is a knowingly false and premeditated malicious accusation drafted and approved in a formal vote by an overwhelming majority of NAACP members present at the organization’s annual meeting for the express purpose of maligning the Tea Party movement in order to marginalize the movement’s political influence.

The NAACP is asking for a fight and has opened with a sucker punch. Representatives of the Tea Party Movement should enter the ring, take off the gloves, and show the NAACP that it’s not afraid of a good old fashioned brawl. If it’s a fight the NAACP wants, it’s a fight the Tea Party Movement should welcome.

It will be a good warm-up to bigger, better and smarter opponents in the future.