Kathleen Parker and Joe Klein: Tea Party fringe groups are a national security threat; FOX and the Becks are acting seditiously.

Chris Matthews leads a panel discussion on the Tea Party movement and the danger of Republicans like Sarah Palin encouraging these people to believe that their very freedoms are being threatened by the United States first black president.

And Joe Klein points out the role that Fox News play in all of this:

Klein: We've had movements like this throughout history....the difference now is a television network, I'm going to call it FOX. The presence of FOX, which allows its commentators like Sean Hannity, like Glenn Beck to rouse the tea party. Sean Hannity was in an event this week where the tea party was raising money to have people sit in the same stands with him. And the biggest difference in the past when there were right wing movements started we had ...the responsible Republican party would slap it down and there is no responsible leadership in the Republican party now.

Klein goes as far as to imply that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are engaging in sedition.

Klein: I did a little bit of research...I looked up the definition of sedition, which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state and a lot of these statements-- especially coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent, Sarah Palin--are right up close to being sedition.

Beck and Palin are engaging in something incredibly ugly. They are pretending that Obama is marching the US towards socialism. It's an utter nonsense, but there are some people out there stupid enough to believe them.

Beck has started trying to backpedal, as if even he realises how dangerous this is getting.



Beck is, of course, trying to make Obama the person who is "intentionally provoking" this anger. That's simply an attempt to avoid his own responsibility for the terrible anger which he is stoking.

And both he and Palin are making phenomenal profits out of promoting this nonsense. That's why they are unlikely to stop it.

Tags: Beck, Palin, Obama, Tea Party protests