As he accepted the GOP nomination for president in 1964, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater famously said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” He then lost to President Lyndon Johnson in one of the biggest landslides in U.S. history.

Americans are a passionate as well as pragmatic bunch. We love leaders who get things done, but we also want them to believe in things. When Democrat Michael Dukakis ran as a pragmatic technocrat against George H.W. Bush in 1988, Bush won handily.

Still, we like our vision tempered with tolerance. After all, we are a melting pot society begun in 1620 by those who sought religious freedom and founded in 1776 by those who celebrated reason. It is no accident that our Pledge of Allegiance celebrates “one nation.”

Still, from time to time movements emerge that embody deep passions. That was true of the anti-war movement of the 1960s. It is true of the tea party movement today.

Yet, the era of tie dye and flower power was not all peace and love. Amid hundred of thousands of peaceful marchers placing daises in the ends of rifles, there were a few darker voices urging violence. Groups such as the Weather Underground tried to spread their beliefs not by singing folk songs but by bombing public buildings.



Moderate voices called upon those in the peace movement to denounce such extremists, and they often did. "But if you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is brother you'll have to wait" wrote John Lennon in the song "Revolution."

Today, the tea party movement faces a similar challenge.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with its positions, most Americans would agree that the movement is based upon enduring American principles including fiscal responsibility and personal freedom. Yet, just as sporadic voices of hate in the 1960s threatened to drown out the message of the peaceniks, sporadic voices of hate today threaten to drown out the message of the tea partiers.

The tea party movement, for all of its anger, is not based on hatred or racism. But as surely as the Weathermen preached hate in 1968, some tea partiers preach vile messages today:

“The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin’ African.”

“Cap Congress and trade Obama back to Kenya.”

Obama as an African witch doctor in loin cloth and a bone through his nose.

"Obama half-breed Muslim."

Defenders have called such statements nothing more than satire or poking fun. They used to say the same thing about good ol’ boy “jokes” in the segregated South or “jokes” about Jews in pre-war Nazi Germany.

That is why the latest news from the National Tea Party Federation — an umbrella organization for more than 80 groups — was so welcome.

On Saturday, the federation demanded that the group called the Tea Party Express oust its former leader, Mark Williams.

Williams is the same man who called a proposed mosque in lower Manhattan a place where Muslims would “worship the terrorists’ monkey-god.”

Evidently he missed the whole religious tolerance part when he heard the story of the Pilgrims.

Last week, Williams took “satire” to a new level. He wrote a letter from “Colored People” to President Abraham Lincoln demanding that they be made slaves again so they didn’t have to take responsibility for their own lives.

“Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!” he wrote. “Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government stop raising our taxes. That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn?”

Well, apparently it was Mr. Williams whom the National Tea Party Federation found outrageous. When the Tea Party Express would not disavow their former head, the umbrella group expelled Williams and his group.

Extremism in the defense of liberty may be no vice, but when it comes at the expense of the great American ideals of respect, tolerance and human dignity, it is no virtue either. Bravo to the National Tea Party Federation for beginning to recognize and condemn those few hateful voices in its ranks.

By doing so, tea party members can only strengthen their message — and the America they love.