Liberty or death: Flying the freedom flag in Rancho Cucamonga.

Ignore the propaganda and to hell with the scoffers. The tea parties are the real deal.

If I had to guess, about 2,000 upbeat, patriotic, solidly middle-class denizens of Inland Southern California lined the busy intersection of Foothill Boulevard and Day Creek Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga between 5:00 and 7:00 on Wednesday evening. The police estimated the crowd at roughly 1,600, but that seemed awfully conservative. In any case, a spirited and diverse throng waved flags and signs, chanted and shouted and cheered as passing traffic along the bustling thoroughfare honked their horns in approval.

So... those are the “right-wing extremists” you may have read about recently.

I confess, I was a bit lukewarm about the whole "tea party" business at first. (Joel and I discuss why in the latest podcast. And I share many of Chad the Elder's sentiments here.) Not that I don't enjoy a demonstration. A few effigy burnings now and again would do the body politic good. But tea bags? Americans did tea 236 years ago. We're not arguing about taxation without representation anymore. We're arguing about spending the United States into ruin.

Wednesday's event allayed many of my doubts. The new American tea party protesters are harkening back to an old tax revolt to lend credence to a modern political movement. Two-thousand people here, another thousand there... multiply that by a several hundred events across the country and pretty soon you're talking about an honest-to-goodness movement. How far this thing goes, I wouldn't dare hazard a guess. But I do know there are already events in the works for May 18 -- the day before California's special election -- and July 4.

I have to believe Obama's partisans are more than a little concerned. Smug bloggers and pompous pundits spent the days leading up to April 15 mocking the tea party protests, dismissing them as "astroturf" -- fake grass roots -- created by Fox News and Dick Armey's FreedomWorks. (If support from a national organization disqualifies a local rally from being called "grassroots," then the word should never appear in the same sentence with "MoveOn.org" or "Kos" ever again.)

One of the worst pieces of anti-tea party dross I encountered Wednesday came courtesy of Democratic party hack and CNN commentator Paul Begala. The man who made a small fortune concocting elaborate fictions for the Clintons attempts to defame the tens of thousands of good people who turned out across the country as “goofballs,” “phonies,” “whiners” and -- get this -- “plutocrats.”

Plutocrats! I saw small business owners, teachers, Teamsters, stay-at-home moms, retirees, college kids, and even a few government workers angry and worried that the political establishment has saddled the next two or three generations of Americans with a ruinous debt fueled by government spending gone mad. I didn’t see a fat cat in the bunch. But, as I say, it was a big crowd. Who knows? Maybe one slipped in.

And, by the way, the tea partiers don’t merely blame Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress for the coming debt tsunami -- $35,000 and counting for every man, woman and child in America, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis. They blame Republicans, too, for years of fiscal irresponsibility when they held the purse strings. Naturally, they worry what Obama and the Democrats will do. They don't believe his promises about tax simplification, and they are not mollified by stupid giveaways and pitiful adjustments in withholding on their paychecks. They see a $1 trillion deficit and know that the government can't print enough money to paper it over.

The Rancho tea party, as well as an event earlier in the day in downtown San Bernardino, was organized by an energetic activist named Laura Boatright. She was thrilled with the turnout but slightly disappointed that no elected officials or chamber of commerce types bothered to show up. Maybe they knew they wouldn't be too welcome?

Boatright understands that the problem facing Californians and Americans generally is that we elected the people who brought us to this pretty fiscal pass. "You know how Harry Truman had that sign on his desk in the White House that said, 'The buck stops here'? Well, that's not true," Boatright said. "The buck stops with us... with the people. It's our responsibility to vote these politicians out of office."

And that requires money, organization and persistence. "This isn't the last event," Boatright assured me.

The Inland tea parties drew big crowds, surprising even the event planners. Events in Palm Springs and Temecula drew about 1,000 people, according to a Press-Enterprise story. Organizers in Temecula had only been expecting a few hundred people.

I've posted several photos of the event after the jump. (Click on "read more" below the icons.) Darleen Click of Protein Wisdom, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, was also on hand snapping pictures of the festivities. Check out her post and her photos.

The angry face of the plutocracy: Well, she is wearing a suit jacket. Wanna bet her pockets are lined with cash? Somebody alert Paul Begala!

Crazy Uncle Sam wants you!: There were surprisingly few freaks at the Rancho Cucamonga Tea Party on April 15, 2009. Memo to organizers: Next time, more freaks!

The Ringleader: Laura Boatright of Ontario, Calif., organized the tea parties in San Bernardino and Rancho Cucamonga. "The buck stops with us... with the people," she told me.

Gadsden Guy: There were at least a dozen Gadsden flags waving at the Rancho Cucamonga Tea Party. No doubt Janet Napolitano is gravely concerned.

A spirited crowd: Many people at the Rancho Cucamonga tea party are exercised about Prop. 1A, a deceptive measure on the May special election ballot that would extend tax increases in the guise of limiting spending.

God bless America: Hundreds of people waved flags and demonstrated their support for lower taxes, restrained spending and smaller government along Foothill Boulevard in Rancho Cucamonga on April 15. Estimates put the crowd at 1,600 to 2,000 people.