FOLEY, Ala. — Match the statements with the correct years.

Statement No. 1: “I’m afraid we’ve had a bloodless coup last election.”

Statement No. 2: “This trend expresses itself in increasing federal controls on the state and local levels of government and a general movement toward a one-world super government which could erase all of the individual liberties now guaranteed by the United States Constitution.”

The choice of years is 1976 and 2009.

Answer: Statement No. 1 was spoken this week; Statement No. 2 was spoken 33 years ago.

While both statements sound a similar political tone the similarities end there. The older statement was reported in the July 25, 1976, issue of The Onlooker. There is no reporter’s by-line and the dateline is a “pasture” on Fairhope Avenue. The speaker is identified as one Chester Rockhold, then 47, of Mobile and Grand Dragon of the United Klans of America, Alabama Chapter.

The statement made this week is by Gene Labrato, an Air Force veteran and Baldwin County native who lives in Fairhope. Labrato has an affiliation with what has come to be known as “Tea Party Patriots,” but he prefers the designation “Tea Party.”

“Our position is, if we educate the American voter, that’s our best party,” Labrato said.

According to Labrato, what he and others in the Tea Party want to do is create awareness of constitutional rights and the motives behind some of the legislation currently being considered by the federal government.

“I’m very much about individual freedom,” Labrato said, noting that he was a Republican, but is now Independent, conservative, “whatever.”

He traces the spirit that brought about the Tea Party’s inception to radio and TV host, author and political commentator Glenn Beck’s “9 principles and 12 values.”

Beck’s principles include: America is good; God is the center of the individual’s life; family is sacred and spouses are the ultimate authority, not government; it is not un-American to disagree with authority; and government works for the individual, not the other way around.

Beck’s values include honesty, hard work, personal responsibility, gratitude, sincerity, thrift and reverence.

Labrato said candidly that “we’re scared,” and among the trends that he and others in the Tea Party have concerns about are health care reform, cap and trade (controlling pollution through economic incentives), “czars” (such as the automobile czar that Labrato feels is moving beyond his scope of authority), and attempts to “unionize” all manufacturing.

Asked about the current administration’s foreign policy, Labrato said he does not think the Obama administration has one. He criticizes the current administration for what he terms apologizing to communists and turning its back on Israel among other things.

In 1976 Chester Rockhold attributed a revival in the Ku Klux Klan to governmental trends that he said were in conflict with the Constitution.

“Public officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution and if they violate the oath, we feel like it is our duty to get them out of there and get someone in that WILL uphold the Constitution,” Rockhold said in The Onlooker article.

According to Rockhold, the issue was not the “black man,” but, “The issue is the turn of events in this country. I can see a one-world government coming out of it.”

Indeed, the Grand Dragon blamed the “controlled news media” for part of the problem, saying national news organizations were biased against “objective reporting of … Constitutional abuses.”

He further charged the news media with concentrating on the antics of a few overzealous Klansmen and ignoring the good things the Klan was doing, namely, fighting the “large volume of illegal drug shipments that were funneled through (Baldwin) county-based channels and connections;” helping needy families pay utilities, phone bills and rent; and exposing the “filthy books in the Summerdale School Library.”

Rockhold, who spoke from the back of a flatbed truck that night, also had international concerns, namely, with then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was serving at the time under Republican President Gerald Ford. He was especially critical of Kissinger’s African policies.

“Over here they tell us to integrate, then Kissinger goes to Africa and tells them to throw the white man out,” Rockhold was quoted as saying in The Onlooker article.

James Spearman, executive director of the Alabama Democratic Party, said this week that interest in the U.S. Constitution never goes away; that constitutional questions continually arise.

“Groups continually challenge the Constitution, and there are groups that want to protect it,” he said.

Noting that change comes hard, Spearman said the U.S. is a “changing nation” and the nation has grown as a result of change. Today, however, he said a lot of “fear mongering” is taking place.

“Fear is being pumped into the media through agents who don’t want change,” Spearman said on Tuesday during a telephone interview. As a result, people “fall in line” with what is being said and heard.

Labrato agrees. He calls it “complacency,” and that is one aspect he and the Tea Party hope to change where the American voting public is concerned.

Labrato said a need exists today to get back to the Constitution and individual rights. “Read the bills before you cram them down our throats,” is what he urges Congress to do.

State Rep. Mike Hubbard of Lee County is the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. He feels an “awakening” is taking place in the country. Citing Social Security, Medicaid and FEMA among others, Hubbard said America has been “drifting” for some time in the direction of letting the federal government take care of everything.

“Now, with the advent of Obama, with socialized medicine and government taking over the operation of GM (General Motors), people are asking how we got here,” he said during a telephone interview on Tuesday.

Hubbard diagrees with those who say President Obama’s election gave the country a leftist leaning; Hubbard believes America is a “right leaning country” — that there is a correction process taking place naturally that he believes will impact the Alabama Legislature as well.

A Tea Party Rally will be held in Foley at Heritage Park on Saturday, Sept. 12, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. According to Labrato, a couple of thousand people attended a Tea Party Rally on the Fourth of July at the Robertsdale Coliseum. He figures another thousand or so attended a similar Rally on April 15 in Fairhope.

For Labrato, the “leftist crowd” is currently working not a new formula, but one that reinforces principles that he believes have led to an outright invasion of the U.S. He sees little coming out of the Washington agenda that will be beneficial to individual Americans.

Thirty-three years ago, in the same issue of The Onlooker that reported on the Klan rally on Fairhope Avenue, a cartoon appeared on the editorial page depicting Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter. The caricature of Carter was standing on a soapbox. He had a heart and the word “LIBERAL” tattooed on his chest. “SHOW AND TELL” the caption said.