CASTLE ROCK — Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo on Wednesday night urged those attending the initial meeting of the Douglas County Tea Party to fight to preserve the very notion of individual liberty from an all-out assault by liberals — “or progressives, whatever they want to call themselves now,” he cracked — who are, he charged, “absolutely determined to destroy the America that (the Founders) created and the one that all of us love.”

The stakes couldn’t be higher, organizers said.

“We are here because we’re in a life-or-death battle for our country. The foundational values our country is based upon are under continual attack.,” said Jess Loban, one of the group’s organizers who is also a Republican candidate seeking the party’s nomination for Senate District 4.

“We have to draw the line,” he said. “And that’s what that group is. We are the ones who are going to draw the line and say, ‘No.’ From Douglas County, we will stand up for Douglas County, the firebrand for conservative values, and we’ll say, ‘This doesn’t happen in our Colorado.’”

More than 50 people packed themselves into a side room at the Fowl Line sports bar to hear Tancredo and other local, liberty-minded speakers. The group plans to get together monthly and already, organizers said, will have to find a bigger venue for the next meeting.

A few found it surprising that there hasn’t been a tea party group in Douglas County all along. While there have been various liberty groups active in the county, the nearest tea party groups have been in neighboring jurisdictions.

Still, there’s a place for a formal tea party group, even in one of the most conservative counties in the state, organizers said.

North Jeffco Tea Party organizer Jimi McFarland, who goes by Jimi Mack, told the group he got politically involved during the recall movement targeting former state Sen. Evie Hudak, D-Arvada, and hasn’t looked back since.

“Go out into your community and get good people elected and get bad people out of office,” he said. “What I don’t want you to do is come here once a month and say, ‘That’s enough.’”

Instead, he said, tea party groups meet up to inspire action.

“We advocate free markets, constitutionally limited government and fiscal responsibility,” Mack said, then admitted that those are somewhat “vague terms” and went on to detail more of the tea party’s core beliefs.

“Illegal aliens are here illegally,” he said as the crowd cheered, and then got in one of numerous jabs at President Barack Obama. “We call them illegal immigrants, he calls them future Democrats.” He went on to list more than a dozen positions, including statements that, “Gun ownership is sacred,” “Bailout and stimulus plans are illegal,” and “Political offices must be available to average citizens.”

The tea partiers were dining on chips, pizza and wings, but when Tancredo took the floor, they had plenty of red meat to enjoy.

Tancredo declared that America was under attack, most prominently by what he termed “the cult of multiculturalism.” Noting that he’s proud of his Italian heritage, Tancredo continued, “Diversity is OK, it isn’t the only thing you can build a nation around. If it’s the only principle that everyone agrees on, that is not a homogenous kind of attitude. It does not build nations, it tears us apart. We have a million things that tear us apart. What we desperately need are things to believe in, together.”

He accused liberals of claiming to support “things like equal rights for women and equal rights for homosexuals” and then turning a blind eye and even embracing Muslims, who he charged believe quite the opposite.

“If you are a Muslim who takes that on to the next step, which is Sharia Law — but nothing in Sharia Law fits with our Constitution or who we are,” Tancredo said. “Yet, who is encouraging these people, who wants to open the gates to all of these people, who wants to break down the barriers that, for years, have helped us a nation that had a set of common principles and ideas?”

That would be liberals in thrall to a multicultural ideal, Tancredo said.

“I’m suggesting to you that this is the greatest danger. Here we have liberals in concert with Muslims, Sharia Law Muslims, bringing them into the country, defending their right to come here,” Tancredo said and then answered the crowd’s guffaws by asserting that there is “no right whatsoever” to immigrate to America, “especially if you do not believe in our laws.”

But liberals, he continued, are encouraging Muslim immigration. “How? Why? And I’ll tell you, it’s because both of those groups, both of them, hate the America you and I love. And they have a common enemy, and they hate America more than they hate each other,” Tancredo said, adding that liberals are fooling themselves if they don’t realize Muslims don’t share their progressive values.

Still, he contended, it doesn’t matter. “They hate America more. So does this president, who should have been impeached so long ago,” he said as the crowd cheered.

“Believe me,” he said, “the battle is so intense because there is so much at stake. They know it, and they are completely and totally devoted to ending this experiment, the one the Founders put together. They hate it because it was based on Judeo-Christian principles, and they just can’t stand that. It is up to us, is it not? … to pass it on to our children and our grandchildren and pray to God — and I do — that this whole experiment is not over with.”

Making the point that the tea party isn’t merely a louder and angrier version of the Republican Party — Tancredo left the GOP in October, charging that the party was “insulting the grassroots” and had jettisoned the principles of “smaller government, individual rights, fiscal responsibility, and free enterprise” — Tancredo said he didn’t know what more Republicans needed to learn about widespread discontent with their own tepid approach.

“That is the value of something like this,” Tancredo said, “is we can come together and we can listen to people who will inspire us, and that we will know, going out of here tonight, that we’re not alone, that there are a lot of people who feel as we do.”

— ernest@coloradostatesman.com