By Paul Beaird
(author of Will We Win Our Freedom?)
Some seek to define the Tea Party and make it theirs. Others want to dissolve it in hot coffee and slander its leaders. Proving that political parties exist to divide and distract the country, the first of these is the Republican Party. The second is for the benefit of the Democratic Party. Because they don’t perceive what the Tea Party movement is, neither will succeed.
The signal event was the National Tea Party Convention held over the first weekend in February in 2010. There is no national Tea Party. So, who hosted the event and called themselves by this name?
On Saturday the 4th of February, during the convention, Bret Baier interviewed Republican Party advocate, Rush Limbaugh and Republican Governor and candidate for the Vice Presidency in 2008, Sarah Palin. Also interviewed were Fred Barnes and Mara Liasson. (Text of this interview under the title, “Panel on the GOP and the Tea Party” is at RealClearPolitics.com on Saturday, February 4, 2010.)
Rush Limbaugh said, “They are going to come to their senses and realize all a third party will do to [is] guarantee the elections to the Democrats.”
Are Tea Party people lacking their senses? Are they children who need to be herded by such wisdom?
Sarah Palin said, “I think those on the political radical left would love to see disunity in the tea party. They would love to see fissures especially between the tea party and Republican party. If anything I see a coalescing.”
Are the Tea Party people a united block that could be divided? Did she think that there was a loyalty between “the tea party and Republican party” that could be fissured? To “coalesce” means to “come together so as to form one whole”. If the Republican party was separate from the Tea Party so that such a coming together is desired by some, what differences are there between the Tea Party and the Republican party? If there are differences, what would happen to the concerns that generated Tea Party demonstrations, supposing it became one with the Republican party?
Mara Liasson of National Public Radio said, “I think that any smart party absorbs energy on its fringe, whether it's the right wing of the Republican Party or the left wing of the Democratic Party. I think the Republicans have been pretty smart so far about doing that. And I think they have been harnessing the tea party activists. I think it's easier when you are the opposition party and you can be united by hatred or fear of the majority Democrats. But I think all these primaries so far don't seem to be weakening Republican candidates. I think that, in the end, if the tea party people have a role to play, they end up nominating some Republican candidates.”
Notice that we, the Tea Party people, are regarded as a source of energy for the lethargic Republican party and that the smart Republicans are harnessing us activists. If you are a Tea Party person, do you feel harnessed? Please also notice that we are regarded as driven by emotions (fear and hatred) aimed at the political opponents of the Republican party. We are not viewed, at all, as motivated by ideas, nor as a source of ideas the Republican party could benefit from, only emotion and energy. Notice that unless we nominate some Republican candidates, we are said to not have a role to play.
Bret Baier asked Fred Barnes, of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard, “Fred, Democratic strategist Pat Caddell said he thinks that it's the most powerful movement since the antiwar movement he has seen in his lifetime. That's kind of a bold statement. But do you agree with Rush (Limbaugh) all these groups can come together under a Republican label?”
Barnes answers, “I agree with Mara. She says they already have, and I think that's true, what's happened.” Later Barnes says, “Here is a movement, it's a grassroots movement. It doesn't have any leaders. You have to sort of integrate with them and join in with them. And they (the Republicans) have done a pretty good job in that.”
Another man named Carlson generally agrees, but expresses one concern. “But there is latent hostility towards Republican leadership here. Fred said that the tea party and the Republicans have the same aims, less spending, smaller government. But to some extent, you know, there have been Republicans who don't have those aims, and they are definitely in the crosshairs of the tea party people who feel deep resentment toward them as accommodationists.”
Here “accomodationist” means someone who compromises with the set of principles held by the opponents of one’s own ideals. Historically, the Republican party has been called the “me-too” party for letting the Progressive-Liberal-Leftist-socialist point of view set the direction, resisting only by wanting legislation to be smaller, slower and less costly, while never arguing with the rock-bottom principles moving America ever closer to the socialist program. Carlson seems to be saying that Tea Party people are aware of that and are not willing to put up with compromising politicians any more.
A couple of weeks later, on the 17th of February, Sarah Palin said some things about the Tea Party people that do not sound as confident that the Republicans had absorbed them. “Now the smart thing will be for independents, who are such a part of this Tea Party movement. to, I guess, kind of start picking a party… And, then because the Tea Party movement is not a party, and we have a two-party system, they’re either going to have to pick a party and run for one or the other. R or D.”
She does not sound as though she thinks the Tea Party people are passive enough to simply have been absorbed by the Republican party, but are independent enough to make their own choice. She does not offer any argument about why that ought to be the Republican party, just that they should be smart and pick one of the two major parties.
That lack of confidence is well founded. The Tea Party movement started out with people who were shocked that their government was dictating salaries, bonuses and business methods to financiers, bankers and automakers. People generally recognize that businesses create the goods, services, jobs, pay checks and economy of the country, but they saw their earnings turned into taxes to bail out companies that did not have enough business sense to stay profitable. They saw their tax dollars used to buy up such companies so that the government owned these failures and, having no confidence that government can run any business; people were deeply alarmed. They saw government spending so far beyond the ability of the US economy to produce wealth that they foresaw permanent debt for their great-grand children. They saw the government trying to take over the entire energy industry with Cap and Trade. They saw the failed system of socialized medicine being forced on them by backroom special deals offered to Congressmen to bribe their votes. They understood that this was a government take-over of an industry composed of doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies, one-sixth of the nation’s wealth and the industry that saves people’s lives. Americans barely tolerate the US Postal System or the Federal Reserve banking monopoly, let alone trust the government with their lives.
At Tea Party events, people have come out of their homes and discovered their neighbors, who have the same pattern of worries, but on different subjects. Here are people offended by the violation of property rights by government’s heavy-handed use of eminent domain on behalf of land developers. Here are people afraid of a government that violates the Second Amendment by ever increasing regulation and banning of gun ownership. Here are people concerned about the lack of real security offered on our borders against foreign terrorists or drug gangs. These Tea Party people listened to each other and learned much from each other. More, they rediscovered the source of the freedoms they thought their government was busy protecting. Those freedoms are spoken of in bold and plain language in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is safe to say that, because of the Tea Party movement, more people, in sheer numbers, have read the US Constitution today than at any other time in US history.
Are these people feeling emotions? You bet. Why? Because they are educating themselves with the ideas of the Founding Fathers and such patriots and outspoken advocates of individual rights as Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Judge Napolitano and others. It is these ideas that are motivating Tea Party people, not fear, anger or hatred. One has to laugh at commentators who talk about those emotions, knowing that the accusers must have never been to a Tea Party event, where a refreshing sense of joy and excitement are expressed, because people witness two things: truth and moral values are on their side and so are their many, previously silent neighbors.
The declaration the political parties need to hear is this. We are not Republicans! We are not Democrats! If we are anything, we are independents who used to be Democrats, who used to be Republicans, who were already independents. We will not endorse or be absorbed by any political party. Why?
Some of us already knew, many are now learning about the history of the sons and daughters of Americans who went to Europe for their university educations, returning to America with the ideas of socialism that looked so appealing and formed the Progressive movement here. Those were ideas that fundamentally transformed the nations of Europe into the collectivist movements of fascism, Nazism, socialism and Communism, all of which tore that continent of once-civilized peoples into shreds, killing more than 100 million human beings and leaving the entire continent in rubble.
The first socialist success in America was in 1890, when a Conservative congress passed the first of the anti-business anti-trust laws. Old time Conservatives, after World War II, who still remembered what Conservatism had been, told lads like me, now 64, that the promise had been to repeal anti-trust, the Federal Reserve banking monopoly, the un-Constitutional 16th Amendment and its federal income tax, the impoverishment of the nation’s seniors by a government-run Social Security system, the driver of ever-skyrocketing medical costs which is Medicare/Medicaid, the law removing the gold and silver backing of the US dollar mandated by the Constitution, US membership in the UN where America pays as religious and Leftist tyrants denounce American prosperity and freedoms. There is so much more that must be repealed to get this government back under Constitutional limits, but these are the best-known. And, Conservatives do not even talk about repealing them anymore.
Yes, there is a mistrust of “accomodationists”. More than a century of compromise has brought America to the edge of economic dictatorship. What else is there to call it, when un-elected “czars”, appointed by the President of the United States, can force federal money on banks in order to nationalize them, on auto makers while closing down car sales dealerships in violation of long-standing contracts, can threaten to jail executives of financial firms unless they resign or take smaller salaries and bonuses due them under voluntary contracts?
It is not true of every Democratic politician that he has sold out to the socialist program, but the party, as a whole, is under the pressure of leaders who have. It is not true that every Republican politician is educated to economics and stands up for the free market, and its leaders certainly are not.
We will not vote for a Republican because he is the only alternative to a socialist Democrat. To vote for establishment Republicans who wants to belly up to the trough of federal money and compromise with socialist ideologues means that we do not any longer have at least one party untainted by the stain of power lust. Better to let the Democrat carry that reputation with him into Congress. If the Republican party wants us to think they will restore freedom in America, then let them put up the right candidates.
We Tea Party people are so committed to the Constitution that we will only evaluate candidates on a one-by-one basis.
In order to restore this government to Constitutional limits, we must have men and women dedicated to a program of, not passing new laws, but repealing existing laws, until the powers held by government which exceed the authorizations of the Constitution are all scratched off the law books of our nation.
So, we aim for a program of Reform by Repeal. Our standard of measure is the one expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, “…that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…”. In all the other words of the Declaration, of the US Constitution, and in the Bill of Rights, no other purpose of government is named. So, it is by the moral standard of individual rights (including property rights) that every law is to be measured, past, present or proposed. Freedom belongs to the people, to every person individually, not to government, whose role is only to protect our freedom to choose and take the actions we need in order to keep and enlarge and enjoy our lives, while here on this warm and ample Earth.
The joke is on those whose political fortunes have been made by doing intense personal background research on their political opponents and exposing their misdeeds of the past to public knowledge and disapproval. The Tea Party has no leaders, no one whose embarrassment would make all of us stay home and shut up, soothing our shame and wounds with TV programs, video games, Internet entertainments, gospel sings, barbecues, sports events, or mind-numbing chemicals. We, each and every one of us, are Tea Party leaders. Come get us all. Shame us all, if you can.
With permission I quote Robert Tracinski, founder of TeaPartyDebates.org:
“There already is a universally accepted national tea party statement and a national tea party platform. We've had them for a long time. The national tea party statement is called the Declaration of Independence, and the national tea party platform is the Constitution of the United States. And come to think of it, I can name six or seven national tea party leaders—revered figures who command the movement's loyalties. Their names are among those signed at the bottom of our national tea party statement and our national tea party platform. They are John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison.
“And the tea party movement cannot go far wrong if it sticks to the original tea party mission statement:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
“The tea party movement that began in 2009 is a deep expression of the American character—because the American character was shaped by the tea party movement that began in 1773.”
We know what freedom is. We are reading, learning and sharing. And, if it takes us longer than our lifetimes to reverse the damage to what was the land of free men and women, well, we are teaching our children, so they know the ideas of rights, liberty, government limited to one purpose which is only to protect our property and freedom of action from criminals and invaders, and free enterprise, which is simply what people do when they are left free to follow their minds with the actions of their hands in order to improve their lives.
Because human life depends on freedom, we will win. We will not let you destroy our country, as communitarian ideas destroyed Europe and Asia in the twentieth century. We will do it by standing apart from any political party. We will not try to influence either party, R or D. We will not splinter America by establishing a third party. We will ask our pro-freedom, pro-Constitution questions of all political candidates and influence them, individually, in every precinct in America. In the 20th century, both political parties have steadily moved in the same direction. Our freedoms lie in the opposite direction and we will go there, with or without you.
