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 “I came to Washington to be an independent voice, to put politics aside, and to do everything in my power to help create jobs for Massachusetts families. This Senate jobs bill is not perfect. I wish the tax cuts were deeper and broader, but I am voting for it because it contains measures that will help put people back …to work. … I hope for improvements in that process going forward.” 

I think this what you might call “foreshadowing”–The Health Care Bill is not perfect either and he did say he believed everyone was entitled to health care.

The consent of the governed and the roots of the Tea Party movement
by Keli Carender

Last President’s Day, about two hundred of us gathered at Westlake Park in the middle of deep blue Seattle to protest the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a.k.a. Porkulus, because Washington D.C. wasn’t listening. We had tried to tell President Bush back in 2008 that we didn’t want the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP), and he and Congress did not listen. Then, one of the earliest initiatives by our new President, Barack Obama, who as a Senator supported TARP and the bailouts of the banks, was to declare the worse economic crises since the Great Depression and hurry Congress into passing a giant stimulus package.

Remember the nearly 1,100 page version of Porkulus that was passed by both the House and the Senate on Friday, February 13, 2009? The final legislative language was not made publicly available by Congressional leadership until late Thursday night, giving Congressmen, Senators and the public less than 16 hours to read the more than 1,000 pages. Seventy-two pages of amendments had been added the night before the vote. Many Congressmen and Senators publicly admitted they did not have time to read it before voting on it. It was this last, final act of contempt and disrespect for the American people that was the tipping point. After my representative and my two senators, all left-wing ideologues, ignored me, refused to empty their voicemail boxes, sent back form letters, and stopped taking phone calls, I understood what taxation without representation felt like.

Representation requires that members of Congress, at minimum, read the bills. Once they stopped doing this, none of us were represented any longer, and the Tea Party Movement was born. Representative John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee famously implied that reading the bills on which members will vote is not necessary. Regarding the healthcare bill Conyers said “I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill.’ What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

The Tea Party story and imagery comes from our common bond with our forefathers, taking direct action against a government that refused to represent the people, but still taxed them. What you may not know is that we share some other parts of the story with the original Tea Partiers.

The story goes like this: Parliament had passed a variety of taxation laws and then repealed most of them because of the activism of our forefathers, the first community organizers. The King left the Tea Tax in place as a petty warning to the colonists that he still reigned over them and had the power to tax them at his will. But that’s not the full story. The East India Company was failing and needed a bailout. Seriously. They persuaded Parliament that it was in England’s best interest to save the collapsing tea company. So Parliament refunded the normally imposed duties to the East India Company, dramatically decreasing the price of their tea, and gave them a monopoly in the colonies. Parliament kept the Tea Tax in place, but even with the tax, the new lower price of the East India Company’s tea was less than the smuggled tea from Holland. It was the King’s hope that the cheap price would entice the colonists to buy the tea, regardless of the Tea Tax.

However, our forefathers refused to accept this bribe of cheaper tea because it would have been an acknowledgement of Parliament’s right to impose taxes without giving the Colonies a voice. They refused. The governed revoked their consent and later determined, in a written constitution, the type of government they would embrace.

That is what our Tea Party movement is about. The American people are rising up against being governed in such a cynical, self-serving, and dishonest manner as we have witnessed. Everyday Americans have said, “Enough!” to this Congress and to this Administration…or any future politicians who hope to fill those seats of power. Everyday, hard-working Americans have found a common bond in a hunger for government truly based on the limits set out by our social contract, the U.S. Constitution. Too many of our elected officials have come to regard the public purse as their treasure trove from which to reward special interest groups and voting blocs in order to keep getting elected. Under those circumstances, who needs to read the bills?

Americans who are part of the Tea Party Movement do not agree on all issues and this is OK. The Movement is not about immigration, national security, KSM’s trial in New York City, and so on. Though these and other issues are vitally important and have extremely significant places in the realm of public debate, they are a subset of the original contract that we have with our government.

The goal of the Tea Party Movement is to free the American people, their livelihood, their property – physical and intellectual, their time, their wallets, and their families from a federal government that has, under both parties, grown to be a political phagocyte that sees individual liberty and freedom as so much debris in the body politic.

When we are free to earn a living, take care of our families, and be charitable in the manner of our choosing; when we are not regulated to the point of inaction and stagnation; when we are trusted to make our own decisions about the paths of our lives and about where to spend our money; when all of these things come to pass, it means that we will have elected representatives that finally realize that they work for us and so must listen and act responsively. When multi-millionaires like Nancy Pelosi can no longer tax us into oblivion to pay for private use of military transports for their grandchildren, and cannot use our money to pay for Johnny Walker whiskey and Courvoisier cognac, we will have succeeded.

Once we have achieved the goal of electing officials that represent all of the people and not one particular group over another group, i.e. public sector union members over non-unionized citizens, or specific race or ethnic groups over others, further issues will be easier to address. Once we have representatives that stop bribing each other with our money, stop giving kickbacks to friends, stop wasting our money on useless trips and redundancies, and stop taking our hard-earned dollars out for a night on the town, we won’t mind paying the taxes that the Founders knew would be necessary to fund a limited federal government.

This is why this movement is neither Republican or Democrat. These rules apply to all of them. This election cycle will bring out many politicians eager to use the momentum and enthusiasm of the Tea Party Movement to propel them into office. In some places in the country the candidates that Tea Party groups support may be Democrats, in other places they may Republican. I can say that here in Seattle the Democrats are so radically left that Tea Partiers will probably have to choose from those who run under the Republican banner. My state level representatives and senator are all avowed socialists, with one of them actually admitting to being a communist – and they are all Democrats. But there will be parts of the country where the more principled candidate will be a Democrat, and the Tea Partiers are not afraid to go there.

If a party or a candidate would like the support of the Tea Party Movement, they had better believe in our principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. Once in office they must live up to these principles with their votes, and if they don’t, they will lose their job at the next election. It’s really quite simple.

Am I worried about the movement being “co-opted” by other causes and established political parties? No. The facts are that many citizens registered as Republicans and Democrats ARE Tea Partiers. Many others are true Independents.

Others are Libertarians. Those of us in the Movement are observant, smart, and pretty darned discerning.

We are learning better every day how to distinguish the candidates who, given the opportunity, will roll the Taxpayer like a thief in a dark alley from those who, like a few fine elected officials currently serving, embody and live the Tea Party principles.

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If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

Reagan saw so clearly then the reality to which the present generation of the American People are only now beginning to awaken. Throughout history, freedom is by far the exception rather than the rule. Tyranny has been the norm since the beginning of recorded history – likely as far back as cavemen scrawling on cave walls with charcoaled sticks. Only at a few brief points in time has man dabbled in democratic notions, formed Republics, and lived under a system of natural laws, respect for property, and acknowledgement of individual rights. All previous attempts failed. The Democracies denigrated into mob rule and collapsed, the Republics fell victim to corruption and the ambitions of men who had other ideas about how people should be ‘ruled’.
Our Republic, designed by men who spent their waking hours studying all that had been written of previous attempts at democratic rule, human nature, and philosophy, stands today as Reagan’s ’shining city on the hill’. No doubt the lights of liberty have dimmed significantly with recent events, but the core of the American Experiment still burns on. People are beginning to realize what is at stake. America is exceptional – not as Chairman Obeyme said “American is exceptional in the same way that the British or French see themselves as exceptional” (paraphrased). Obeyme views us, the American People and our system of self-governance, as a European king would have viewed his subjects and such notions – with disdain. I don’t think this could be more plain. Our Republic is still intact, although probably fatally broken if some things aren’t changed soon, we need to remain vigilant and protect, with our last breath, that which remains. That is our duty not just to our forefathers, but to our posterity.
So, in the wake of the Brown victory in Massachusetts, don’t relax or believe that the Marxists will now just fold their tents and embrace the Constitution and the rule of law. They are committed and still in charge. We need to push back, continue to write letters, and demand that they be accountable to us, the American people. Remember, the federal government has no legitimate power other than that which is granted through the Constitution. As Jefferson reportedly said:

The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.

We all need to keep the pressure on through the November elections. Talk to everyone you know even at the expense of alienating them – if they aren’t interested enough to engage in thoughtful debate and take a stand against tyranny, then they are part of the problem facing this country. Stay vigilant and don’t get complacent, there’s a lot of work to be done.

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Glenn Beck’s documentary on the impact of progressivism on America airs today at 3pm. I’ll be interested to see if he mentions the scourge of the 17th Amendment and how it has led to the control of the Congress by special interests and lobbyists, and to the out of control spending that is prevalent today. This is why our ’system is broken’, per John McCain. Senator Zel Miller, upon his retirement from the Senate, stated in his last address to the Senate that the 17th Amendment was the instrument by which lobbyists gained control in Washington D.C., and should be repealed. I’ll be writing more on this soon, but watch Beck to see if he mentions it. If he doesn’t, he’s missing the boat.