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Q.
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If this isn't an anti-Obama or anti-Democrat thing, why did you wait until Obama was elected President to start caring so much?
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A.
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Most Tea Party folks have cared for quite some time, but have held out hope that the regular process of voting had a chance to actually change the direction. In fact, many dissatisfied Republican, Independent and conservative Democrat voters abandoned the GOP in 2006 and 2008 as a show of force using the regular process. For their 2006 efforts, they got a Congress even more dedicated than the 1998-2006 Republicans were to the proposition of running up debt and enslaving America, and for their 2008 efforts, they simply got an even bigger dose of those ills they already felt sickened by.
In fact, Obama/Reid/Pelosi are getting the grassroots backlash from a people not so much angry at them, but angry at the knowledge that protest and demonstration is all we have left, since the GOP spent 8 years proving beyond any doubt that they provided no real alternative to a federal oligarchy that has been totally and irrevocably corrupted by their own power.
Sure, the average libertarian/conservative/independent voter never really expected much from dyed-in-the-wool, big government aristocrats like Reid and Pelosi, but folks like Thad Cochran (R-MS) in the Senate and Jo Bonner (R-AL) in the House show us that we really have no ballot box alternative in the other major party. There are a few, like Coburn, Boehner and Flake, but they are vastly outnumbered in their own party.
All we have left is protest, and hopefully a grassroots uprising that produces either new people who can challenge our federal lords and ladies in their Capitol Hill castles, or at least sober their big government drunken antics with the very real idea that 300 million angry Americans represents a force to be reckoned with.
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Q.
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You're only doing this because Obama is black.
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A.
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Nothing could be further from the truth, and no matter how many times people like Janeane Garofalo or Keith Olbermann dismiss anyone who would protest Obama as "redneck Teabaggers" or "racists", the simple fact is that they are using a very tired and worn out tactic of casting as villain anyone who disagrees with them. In the world of logical fallacy, it is a combination of Ad Hominem attack (invalidate the argument by attacking the speaker) and Poisoning the Well (making a false negative claim about a speaker so that all future arguments by the speaker are invalid).
In the future, pay close attention whenever the accusation of racism is leveled, and use the Garofalo-Olbermann example as your guide. When the racist ad hominem occurs, you’ll notice that the actual topic is shoved aside, forgotten, ducked, dodged and avoided. Don’t focus on why those folks are all across America, peaceably assembled in protest. Oh no, simply call them all racist rednecks and the debate is over!
These protests are identified with taxes and spending, but the core principle being protested is our government’s rampant and near continuous trampling of the Bill of Rights and our natural rights as citizens. We protest those actions that are in violation of the very limited powers that the US Constitution grants the federal government, and are aimed at every member of the federal government who takes part in such abuses of power. That list is much, much longer than one man in one office.
Also, we cannot speak for everyone, but no longer will leveling the accusation of racism get us to flee the arena of ideas. Not one person among us is racist in any way, and therefore, any charges to that effect have the same veracity and seriousness as accusing Tea Party participants of being pixies and unicorns. It simply isn't true, so why run away from boorish and ignorant naysayers who cannot combat the ideas on their own merits and resort to ad hominem fallacy?
Obama, as part of the federal government that exploits the taxpayers and robs them of their money, property and inalienable rights, is being protested because he is part of a machine that is destructive to the very people whom it claims to serve. His skin color is incidental.
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Q.
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If this is bi-partisan, then why all the anti-Obama signs?
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The Tea Party concept in general is a peaceful protest for redress of grievances, but there is no formal application process that requires vetting participants for absolute adherence to every principle of the democratic republic, libertarian, small government, and individual freedom concepts.
As a result, some folks will show up to grind their anti-Obama axe. While slightly misleading and potentially injurious to the overall message of the Tea Party thinking, they represent the ideals of freedom of speech that are central to the individual freedom that we are all fighting to regain.
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Q.
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Why didn't you protest TARP and all of Bush/Paulson's bailouts?
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Many people were quite vocal in their disagreement with the TARP bailout, and incredulous at the idea of employing those practices that caused the severity of the recession as a solution to same, but once it was signed, most folks in the Tea Party mindset figured on two things - 1) when it did nothing but run up debt and produce no recovery effects, the government would no way do anything that stupid again, and 2) a lot of people up for re-election were going to have a day of reckoning in November. We were right about the latter, but not the former.
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Q.
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Taxes are necessary for roads, police, the military and lots of good stuff like that, so why do Tea Party participants want to avoid paying for those things?
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We don't want to avoid paying taxes for those purposes and those like them. The easy answer why is because those purposes listed represent things that our federal government (or government of any level) is empowered to do. The Constitution is very specific about what they are and are not allowed to do, and is based on the very simple concept that a government of the people cannot possess powers or rights the people themselves do not possess.
Every individual has the right to move about freely for travel, commerce and connecting themselves with other individuals. We can therefore delegate that right to a government that we will chip in our taxes to facilitate and expand our ability to do that. Hence the money we spend on infrastructure.
We as individuals have a right to defend our own lives, our homes from attack or destruction, and our property from theft. We can therefore delegate that right to a government who will use our taxes to provide police who protect the entire community, firefighters who do same, and a military that protects the entire sovereign nation on our behalf.
If we do not have the rights to do something as individuals, our government should not have right to do on our behalf or otherwise. If my company is failing, I do not have a right to simply take money from my neighbor to see me through those troubles. If I make a poor career choice, I cannot simply take money from my neighbor to subsidize a standard of living I have not earned.
Basically, none of us have a natural right to the property of another unless through voluntary trade between the two of us based on mutually accepted terms. How then does a government of, by and for the people gain the right to simply take any property they choose, whenever they want, based on nothing more than political whim, to then simply give that money to another person, group, or company?
That is the heart and soul of the Tea Party mentality, and the core principle that drives the grievance and the protests in opposition. Our government no longer serves us, it rules us. By letting us choose different rulers every so often, we are supposedly "participating", yet when every new choice rules with the same casual disregard for any semblance of the rights of the individual, then such rights are largely imaginary and no longer inalienable.
The loss or violation of our natural rights is what we protest.
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Q.
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Bush is the one who caused this, not Obama, so why is he off the hook?
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For one, no President "caused" anything where taxes and spending are concerned. Congress is the beginning and end of where all tax and spending law is concerned, and has been since 1787. The US Constitution vests that power in the House of Representatives, with advice and consent of the Senate. The President is only capable of veto, but Congress can override a veto with a two thirds majority. So spending, which has been out of control to one degree or another since roughly 1913, belongs to the US House and Senate.
In 1913, the federal government passed the 16th Amendment, so that income could be taxed, and without regard to census or enumeration. The idea in the US House leading up to that amendment was quite literally to “soak the rich.” Once they found out they could tax any way they wish for any reason they conjured, they spent every year since finding new ways to expand the power, reach and cost of the federal government.
Next, Bush got protested plenty. The American Left protested Iraq for much of the first four years. Moveon.org, DailyKos, Huffington Post and Bill Maher's post-"Politically Incorrect" resurgence are all direct results of protesting Bush. The voices died down a bit after 2006, because the Democrats once again controlled the taxes and spending, which really threw a monkey wrench into the partisan machinery of both Right and Left.
One of the worst periods of federal governance in recent memory had a solid Democrat majority in the US House, an ineffectual and largely apathetic Senate, and a GOP White House. It is hard for partisans of either side to get solidly behind the protest because an ideologue uses simplistic logic of "blame the other guy" as their stock in trade, and in the current situation, both parties share blame at every level.
The last great period of governance this country has had was 1995-1997 when a GOP Congress and Democrat President held check over each other's power and fought tooth and nail over budgets and a ton of other stuff. Some people say Newt and the GOP won, others say Clinton and the Dems won, but from 1995-1997, their adherence to their Constitutional duties saw America win. Spending was reduced, the deficit was turned into a surplus, and the economy performed well.
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Q.
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Aren't you guys Libertarians?
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With well wishes to the Libertarian Party, no, we are not an affiliate of the Libertarian Party, or any other political party for that matter. In the future, we hope to have a more closely bound network of like-minded Americans all sharing small government principles in order to effect change in how our government treats its citizens. The very essence of the concept of individual rights is that we all have a voice, and the size of an organization or bureaucracy does not alter that.
The importance of party independent, small government thinking cannot be stressed enough. As in the case of the accusation of racism, too often will critics assign those they disagree with a party or platform, and then attack those ideas they have incorrectly assigned to you. The usual suspects who defend their masters in DC have a standard set of attacks against very specific sections of the Libertarian Party platform. We do not wish to have the entire Tea Party movement reduced to those specific points, because a) we don’t necessarily agree with each and every point of their platform, and b) we don’t want the entire discussion dismissed by a strawman argument.
Participants at Tea Party protests come from all over the spectrum of the ideological dial, but all share the small government, “Don’t Tread On Me” thinking that our Founders envisioned. That is the central idea, and we do not wish to distract folks away from that.
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Q.
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You can't win, and this is how things are, so why try?
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A.
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Because no matter how much the media, the government, or anyone else says otherwise, every last person in this country still has the same inalienable rights that Thomas Jefferson penned into the Declaration of Independence. More importantly, our own Constitution had peaceful protest and redress of grievance held in such esteem that the very first article of the Bill of Rights includes it.
The way things are is not the way they are supposed to be, no matter what a politician or one of their media apologists tells you. Both have a vested interest in the hope that you've been too busy or distracted to check into what the government is and is not supposed to be up to. They create all sorts of laws and embed them in larger bills so you don’t know they are doing it.
Some examples:
Until 1919, the estate tax had only been used to fund the US war effort as needed, and was always abolished once hostilities ceased. After WW I though, the Congress figured they already got away with the Income Tax, and nobody would gripe about some far away tax allegedly aimed at only rich people. Look what it grew into.
Until WW II, individuals paid taxes like business did. You wrote checks at whatever interval and sent them to Washington. The problem Congress had with that is that people were entirely too conscious of how much they paid in taxes, and also that they weren’t being paid in a timely enough fashion. They sold the payroll deduction system as making your life easier, but it hides their taxation schemes in the “out of sight, out of mind” fog.
Ignorance of our rights and apathy to fighting for them is what our government counts on to be left alone to sack, plunder and destroy this nation from within to serve their own greed and lust for unchecked power. We refuse to go quietly into their quasi-free night of indentured servitude and slavery. (Nod to Frederick Douglass, a freed slave who first wrote about the concept of “quasi-free slavery”, and I cannot recommend his writings enough.)
Information is the greatest bulwark against tyranny we have, and in a war of ideas, 300 million passionate, involved Americans sharing information cannot be defeated by 535 apathetic oligarchs who have staffers and lobbyists do all of their thinking for them.
It used to be a common piece of advice to write your representative, but our representatives don't read anything we write them – they simply do not care. What they do care about is negative publicity and the scary thought that they may not get re-elected. Our commentary is a powerful tool to create the one thing our politicians fear most in the world – the educated and informed citizen. Add enough voices speaking that commentary and you make that fear real, and you then motivate these so called "servants of the people" to govern differently, and that is exactly what we hope to accomplish - motivation to change.
Instead of questioning our chances of success, ask yourself if you'd like to retain your freedoms, and if so, how can you help?
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