I had the pleasure of attending the Tax Day Tea Party in Watkins Glen, NY this past Sunday and was really pleased to see that the other local Tea Parties are alive and well (I regularly attend the Corning Tea Party meetings)! To any of you who were there as well, thank you for joining the rest of us who care enough about our country to spend a Sunday afternoon staying informed, sharing information and making a statement. It was great to see folks from all age groups and walks of life joined together for a laudable purpose and I know we are making a difference and will continue to as long as we stay united!
The subject of unity resonated with several speakers and I believe it was the most important message we heard. I remember the first Tea Party event I attended in 2009 with my 11 year-old son, in Corning, NY. I was amazed and proud at the diversity of the crowd- young families, senior citizens, small business owners, union members, business execs – a real cross-section of our local population. We were united in frustration, outrage even, over the irresponsible actions taken by an overreaching government and the impact those actions were having (and have continued to have) on the financial health of our country, our states, our individual lives, and our local communities. Most amazing was how one issue, uniquely affecting each of us, could create such a spontaneous uprising (albeit peaceful) across the entire country. Americans, everywhere, had a real commonality and that commonality made us a threat to the bureaucrats in Washington, DC and Albany, as many found out at election time.
Regardless of our path in life, the financial meltdown of America impacted us all, in one way or another and so many, who would not normally join together for other reasons, found common ground and united; we became a force to be reckoned with. Tea Party folks realized that the irresponsible behavior of the power guys helped create the mess we are in. We clearly scared the daylights out of the establishment politicians in both parties and they have expended great amounts of money, effort and media assistance to try and marginalize the Tea Party, and use individual issues to “divide and conquer” us. Together, we have the power, we always have, but we need to focus on uniting to protect the inalienable rights that make us real Americans.
Each of us, each person, each family, each community, each county, each state is unique with its own set of needs and wants. We all want our world to be a better place- even the power guys. The problem lies in defining what a “better place” is. That conundrum is right up there with trying to define “fairness” or "happiness". What qualifies as better or fairer is completely dependent on who is defining the term. There is no "one size fits all" definition and our government should not be legislating ANYTHING that doesn't provide a equal benefit for all Americans, rather than pitting one group against the other. They certainly should not be engaged in taking from some and giving to others without their consent.
The reality is that we are a generous, caring people. If we weren’t wasting so much money supporting bloated out of control bureaucracies and government programs loaded with fraud and waste, at costs hundreds, even thousands of times more costly than we could run them locally, we would not only have the funds to address our local challenges, with local money, tailored to meet local needs, in a far more efficient and transparent manner, we would actually be able to keep more of our own hard earned money in our own communities and pockets, strengthening our communities and pursuing our own happiness.
Instead we continue to allow the taxation machine to take our money and beat us over the head with it, while we wait for them to throw some scraps back to our communities, expecting us to be beholden for the crumbs, when they took the "food" from our plates in the first place. The attempt to impose one ideal “Utopia” is not only utterly foolish, it is tyrannical and untenable in a free society.
If we are to remain strong, we must focus on the issues that unite us and not on those issues that potentially could divide us. We need to keep our eye on the real enemy –those who would take away our innate, God given rights to religious choice, to voice our opinions, to own guns, to limit the control of our government. Each of us defines happiness differently and place different values on different things. Is it right to try and force your neighbor to act or believe a certain way because you somehow feel your way is better? Should individual communities be forced to spend money on services they don’t need or want? Should we be forced to fund business sectors or social issues we don’t support? That is exactly what our government is forcing us to do - every day, using our own hard earned money to do it.
The power guys are very effective at turning one side against the other by shifting the focus away from their own actions and onto our individual differences. Each of us has a unique approach to and outlook on life, based on all of the factors that have and will affect our individual consciousness. None of us will deal with an issue or problem exactly the same way because of that. Even within our own psyche, we tend to make different judgments about different people despite common behaviors, based on our individual knowledge of the people we judge. The power guys know that we will not always agree on specifics and they use that knowledge like an axe, to divide us.
The real issue isn’t whether - a) you believe in God or are an atheist, b) own guns or despise them,
c) support right to life or right to choose, or any myriad of other topics. The real problem is our government taking away our rights and forcing us to pay for the life choices of other people. The real issue issue is -how do we protect our individual rights and limit our imposition on each other?
We are all impacted by excessive government intrusion in our daily lives -excessive government takes the fruits of our labors in the form of onerous taxes and regulatory fees which, in turn, impedes and erodes our individual ability to pursue happiness. Excessive government continues to find new ways to take away our money and property and limit nearly all aspects of our individual rights. The usurpation of our individual rights is the enemy, not the woman who has an abortion or the gay couple who live in your neighborhood. The enemy is a government that forces you to pay for the abortion or finance the lifestyle that you don't agree with, by taking your hardearned money and deciding who should benefit from it, instead of you.
Consequences are the direct result of the individual choices we make. Other people's choices don't impact our quality of life unless we are being forced to pay for them, they commit crimes against us or we choose to let their choices pick away at our brain. Your hard earned money is your power- it is your voice, just as your vote is. Allowing a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington and Albany to take more and more of our power from us to buy the things THEY want, and support the issues THEY want, and reward the people THEY want, severely limits our own individual ability to pursue happiness.
We have no more right to impose our belief systems on each other, than the government has to force us to accept and fund other's belief systems. Our greatest right is the right to live free of those impositions and to limit our government’s ability to “impose” as much as is reasonably possible, while maintaining reasonable social order to protect our lives, our liberty and our property.
There are forces at work (and have been since the signing of the Declaration of Independence), trying to unravel the efforts of the original Tea Party patriots. Those forces have been quite effective in twisting the truth, shifting the focus off the real issues and using hot button issues to distract and divide the masses. Remember what brought us all together in the first place - government oppression- and focus your talents on unifying our efforts. We have the ability to make a real difference in the future of our country for our children and grand children to come, but we have to set aside personal differences and focus on the real task at hand.
