I’ll Explain it to You: The Tea Party Movement

Barack Obama, Cory Truax, Economics, Founding Fathers, George W. Bush

I have been a supporter and participator in the Tea Party movement since its earliest days. The first weekend in March, when the first Tea Party protests took place, my hometown of Greenville, SC had what I have found to be the largest of that weekend with 2,000 patriotic protesters. Since then, cities like Cincinnati, Sacramento, and Kansas City have eclipsed our attendance and hundreds of cities nationwide have hosted a Tea Party.

I believe in this movement: its meaning, its purpose, its objective, its potential. I am thrilled to be attending Greenville’s April 17th Tea Party and getting reports from the hundreds of other Tea Parties taking place across the country around Tax Day. I’m also interested to see how the leftist, elite media finds a way NOT to cover the events.

The Politico is reporting that groups like ACORN are planning counter protests and even planting people in the Tea Party crowds to incite violence in attempt to rob the protesters of credibility. We will just have to wait and see if they are successful, but if they are, that seems to me to be the only way national news will cover these gatherings.

Now, onto the point at hand.

On a recent trip to Virginia, I was listening to a local radio talk show. The host had Virginia’s Democrat 5th District Congressman Tom Pirellio on for an interview. Near the end of the interview, the host asked if the Congressman had any thoughts on or was planning on participating in one of Virginia’s many Tea Parties– two happening in his district alone.

Congressman Pirellio replied in a side-winding, prevaricating way that he would not be attending. He further said he didn’t understand the Tea Party Movement. He even tacitly accused the Tea Parties of abusing a great memory in American history. In his mind, this entire movement is an inexplicable temper tantrum and an insult to the American Revolution.

Pirellio challenged the conservative host to explain the motivation behind the Tea Parties, and the host did a dismal job. And because he did, I seek to explain it now.

The world of politics, policy, and government changed for me in February 2008. In that month, President George W. Bush and the Democrat-controlled Congress passed a $200 billion+ dollar “stimulus bill.” The bill certified “rebate checks” for families across America in hopes of kick-starting the economy (Of course, one can get a RE-bate only if they have given some bate. And many who received this checks never paid in the bate).

At that point, a large contingency of Americans who oppose the federal government’s behemoth power and structure, myself included, began to feel a twinge of disenfranchisement. Why wouldn’t the Republican president listen to us? Why was Congress passing this irresponsible, mass-spending bill with seemingly no regard for the objections from the American people.

The country’s economic woes continued, and then, in September of last year, we began an imperative fight over the $700,000,000,000 bailout for the financial sector (By the way, that was after the individual bailouts of AIG, FannieMae, and FreddieMac). Both presidential candidates and the president supported it. It failed its first attempt under the weight of strong public opposition. But an almost identical bill passed just days later against the same popular sentiment. The disenfranchisement continued to grow.

In January, we swore in President Obama, and the spending gates flew open. A 787 billion dollar “stimulus bill” (pork spending), a 410 billion dollar Omnibus Spending Bill, a proposed 75 billion for mortgage bailouts, and another 634 billion proposed to start government-controlled health care. And all that was BEFORE the budget proposal.

Then came along the budget, a clear contradiction to President Obama’s promise to cut taxes for 95% of Americans. By including cap-and-trade taxes, the President would NECESSARILY raise energy costs on ALL energy for EVERY American. It’s an indirect tax, but a tax nonetheless.

But the budget itself was the largest in American history, eclipsing the 3 trillion dollar mark. It’s proposed deficit spending cannot be accurately explained. The best way I’ve heard it articulated is that the Obama spending plans would accumulate more debt than his 43 presidential predecessors did combined.

To Congressman Pirellio: we see all this, and we’re terrified. We haven’t yet seen the consequences of this sort of spending but we know what they are. We’ve already seen the first dangerous consequence. The Federal Reserve is monetizing the debt, pumping in untold amounts of money into the system. Hyper-inflation cannot be far away.

This devaluing of the dollar leads to another natural consequence we see the G20, EU, and UN discussing even now: an international currency. If the dollar isn’t the world’s trading currency, then America is not the world’s economic power.

Further, this sort of debt, which MUST EVENTUALLY BE RECONCILED, will irrefutably be an encumbrance on future economies. Indeed, just servicing our own debt may become the country’s largest line item in the budget. And it seems to us, you, the Congress, and both presidents Bush and Obama don’t believe debt has a consequence. You speak about it as an abstract concept. But it’s not. This is real debt. Its effects will be pragmatic: an irrevocably shrunken American economy.

We see all this, Congressman, and we can clearly foresee the disaster. We see the Democrat Party, a party now seemingly dedicated to One-worldism, globalism beyond trade, and totalitarian control of government over even the minutia in our lives. We see the Republican Party, willing to sacrifice any principal to try to win an election, spending recklessly on prescription drugs, ignoring the middle class voter that gave them power, and playing any game they can to regain power.

We see Congress, and almost everyone in it, simply seeking one word: power. Damn the consequences! Damn the next generation! Damn the future! I want power now! That’s your attitude, sir, and almost all of your colleagues whether there be an “R” or “D” beside the name.

And that’s why we have Tea Parties.

You aren’t listening. President Obama isn’t listening. Michael Steele isn’t listening. Tim Kaine isn’t listening. Nancy Pelosi isn’t listening. Niether is Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, or John Boehner.

So we come together and find strength in our numbers. We finally see that we aren’t alone in our concern, in our frustration, in our fecklessness. We come together and see that sanity hasn’t escaped everyone yet.

We have Tea Parties also so that maybe some of you will indeed hear us. Can you ignore 300 parties and hundreds of thousands of people coming together next week? God forbid that you can.

We have Tea Parties MOST OF ALL, though, because WE can see the parallels between the current parties and our government and the British Crown. It’s not taxation without representation, but it is indeed a form of tyranny. This government seeks its expansion and the contraction of our liberty every day it exists.

You seek to stifle freedom of speech in the Fairness Doctrine and Hate Crimes legislation. You seek to rob us of economic freedom through higher taxes and cap-and-trade. You seek to subjugate our sovereign states with a strings-attached-laden stimulus bill and further to suppress America’s sovereignty through international bodies. You seek to control what cars we can drive with emissions regulations. You seek to control what we eat with higher taxes on items you deem unhealthy.

You sir, your ilk, President Obama, President Bush (in the last two years) ARE KING GEORGE. You are a new a tyranny: a soft tyranny, but a tyranny nonetheless.

And so we protest.

Those are our grievances. Those are our purposes. And Congressman, this is just the beginning. A new Revolution is brewing– not one of arms at Bunker Hill or Trenton, but of ideas in every precinct across America. We are freedom. We fight for liberty, and I won’t stop until the objective is achieved. That objective is simple: maximum freedom for the most people possible.

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Cory Truax @ April 10, 2009