The hedonists have a phrase that simply says, "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it." Not normally one who would embrace or advocate such a philosophy, I have found myself repeating the phrase quite frequently to those who are tempted to criticize the pro-freedom TEA Parties that are sweeping the country.
For the most part, I don't fault critics of the parties for their skepticism. Indeed if all I knew about the events was what was portrayed in the mainstream media - racist, ignorant, bitter, old, white folks who hate change of any kind - I'd steer clear of the party myself. But that representation of this movement is about as accurate as it would be to call ACORN a model of civic virtue.
The message of the TEA Party movement is a simple one: freedom works best. Thanks to the wisdom of America's Founding Fathers who made our government completely reliant upon the consent of the people, those in Washington can't take our liberties away unless we let them. As a result, power hungry politicians work overtime to generate a climate of panic and exploit every problem as a crisis that needs an immediate government solution. The dirty little secret being that with every government solution we consent to, we hand them more power over our lives.
By design, the policies they propose always sound wonderful - save the planet, insure the masses, stop obesity. But the devil is in the details: to save the planet we must let government tell us how much energy we can consume; to insure the uninsured, we must let government tell us what procedures and operations we can have; to end obesity, we must let government regulate what kind of food businesses can sell.
The TEA Party movement is about reminding people that government was intended to protect your freedom to earn whatever you want for yourself. But the moment you begin believing that things should be given to you, accepting the political game of "whoever promises me the most things gets my vote," and adopting the entitlement mentality that regards all good things as your "rights,"...you transform the role of your government from one that protects your freedom to one that controls it.
Central planning has been tried repeatedly, promising to end poverty, insure health, and bring about the kind of equality where no one lived in a mansion while others lived on the streets. And the consequence was that everyone (besides those in power) ended up on the streets. It doesn't work. What works is freedom.
Some have wrongly assumed that these TEA Parties are the creation of the Republican Party and unfairly target Democrats. First of all, the thought that the staggeringly incompetent national Republican Party could organize something like this is laughable. Secondly, to suggest that the events are anti-Democrat relies on the absurd assumption that there aren't any Democrats who still believe in freedom.
Yes, these TEA Parties are protesting the leadership of Pelosi, Reid, and Obama.but not because they're Democrats. Rather, because the policies they are advancing are meant to deprive us all of our freedom (economic and otherwise).
Many of the Democrats who attend these TEA Parties see them as an outlet for their frustrations. Having witnessed the outrageous deficits of the George W. Bush years, they voted for change. And the change they got was to see President Obama double down on Bush's big-government, freedom-limiting approach, and multiply his deficits ten-fold. That isn't change. It's the same, sad, steady, sorry march to government growth we've been experiencing for two centuries.
The core motivation behind this movement is simple: we don't want our legacy to be the generation that let freedom in America slip from our grasp. We don't want to look back on the once great United States, and say, "Wasn't it wonderful when we were free? It's too bad we couldn't get over our Republican/Democrat party obsession to notice when our leaders were stripping us of our freedom, and stopped the revolution before it was too late."
For 230 years, patriots have defended that core principle of the Constitution that we have a duty to "preserve the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity." In other words, we have a responsibility to ensure that those who come after us get the same opportunity we had to freely pursue happiness.
Despite the misleading reports from a state-run media, that is what this movement is about. So I challenge the skeptics: try some TEA. You might be surprised how inspiring the message of freedom still is.