Principles

Principles

Ken

“Independence is my happiness,
and I view things as they are,
without regard to place or person;
my country is the world,
and my religion is to do good.”

Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

 

When Thomas Paine wrote these words in 1791, he was writing in opposition to Edmund Burke’s defense of the aristocracy and the corrupt system that they had built for their own benefit.  In a previous 100 years, the taxes imposed by the English government had increased almost tenfold (from 1.8 million pounds to 17 million pounds). By comparison, the budget of the U.S. government has increased to 14 times the U.S. budget of 100 years ago (after adjusting for inflation).  Much like U.S. citizens of the 21st century, English citizens were oppressed by a government gone wild.  The aristocrats were shielded from the taxes and regulations that were causing much grief among the lower classes.

Paine pointed out how useless the aristocrats were:

“The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and when compared with the active world are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.”

 Paine believed that the national character of the English had changed over the previous century and that this was why they put up with the abuse:

“It would have been impossible to have dragooned the former English, into the excess of taxation that now exists; and when it is considered that the pay of the army, the navy, and of all the revenue officers, is the same now as it was about a hundred years ago, when the taxes were not above a tenth part of what they are at present, it appears impossible to account for the enormous increase and expenditure on any other ground, than extravagance, corruption, and intrigue.”
Like the English of the 18th century, has the national character of Americans changed such that we continue to believe the lies put forward by Progressives for the past 100 years? Dismally, it almost looks so.
Many freedom loving Americans are confounded by the 2016 Presidential campaign.  If the polls are to be believed, we are headed for one of most bizarre choices in the history of Presidential politics.  How did we get here?  It seems like far too many Americans have lost sight of some of the most fundamental aspects of liberty.  We are being driven by personalities and policies, but lack the rudder of principle.
Thomas Paine was a man of principle, who had suffered much by the end of his life because he refused to compromise those principles.
“To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful.”   
Some of the choices offered to us for President this year seem to be lacking principle altogether.  Can we survive?  Yes!  What is important is that the citizenry adhere to principles based on limited government, a free market, and individual rights.  These are the principles that the Tea Party movement sprouted from.
Do not worship those who fail to acknowledge the most basic principles of liberty, of the free market, and of our natural rights.  What is the most important characteristic that you are looking for in our next President?  Is it only that they beat the other team?  Is it that they are the least offensive?  Or, is it that your choice has the resolve to defend liberty?
As an organization, the Worcester Tea Party does not endorse candidates, but we do ask that you consider their belief in our principles.  Are they for limited government, Constitutional rights, and a free market?  It’s a tall order, but you should not settle for less.

Impact Things Sufficiently to Change Things

Matt O'Brien

“Maybe it’s an issue of being unable or unwilling to realize that we can actually impact things sufficiently to change things, rather than seeing ourselves as being exiled to some distant side line of life where we can do nothing more than sheepishly root for a life that’s far too far away to touch.”

– Craig D Lounsbrough

Being an advocate for liberty requires a healthy dose of optimism, a belief that freedom is a fundamental desire of all people, and a thick skin. We often seem to be outnumbered. Those who argue for bigger government always seem to be able to win the public’s support. Even those who talk as if they are allies turn out to be statists, hungry for power. It’s so easy to become discouraged by the inanity around us, but the Tea Party movement was sparked by a belief that it was possible to seize freedom from the tyranny of an over-sized and oppressive government. There is no reason to doubt that possibility.

Advocates of Tea Party principles should not be discouraged. Change comes slowly and often imperceptibly. We won’t know when we’ve turned the tide. A good analogy is the technology that is such a significant part of our lives. Each day it changes. Each day there are new innovations. Each day we continue to live our lives without perceiving that changes are taking place. Looking back at the past decade, it seems hard to believe that we ever lived in an age without iPhones, the internet, streaming movie services, and thousands of other modern advances.

The battle for liberty is mostly fought in imperceptible small steps. Yes, there are major losses (and major wins!), but the critical battles are the thousands that take place over time. These wins and losses take place across our nation, in town meetings, city council meetings, courtrooms, and many other public venues. We cannot win if we see “ourselves as being exiled to some distant side line of life where we can do nothing more than sheepishly root for a life that’s far too far away to touch”.

It is lazy Patriots that see themselves as “being unable or unwilling to realize that we can actually impact things sufficiently to change things”. In reality, it is only the individual that can have that impact. Each person must fight for liberty every day. The Tea Party movement is nothing but thousands of individuals, each fighting for the same principles in his or her own way. We’re not a unified, centrally controlled mass. We are a network of individuals spread across America. Each piece of the network has a role to play. The importance of each member of that network cannot be minimized. Each person can and does “impact things sufficiently to change things”.

Theodore Parker said that “the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.” We can take confidence and renew our resolve by knowing that the arc of the moral universe also bends toward liberty. People all over the world envy the freedom that we have, no matter how damaged it is. In this New Year, start with a renewed sense of optimism that liberty will triumph.

In liberty,
Ken Mandile
Senior Fellow
Worcester Tea Party

Banish the Darkness

Banish the Darkness

Ken
December is a month where much of humanity defies the frigid darkness by celebrating what may be our most joyous holiday.  Christians and non-Christians alike have taken to the spirit of Christmas to celebrate in their own ways.  Words of peace and joy and good cheer are shared with all.  This year though, we enter the season with a darkness spreading like the Shadow of Mordor across the free world.
Years of a foreign policy based on hubris and naive talk of containment have put the civilized world at risk in ways not seen since the Cold War.  This combination of neglect and malfeasance have given the enemies of modernity and freedom the time, money, and brazen confidence to wreak death and fear across the globe.  The world has realized that the once steady leadership of the United States is in shambles and they doubt our will and ability to confront evil.  This holiday season, instead of wishes of Peace on Earth, the talk is of war.

A greater danger comes not from the terrible but unlikely act of a terrorist, but from more certain threat of a government which would respond to every crisis by eroding our freedoms.  Those who are familiar with Robert Higgs’ book, Crisis and Leviathan, know that governments use fear and war to implement new laws and restrictions.

Often, the proposals are sold as only temporary, as the French are doing now with their three month state of emergency.  Personal computers in France are now subject to administrative searches without a warrant.  The internet is being censored.  Other searches are now done at the whim of the police.  If history is our guide, many of these policies will continue when the emergency ends.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Either we believe these words or we do not.  If we meekly retreat and hide, then these are not real principles, but just pretty words to be discarded out of convenience.  It would give the terrorists a veto on our rights.  Fear should never be a justification for the abandonment of our rights.

In times like this, we need our reason, and our principles, and our faith.  We need to prudently respond to security threats.  As we respond, we need to be cautious about overreacting and calls to hand over our rights in the name of security.  We must destroy evil with resolve, and we must also defend our liberty with that same resolve.

In this season nearly one third of the population of the Earth will celebrate the Light of a Savior.  In this season the Jewish faith celebrates the light of the Maccabees’ oil.  Many other faiths choose this time to celebrate the promise that the sun would bring warmth and light.  We must not let the shadow of terror eclipse this season of light and joy, and we should pray that our country finds the courage to allow our light to banish that darkness.

Leave the Organization of Hatreds to the Professionals

Matt O'Brien

A recent Robert Higgs essay in the Independent Institute blog referred to a Henry Brooks Adams quote denigrating the nature of politics.  “Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”  How much more cynical could one be? It is intriguing though.  And, it may very well be true!

Politics is about destroying your opponent.  If you can’t destroy the opposition, then you are to weaken it as much as possible.  Compromise is unacceptable.  It’s a violation of one’s principles.  Compromise often leads to the fall of politicians who stray from the party creed.

In his essay, Higgs contrasts political transactions with economic transactions.  In economics, you rarely succeed by destroying your opponent.  That’s not the purpose of voluntary exchange.  In fact, commerce requires that both parties feel like they’ve won.  If one party is unhappy, then the exchange has failed.  Many social interactions mirror economics.  Other than games, sports, and war, politics may be the only human activity where destroying your opponent is necessary.

Robert Higgs wrote:

“Parties recruit followers by exploiting hatreds. Bureaucracies bulk up their power and budgets by artfully weaving hatreds into their mission statements and day-to-day procedures. Regulators take advantage of artificially heightened hatreds. Group identity is emphasized at every turn, and such tribal distinctions are tailor-made for the maintenance and increase of hatred among individual persons who might otherwise disregard the kinds of groupings that the politicians and their supporters emphasize ceaselessly.”

Perhaps this negativity is why so many people don’t like politics.  They don’t want to discuss it.  They don’t want it on their Facebook news feed.  They just don’t want to think about it.  It’s important work though, and good people need to stay in the game to steer us to a better course.

There is a way to be involved in politics while avoiding the organized hatred.  Promote positive ideas.  Promote a philosophy of liberty.  Believe in the inherent goodness of people.  Acknowledge the inherent value of your allies and of your opponents, but don’t compromise in the battle of ideas.

Since the very start of the Tea Party movement, I’ve felt that we were in a war of ideas, not personalities or politicians.  We have a positive message, one that believes in people, not political parties, government programs or organized hatred.  Unless we can win the minds of the American people, we cannot succeed.  We cannot win with cynicism and hatred.  As we enter this very important season of Presidential politics, promote your candidate by articulating the good ideas and the good character that he or she has.  Leave the organizing of the hatred to the professionals.

In Liberty,
Ken Mandile
SeniorFellow
Worcester Tea Party

 

…Then Dumb and Silent We may be Led

Matt O'Brien

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

Benjamin Franklin, as Silence Dogood

2015 marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. These 54 lines of Latin were signed at Runnymede on June 15, 1215.  Today, we consider this document to be one of the foundations of our own Constitution.  At the time, it accomplished little for the people of 13th century England.  Within 6 weeks, it was voided, but it was never forgotten. 400 years later, the English used some of the ideas in the Magna Carta to recognize individual rights and less than 200 years after that, Jefferson and Madison scribed their own Great Charter.  The radical notions scribed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1215 and by our own radicals 560 years later, have been under attack since the ink dried.

Today, our First Amendment, particularly freedoms of speech and religion, are being viciously hacked away under the guise of political correctness.  On college campuses, supposedly the bastions of free thinking, students, professors, and guest speakers are being silenced out of fear that they may harm someone’s sensitivities.

It’s so bad, that even President Obama, who has hacked off huge parts of the Constitution himself, recently said;

“I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I gotta tell you I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.”

The sad thing is that it’s more than college students who are demanding coddling, its adults too.

Most contemporary democracies contain some form of speech protection, but ours is among the broadest.  We protect the most odious words, flag burning, offensive art, etc.  Many countries have settled on their own version of freedom of speech.  As much as I’d like to shut some people up, I realize that one day, I may the one being muffled.  It’s best to keep this freedom as broad as possible.  If we do not, then we will be leaving it to the courts and Congress to implement restrictions.  Once they start, the censorship will keep going.

As conservatives, we believe that civility is necessary to keep social order.  Good manners in speech should never be shoved aside to win an argument, to advance a political position or even as a means of pushing back against political correctness.  It’s ironic that today’s progressives are among the most vehement advocates for squelching offensive speech, while at the same time, spewing some of the most vile words to demean their opponents.  We shouldn’t stoop to their level.

Franklin knew that restricting speech was the tyrant’s way of dousing the flames of rebellion.  Free speech is necessary to transmit knowledge.  It is an essential part of being human, allowing us self-expression and allowing us to develop as individuals.  Most importantly, it allows for peaceful social change.  The potential for change is a threat to those who want to grow and project the power of the state. To paraphrase Franklin, those would overthrow our liberty depend on subduing the freeness of speech.  Many before us have defended against these attempts.  We are duty bound to continue to defend our right to speak our thoughts from all attacks.

In Liberty,
Ken Mandile
Senior Fellow
Worcester Tea Party

On Racism and the Murders at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church

Matt O'Brien

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound  to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality…. 

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr

For the past year, violence has sparked a renewed debate about the nature of racism in America.  Most Americans think of racism as a flaw of prior generations, as if bigotry no longer victimizes people of color.  Blatant and open discrimination and the words and jokes about minorities that once were freely used in polite conversation have been relegated to the hall of shame.  We understand that they are degrading and unacceptable in a society that is founded on the principle that all men are created equal.

While society has made great strides in erasing racism, it still festers, not only in old fashioned bigotry, but in a form that’s more insidious.

The horrific murders in a Charleston, South Carolina church earlier this month have once again brought racism and race relations to the forefront of conversations.  In the case of the Charleston shootings, a hate filled gunman exposed many Americans to a side of our country that most would prefer not to acknowledge.

The bigotry and hate of prior generations has withered to a great extent, but underneath, there are roots of it that will be hard to eradicate.   It’s not something the government can fix.  It needs to be fixed inside the communities that experience the struggle. It needs to be fixed in the hearts of those who continue to divide American by race and class.

Our conversations about race always seem to go off track.  Instead of talking about the racial hatred displayed by the murderer at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, we’re talking about the Confederate flag, psychotropic drugs, and gun rights.  Conversations about Michael Brown and Freddie Gray devolved into arguments about drugs and whether they were “thugs” or innocent victims.    We insist on finding blame instead of recognizing the nature and the effects of racism in 21st century America.

Lost in the fog of these arguments is the real plight of minority communities, the hard working people who get up every day to try to keep their family safe, warm, well fed, and housed in a community with good schools; Americans who dream of living the American Dream.  As with so many Americans, of all races and colors, this dream has been dimmed by opportunity-killing government policies.  The Tea Party movement has been talking about this from its inception, but that narrative doesn’t fit the theology of dependency that Washington thrives on.

One of the most pernicious forms of racism is the institutional racism practiced by the government.  George Bush referred to it as the “soft bigotry of low expectations”.  It is supported by a bureaucracy that refuses to allow people to live up to their full potential.  It’s not just a welfare system that splits fathers from families.  It’s a criminal justice system that labels millions of Americans as criminals, destroying whatever opportunity they may have had, just as they should be learning to be productive members of society.  It’s a public education system that fails over and over, denying families an opportunity to choose a better school.

The left tries to use the race issue to sell people on Marxist or Progressive ideology, ironically, ideologies that perpetuate our divisions.  While they blame capitalism and conservatism for perpetuating oppressive policies, the truth is that statists thrive on perpetuating these problems in order to sell their politics of division and envy.

What can we do to help minorities who suffer from effects of discriminatory practices, words, and policies?  First, become better listeners. Sometimes, there’s no need to argue, even when you disagree.  Ask questions.  Don’t get caught up in silly superfluous side issues.  Listen.  Hear.  You are going to hear a lot of stuff that you don’t like, but somewhere underneath the haze of mistrust is the truth.   Attend discussions on race.

Second, realize that we can and always will do better. Let’s not compare ourselves to other countries.  We are the best country on Earth for immigrants and for American born minorities.  No other country welcomes the diversity of cultures that bless us, but being the best of the bunch doesn’t mean that we are the best we can be.  We can do better, not because we have failed, but because we have a legacy of success.

Third, Do not cede the civil rights issue to those who don’t understand the nature of liberty; those who think that liberty can only be earned if you fit into the right identity group.  We understand that every person is born free.  This is a message that proclaims that we will not allow Americans to be divided by race, color, gender, and class any longer.  We are not “tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism”.

By advocating for principles of liberty articulated by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Monroe, and by Booker T. Washington, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Frederick Douglass, we can be allies in rooting out the vestiges of racism and bigotry.  This is how we can best honor the memories of the Charleston victims.

In liberty,
Ken Mandile
Senior Fellow
Worcester Tea Party

Graduation Day for Citizens

Matt O'Brien

 

“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out…  but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law.  Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.   What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

-Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and other Essays,

 

Many of us are unnerved by the rioting that we see in Baltimore and in the past year in Ferguson.  We are disgusted by the lack of respect for the law and by the destruction of private and public property.  At the same time, conservatives can and do acknowledge the grievances of those who are unjustly targeted by the police and anyone else in who abuses their power.  How do we reconcile the need for reform against the need to maintain social order and respect for the law?

The essence of conservatism is a respect for the past and for what exists today and what we shall hand to future generations as good stewards.   It is a respect for the ideas and institutions that were developed and gifted to us.   But, in some instances, the past can act like an anchor to progress.  We must be careful not to give it authority over us that is undeserved, especially so when public institutions become agents of injustice.

Edmund Burke is considered to be the first person to articulate the modern political philosophy of conservatism.  His late 18th century writings delve into the importance of preserving our links to the past.  Burke was a supporter of the American Revolution, but he saw the destructive French Revolution as a threat to civil order.  He carried on a very public and nasty debate with another Tea Party favorite, Thomas Paine.

Burke defended conservatism against the threat of radical Enlightenment liberalism.  He believed that this upstart philosophy would wipe away the old order and centuries of social progress.  He saw the existing civil society, social norms, and political order as the result of many generations of development.  The wisdom of each successive generation built on and improved on the gifts of the past.  Burke felt that the each generation owed it to future generations to act as good stewards of these gifts.

Burke was no stick in the mud though.  He defined conservatism as a philosophy of reform.  He believed that change should be slow and deliberate, so that it would not damage the good that had been done by prior generations. Burke’s conservatism was not static, it was evolutionary.

Fifty years after Edmund Burke’s death, Henry David Thoreau wrote his essays on civil disobedience. His philosophy on civil disobedience was conservative in its nature, but radical in it words.  If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out… , a very Burkean idea.  On the other hand, he only had so much patience: …but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law.  Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.

I’ve heard, since the beginning of the Tea Party movement, talk of rebellion and resistance.  It never seemed to spark a revolution though.  As frustrated as we feel with the evil of our out of control government, we have yet to be the counter-friction necessary to stop the injustice of the machine of government.  This isn’t because we don’t care enough.  It’s because we love our country so much that we are not ready to destroy the civil order that protects us from anarchy and much worse forms of injustice.

We can be allies with all those that seek to uproot injustice.  While we share that goal, we oppose their chosen methods.   Patience, conviction, and persistence will eventually wear out our rusty clunker government and its injustices that we now suffer.   It’s quite a behemoth though.   It’s taken decades to build.  It will take decades to dismantle.   Ours movement is based upon a philosophy of slow and deliberate reform.  This patience is a virtue that will reward us with a stronger and freer country.  In the end, a social order strengthened by the test of time will be victorious in the contest of ideas.

In liberty,
Ken Mandile
Senior Fellow
Worcester Tea Party

Earth Day for Conservatives

Earth Day for Conservatives

Ken
 

“Society…is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; 

a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.

 As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, 

it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, 

but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

–Edmund Burke, Reflections,

 

 

 

     Edmund Burke lived just prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution, but the words of the founder of conservatism remain as true as the day he wrote them.  Conservatives see themselves as part of nature.  We value the natural and man made treasures handed down by our ancestors.   We see ourselves as caretakers of the order of society and nature that have been carefully developed over time.  Included in this respect for the existing order is respect for the Earth.     Despite the common wisdom, there is no divergence between true environmentalism and classical conservatism.  The divergence is really between progressive environmentalism, which is really a disguise for Marxist economics, and real action to protect the environment.  So much of what we call environmentalism is really hatred for human advancement and an unthinking acceptance of nonsensical myth. 

     Today’s society has been fooled into accepting feel good-knee jerk efforts to “save the planet”.  Simple things like paper bags vs. plastic bags vs. reusable cloth bags go unquestioned.  The idea that not printing out an email will somehow save the planet is accepted as common sense, when it really has zero effect on the environment.  Recycling is accepted as good citizenship, without a thought to the wasted time, energy, and resources needed to reprocess our trash.  Renewable energy is given a pass for the multiple ways that it endangers the planet.  Electric cars (“coal burning cars”) give owners the sense that they have a pious superiority over the gun toting pick up truck driver.  It just isn’t politically correct to question the science behind the manufacturing process of green cars, solar panels, and windmills.

     Go through any northern liberal urban area and you will see how big government has scared our planet.  Trash filled wastelands, tarnished by unsightly public housing and government offices, weed filled highways and neglected infrastructure make huge areas of our country ugly and unnatural.    Look at almost any mega-environmental disaster, from the destruction of the Aral Sea by the Soviets, the Three Gorges Dam by the Chinese, the multitude of military wastelands generated by the U.S. government, the waste of water resources in the U.S. West, and we see that big government is the biggest threat to our planet. 

    The growth of capitalism,  social order brought about by unleashing individual liberty, and the squashing of monarchy, oligarchy, and despotism have allowed humankind to advance in ways never seen in the many thousands of years of organized society.  Fossil fuel freed us from the pollution of dung and wood fuel.  It gave us the ability to travel and relocate and communicate in ways that were unimagined 200 years ago.  Yes, we had a period of waste and uncaring pollution, but now, the free market is what is making our air and water cleaner.   Don’t let the progressives fool you into thinking otherwise.

     Conservatives should support thoughtful conservation of resources.  We are but caretakers of the planet.  The gift of wondrous natural beauty and treasure was passed onto us by those who came before.   We have a duty to leave our planet cleaner than we found it so that future generations can enjoy it.  As Edmund Burke said, “it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

Choosing Words

Matt O'Brien

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

George Orwell

In  “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell said  “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. ”   In corrupting the use of words, our competitors are able to disrupt the common sense of the citizenry.   “Social justice” is one good example of such corruption.  You’d have to be very cold hearted to oppose something called social justice, so what’s wrong with social justice?  Well, to begin with, and end with, it has nothing to do with justice.  By throwing together two good words and using them in a way that deceives the listener, the anti-liberty crowd has been able to fool the uninformed.

 

One of the main purposes of the Tea Party Movement is to convey the message of liberty.  To do so, we need to be careful about the words we choose, but more importantly, we need to point out the misuse of words by those who look to steal our freedom.   “Liberal” and “conservative” are two perfectly good words that have been corrupted.  Tea Partiers make the error of using the word “liberal” as an insult, when it should be compliment.  We have ceded this word to those who blasphemy it’s real meaning.

 

The left has a habit of changing the language when it stops working for them.  “Global Warming” seemed scary enough, until it didn’t work for them anymore.  They were forced to switch to the less scary phrase “Climate Change.”

 

Remember how a few decades ago, poverty was such a big concern?  We don’t hear so much about poverty anymore because the worldwide poverty rate has unexpectedly plummeted.  The lowest 10th percentile income earner in the U.S. enjoys an economic lifestyle that is better that almost every other country on earth.  What are the progressives to do if poverty is plummeting?  Let’s change the word.  Now poverty becomes “income inequality.”  All inequality is bad, isn’t it?  So income inequality must also be bad.  If income equality is bad, then one could make the case that income redistribution is good.  We lose just by accepting the phrase “income inequality.”

 

At this month’s Worcester Tea Party meeting, we heard two speakers on Agenda 21.  The very next day, I saw the agenda for next week’s meeting of my town’s Board of Selectmen.  I saw the phrases “International Property Maintenance Code”, “Master Plan Implementation”, and “Revised Water Conservation Language”.  Immediately, bells went off in my head.  I knew that they were using corrupted words that sounded perfectly well-meaning so that they could be used to advance an ideology that disputes private property rights.

 

The words of liberty, as articulated by our classical liberal founders, ring true in the ears of almost every American.  It is only those who seek to deceive by twisting good words into bad that we need to fear. They are charlatans who will lead people down a disastrous path.

 

Be careful in the words that you  choose.  Be honest.  Don’t deceive in the way our competitors do.  When you are speaking the truth about the value of liberty, you do not have to grovel in the gutter of euphemistic deception.

 

In liberty,
Ken Mandile
Matt O’Brien

There is a time for everything, a time to be silent and a time to speak.

Matt O'Brien

On Thursday, we hosted a viewing of Michelle Malkin’s Rocky Mountain Heist at our January meeting.   The movie exposes how the wealthy left was able to seize power in Colorado.   The “Colorado Plan” wasn’t just a strategy to win a few seats in the state legislature.   It was a brutal and thuggish plot to wipe conservatives and moderates from every office in the state.   Rocky Mountain Heist discussed how four wealthy Progressives were able to pool their money to build a political machine unlike any before it.

The Colorado Plan was so successful, that it is now being replicated,  state by state, to weaken the Republic.

The good news is that there are many forces opposing this quiet revolution.   It’s also good that we have resources like this movie to inform us about the threats that we face.  This “intelligence” is an important tool in resisting the latte liberals who oppose liberty.

Even greater news is that we are already starting to see the collapse of the Colorado Plan.  As the Progressives took over, their ideas were put to the test and, as expected, they failed.

The Tea Party movement doesn’t enjoy the luxury of having wealthy benefactors.  Our one luxury is a set of principles that have been tested by time, principles that have made America great.

As individuals, we can do our part to elect leaders who honestly believe in these principles of  limited constitutional government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility, but our most important goal is to teach the beauty of living free.  Wealthy Progressives will always be able to buy an election now and then.   We should expose them when they do, but their wins will be short lived if we dedicate ourselves to keeping the idea of liberty alive.   That is a challenging, honorable, and important task.  It is one that cannot be stopped by wealthy leftists who try to put chains on us.   In this new year, live free, speak freely, and have faith that liberty will always win.
In Liberty,
Ken Mandile