Teatime

I’m updating this blog early, because this week’s essay is about my experience at the Middletown, NJ tea party.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, NJ pays some of the highest property taxes  in the country.  This is not due to wonderful services, mind you, but rather because the state finds itself awash in waste and corruption.

A situation very much like that with the federal government.  So, at its heart, those who organize and attend these tea parties are those of us who are dissatisfied with what we see in our governments (state and federal) on this note and feel unrepresented by both parties.  With the exception of a brief spate of welfare reform in the 1990s, many conservatives feel they have not had a voice in government since 1988.  “Republican” does not necessarily (or even often) equal “Conservative.”  And if you think that the Evangelicals in the Mid-West represent “Conservative,” or that they comprise a majority of the Right, then you have bought into the misinformation and have no clue what the difference is between Right and Left.

But that is a subject for other essays.  Back to the tea party.

There were many patriotic people there from both major political parties as well as numerous people who were unaffiliated, or affiliated with smaller parties.  Far from simply being a “Republican Pep Rally,” these were people who deeply believe in America’s founding principles and want America to once again stand astride the world as the land of liberty and prosperity.

After interviewing me, several people asked me to speak when an open mic was declared later, and so I did.  My comments are below:

“Where do we go from here?  We have an ideological fight on our hands.  The Left has made a concerted effort for the last few generations to re-educate the American people in terms of the nature of our rights and the role of responsible government.  We are now at the point where entire generations are wholly ignorant of the nature of our rights and the role of responsible government – the reason there is an America to begin with.  Worse yet, they now have a belief entirely at odds with our founding principles.  You can’t argue something is unconstitutional to a person who doesn’t care about the Constitution.

“Yes, we need to fight them on the issues, but we cannot only focus on them.  We must fight their re-education and re-principling of the American people.

“It won’t be easy; we must compete with public education, the universities, media and Hollywood.

“We have a long road ahead of us, re-asserting justification for the Constitution and the United States, but if the Left were able to pervert it in three generations, surely, right-thinking, sensible Americans can turn the tide and save the greatest experiment upon which humanity has ever embarked.

“Start with our children – the Left already has…”