What I Said at the Tea Party
The crowd in Fayetteville for the Tea Party could not have numbered less than 1,000. I would guess 1,500. They were very fired up even though I got there close to the end because I had to work until 5 and drove down from Bentonville.
I will post some pics later from my family, please excuse it if most of them are of me because, as I said, my family was running the camera.
State Representatives Mark Martin and Jon Wood were both in the audience. No elected officials were allowed to speak. As it turned out, I was the last speaker (besides MC Laurie Masterson).
Read the speech I gave on the jump......
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Wednesday, April 15, 2009
2 Comments:
Thank you for that Laurie, and thank you fellow citizens who are here today to exercise your rights as a free people. May this be a day that you describe to your grandchildren with these words: “I was there. I was there standing tall on that first day of protest. On that first day we began to get our country back.”
The control freaks in Washington who believe they know how to spend our money better than we do have not changed their spots in my lifetime. Here is how Ronald Reagan described their policies in 1986: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
That twenty-three year old description still rings true today. So our current predicament did not come about overnight, and we won’t fix it overnight. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and for too long too many otherwise decent folk have not paid that price. The result? The Greek philosopher Plato called it over 2,000 years ago when he said, “The price that good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
And so here we are, in this mess. Fifty years ago we were the largest creditor nation on earth, now we are the largest debtor nation in history. Our manufacturing base is gone. We used to out-produce the world, now we out-source our production. We find that our supposed economic gains since about 1973 were shams, built on the twin illusions of debt and inflation. The federal government in Washington D.C. now has regulations telling us how many gallons of water our toilet is allowed to hold, and will soon begin dictating what type of light bulbs we will be permitted to use to illuminate our own homes.
When this day is done, our real work begins. We must fan out across this state and tell our friends and neighbors this simple truth. "Good government is not someone else's responsibility. It is not something that will just take care of itself. It is not something that happens by accident while we watch ballgames on TV. This is America. Here, if we don't ensure that our government is just, then it won't be. It will progressively rob and oppress us." -
I understand that one of the rallying points of this event is that “America is Good”. Of course, no one but God alone is truly good, but I will agree with that statement insofar as it applies to men- with one reservation. America may be good, but the Federal government in Washington D.C. is not America, WE ARE.
When a mother sings lullabies to her infant child, that’s good. When a father teaches his son how to catch a baseball, that’s good. When grandma bakes an apple pie to take to a shut-in from church, that’s good. When a man does an honest day’s work, that’s good too. When a wife and husband embrace and give each other love and support, that’s good. That’s what America does, and it’s good.
Now what does the Federal government do? Well, they recently voted if you total it up, to give over $2.8 TRILLION from your children’s future earnings to high-rolling Wall Street banksters who got greedy and over-leveraged their phony assets. They could have given every family of four in the United States over $36,000 cash. THAT would have stimulated the economy. That would have saved people’s homes and gotten families out of debt. But they did not do that. They borrowed it from the Chinese communists and gave it to their friends. And your children will get the tab.
I think Americans do good things. But the bail out was not a good thing. It was done by a federal government that was not the same thing as the country. They put on a big show, the Democracy Production, to give We the People the impression that we are still in charge, but once in a while, like with this bailout, the mask falls off, the illusion slips away, and we see that we have work to do.
Since I am speaking of things that the Federal government has done that are not good, I should mention that not only has the Federal Government burdened the younger generation with colossal debt, it has also worked to reduce the number of young people around to help pay that debt. It is the Federal government which has imposed legalized abortion on all fifty states despite the will of the people in most of those states to limit or even end it. Since that time, over 45 million innocent American lives have been lost to this madness.
Imagine every man, woman and child killed in every state of the union between the Mississippi River and the Rocky mountains, from the southern tip of Texas to the Canadian border. Imagine the population of those 17 states completely wiped out. That’s how many children have been lost since the federal government imposed legalized abortion on this country. Al-Quida could not do us such damage even in their wildest dreams of hate and madness. So I can accept that America is good, but the government has been captured by forces that are not good.
With God’s help, there are solutions. And when I say “with God’s help”, that is not just an expression. The best defense against big government is a virtuous population, for such people have no need of rulers. They take care of themselves and the work things out among themselves. I believe that Daniel Webster once said that there has never been for any great length of time a corrupt government over a virtuous people, or a good government over a corrupt people.
To maintain power over us, Washington must divide us against one another. Rich against poor, young against old, male against female, white against black. Washington has no interest in resolving the differences among us, for then there would be no need for them as the referee. They nurture divisions among us because living off of them is their stock and trade.
Together though, there are things we can do to restore our Republic. Time does not permit me to speak of them here. I will say that I certainly endorse Jason Sheppard’s idea to change ballot access laws so that we are no longer trapped in the game of voting for the lesser of two evils, or even the same evil in different doses. We should not expect either of the two Washington-based political parties who led us into this mess to lead us out of it.
Do not worry that Mr. Sheppard’s proposal is an Arkansas measure rather than a national one. The dynamic now is that the Federal government is working with the state governments to restrain the people. Our goal must be to get the people and the states working together to restrain the federal government. It does no good to reform Washington until we first reform Little Rock. The states must first be turned from doing Washington’s bidding, and once again be made to do the people’s. Once that it done, from that secure foundation, we can move to restore the central power to its proper size and scope.
Arkansas, we must fix Arkansas first. Fix Arkansas First, and have faith in our countrymen that Texans will fix Texas, Hoosiers will fix Indiana, and Hawkeyes will fix Iowa. And if enough of us do that, Washington will be fixed by default. Thank you for your attention, and may God bless the real America.
Thank you,
Young Kincade over at the Arkansas Project has pics and coverage of the Little Rock rally, and links to reports from across the state. Put this url in your browser...
http://www.thearkansasproject.com/report-from-little-rock-tax-day-tea-party-protest/#more-6161
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