Speakers include
Matt Wingard, Doug Keller and
Lew Barnes.
Hopefully, a little wind-down time at The Ship, a walk to the Court House, and the Rally at the Court House starting at six.
Don't be surprised if it takes a little more time for things to come together. Our local tea party folks are a truly
ad hoc group. Meeting with, and talking with, the folks who have volunteered to put this on, these are "really" spontaneous folks, without a larger organization to depend upon, simply asking you to decide whether or not you're fed-up enough to add your body, your voice, to a demonstration against the entitlement mind-set of government. State legislators, like Betsy Johnson, Debbie Boone and Brad Witt are absolutely clueless when it comes to the Tea Party Movement. The campaign checks and the political support they receive from the SEIU, AFSCME, the OEA and NEA, and the ONA has served them well. These aren't unions like the traditional trades. The blue collar guys have been left in the dust.
Today's "union movement" is the largest supporter of increase government regulation and control, bigger government, greater regulation and some of the craziest beliefs, most notably their convictions about the scare of Man Made Global Warming and an utter inability to view investment and jobs as anything other than threatening the Environment.
What do you need to do? Simply show up and be counted.
I won't have a sign. I won't join in in any of the attempts to "motivate" the crowd with mind-numbingly dumb chants. I'm not a automaton of the Right. Just as I could never have been an automaton of the Left in younger days.
We, as Americans, are asserting our right to peaceably assemble, to petition our government, to seek a redress of our grievances. This right of petition dates to the
Magna Carta. 795 years ago, it was established in law that we, the people, have a right to have our voices heard.
There are two types of rights; inalienable rights and indefeasible rights. An indefeasible right is one which cannot be deprived the individual without his consent. An inalienable right is one which an individual cannot give away or dispose of, even if one wishes.
The right to assemble, the freedom of political speech, these are inalienable rights. The right to property, to be secure in our homes against unreasonable search and seizue, these are inalienable rights. Our national government was established on the recognition that we, as free people, are endowed with these inalienable rights, and that no government, no group of petty tyrants, have either the authority or the ability to deprive us of these rights. They are as much a part of us as are our eyes, our skin, our sense of touch, taste and texture.
There is no alien race that is vastly superior to us, recently arrived, that is attempting to dominate our lives, our economic system, our beliefs in right or wrong. These are not angels that we are assembling to oppose. These are regular folks who for years have felt free to admonish us because we celebrate our liberty and freedom more than the imposed solutions to problems they have dreamed up. We are regular folks, too.
We are not smarter. We are not better. We are not wrong, for all that.
We are different.
We respect the differences that exist between people. We respect the individual more than we respect the coercive power of groups. We would prefer to be left alone.
The Tea Party Movement exists to redress our grievances. Government power, authority and taxes have grown to a point where the individual's rights have been lost in the rush to provide solutions to social justice demands of large groups; SEIU, OEA, NEA, AMFSCME, etc. Or, rather, Big Government.
We are asking that our government recognize the need for redress, a re-balancing of the claims of social justice to those of individual rights and liberties. The silly and petty rules and regulations of our government have grown to a point where serious folks simply shrug their shoulders and turn their backs to the increasing encroachment of the victim class as it proceeds toward its defining an environmental and economic utopia that is irrelevant, delusional and wasteful. It's time for the adults to have their say.
I hope to see you there, today. Not to shout. Not to act up. Not to be ridiculous. There is enough ridiculous in my life already.
I want you to join me, even if you don't know me, to present yourself as a person willing to commit to the idea of liberty and freedom. Just by being there.
