g.n.benefield, Ph.D., MS, MA
The problems with the Tea Party movement and libertarians, author included, are we are creating and are active in many splinter groups with divergent goals and visions and efforts. We must look back to see forward. We are dissatisfied with both political parities while the prospects of creating a third party will work into the hands of the statists forcing an all powerful centralized statistist federal government. Washington and De Tocqueville led the way for today’s struggle by warning us, like in Scrooge, by warning us about the sins of our ways.
The movement must unite in defense of the Constitution. Groups like RagingElephants, the Hope for America Coalition, American Majority, Red State, and Political Chips are linked in this unity. Each advocates, supports, and educates the movement in the tactics to retake school boards, city councils, state legislatures, and Congress. We will win by politically taking back the diverse local and state power a centralized government has taken from us.
The diverse rights protected in the Constitution have been successfully taken away from corporations, from individuals, and the states. The taking of these rights do not to serve local and state powers or a more democratic base, but to empower the federal government and the executive branch as the sovereign. Almost all charitable establishments have more or less fallen into the hands of the central government. The federal government has exclusively taken the role of giving bread and shelter to the hungry, aid and refuge to the ill, and has made itself the reliever of all miseries of citizens and non-citizens.
Reflection upon the causes that are undermining our Republic, it occurs as matter of serious concern the role of parties and their manipulations by geographical and population discrimination: Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views.
“One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburning which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.”
“Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts…” President George Washington expressed that Liberty is the binding thread of the Republic. His remarks were in the Farewell Address of 1796. Washington defined the role of government, “The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize.”
The Republic was not made for majority rule. The system of checks and balances was to protect and defend the Constitution and its limitations on centralization of power in the federal government and the executive branch and the tyranny of the majority. Citizen sovereignty is the foundation of power. State’s were given the most power of any government entity by retaining powers not specifically given to the federal branches of government.
Education has clearly become a national concern with children being taken from the parent choice of schools, control of funding and education quality. The federal government has undertaken political action to consolidate all schools, public and private through No Child Left Behind and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that did not provide adequate funding to states while establishing impossible outcome standards. In 2010 the testing standards require 87% of students pass state math and reading standards at 85%. In the near future, the requirement will be 100%. General education and special education students are measured by the same assessment in most cases. Only 3% of special education students are allowed to take the alternate assessment. Schools now teach benchmarks, facts that are identified to be in the required state assessments mandated by the federal government.
Are all democratic peoples instinctively drawn toward centralization? Examination of democracy in Europe would suggest centralization is the destiny of democracy, though the citizens have not lost all independence. The trend toward centralization in Europe and Canada may be explained from their history of having never known freedom, or that it has not known freedom for a long time. It was in this environment that equality and liberty has been attracted to the flame of old habits, traditions, and doctrines of centralization.
The early English settlers discovered a society rooted in democracy and liberty in their New World settlements. They had the structure of justice, the jury. They had new freedoms – freedom of speech, of press, and individual freedom. These settlers secured their independence and built free institutions and sustained their liberty through many internal and external trials.
For the United States of America, freedom is old. Equality is relatively new. As Christmas Eve departed and the New Year entered with 2010, the Democrat peoples government has presented the Republic the form of one lone central power – the federal government. Checks and balances provided in the Constitution have fallen to a one party system. The two party system has failed in two respects.
The party of the Republic, the GOP was drawn to the flame of centralization, leaving the courtyard of liberty through the illusionary gate of equality. In the contemporary definition of equality, certain groups of people are selected to have protected status and additional rights in the name of equality. Equality is no longer of opportunity, but of outcomes. The protected classes and outcomes are defined and administered by the central government with the support of nearly one-third of the GOP (rhinos).
How did this turn from liberty and the spirit of independence change course so radically? This change is not result of natural evolution of democracy, but through the institutions and manner in which equality is defined and administered.
The revolution was founded in a struggle against aristocracy. To prevail, a central government was established to repulse the aristocracy and to protect the new confederation of colonies. First articles, then the Constitution, government centralization, weak as it seems in present light, was strong enough to protect the country for forces without, but not the sense of liberty within. Following the Civil War, the centralization of federal government was further increased.
As the aristocracy before it, the centralized Democrat government has developed its own aristocracy that dreads the petty tyranny (independence) of the people. The Constitution establishes sovereignty in the people, a situation that threatens the Democrat aristocracy as much as liberty threatened the British aristocracy in the 1700’s.
In what was perceived a classless society is now a system of classes. The Democrat peoples party, in the name of the people, established a permanent poverty class – the result of a declared war on poverty. They have established a near permanent ruling aristocracy of the rich – the result of a selection and tax system that prohibits the poor and the middle class from reaching the aristocracy.
The Democrat peoples party seeks to govern the people as a whole, not individuals with individual rights. Their centralized government systematically forces a one size fits all solution for any problem to protect the aristocracy. The “cars for clunkers” rewarded some and punished others. The executive order establishing Cap&Trade (Oct. 5, 2009) rewards the aristocracy (Al Gore, his cronies, and government), health insurance reform rewards the power of centralization while keeping the independence of citizens controlled by treating them as a whole.
The aristocracy of family and wealth ensures their continued dominance with a collaborated strategy. The wealthy helps the chosen who share the commitment to the aristocracy, the class system, and the commitment to a centralized government. The Democrat peoples party has through their system of patronage. The courts through a strict set of self perpetuating legal procedures protect the lawyers and the courts from oversight by the centralized government or the sovereignty of the citizens through the Constitution.
The Federal Reserve can trace its aristocracy to the ancient rich families of New England and England, even in contemporary times. The political party system dissuades usurpers like Sarah Palin from ascendency. She had committed no crime against the centralized aristocracy except professing independence and being from a modest, non-wealthy class. She was a threat to the aristocracy – the Democrat peoples party and the rhinos of the GOP.
George Washington advised us, “I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence; that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual; that the free Constitution, which is the work of your hands, may be sacredly maintained; that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue; that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.”
intent of President Washington was that the aristocracy of democracy was liberty, not a class of people. The Constitution was sacred, founded in God by Christians and Jews. The Constitution was seen as written and adopted as sacred, behind Scripture and the Ten Commandments.
For those of us in the Tea Party movement, the” love of liberty” is present within “every ligament of our hearts as Washington said. We treasure unity to the Constitution and its limited powers as a main pillar of our real independence, the support (not to provide) of our tranquility at home, our peace abroad; of our safety; of our prosperity; and our liberty which we so highly prize.”
For we the people to be independent, our states must first be independent. As we patriots enter the political fight of 2010 as libertarian protectors of the Constitution, against the self-made class of aristocrats using democracy as the tool to be the usurpers of the Constitution’s power; we have to be clear – it is a battle of politics. The Republican and Democrat aristocracy is the enemy of liberty and libertarians in both parties. In Russian revolutionary terms, it is we, the non-political classes, the proletariat within each party that need to stand up against the oppressors. We the people in both parties must unite and revolt with our votes.
This is a political battle against impossible odds, much as the 300 Spartans who led the battle against tyranny and to give Athens and other Greek cities time to save their liberty. We need to capture 79 congressional districts from a nation where 19 cities elect a majority of Congressmen.
We need to first take back the party system. We need to take back the precinct party offices, local government and school boards. In place of a third party, displaced Republicans need to take back the party. JFK Democrats need to take back their party. We do not wish to replace one fascist party with another, but re-frame the debate over democracy back into the constraints of our founding document.
As Republicans, we need to take back 40 senate seats. There are only 8 seats to be gained, with a possibility of 20. Anything short of a 40 seat win is less than a victory in an off year election. Numerically, the senate seats offer the best opportunity, however, only 17 are up for election and only 8 are really attainable. We will win only when city, suburb, and rural voters unite under the Constitution and its conservative principles – independence and liberty.
As we make gains, there will be violence from the statists, as in Germany, England, France, and Russia. The think tank for the Obama, Pelosi, Reid counter-revolution against the Constitution and the attack on liberty is Harvard, Yale, and Princeton universities. In August, the Trilliteral group, a printing concern of these universities published and distributed The Coming Insurrection. The book calls for anarchists and leftists to rebel against the country, its institutions, and its people, the unprotected groups. The book led the insurrections of several years ago in France. If one watches carefully, this form of terrorism is beginning to be reported.
A second source of violence is from the president’s right arm, the union “thugs” that have physically beaten Tea Party patriots and created false images and blamed property and physical violence on the Tea Party movement, later found to be false. There has not been one act of violence by anyone in the movement.
There will be a time when the statists, those committed to the undoing of the Constitution, will witness they are losing and they will respond as members in Congress and the Administration have already threatened, “With any possible means.”
To avoid this violence, we need to remove the image of a people in rebellion against the central government. We need to take back local government and state government. We need to throw off the reins of federal mandates and funding that usurp state sovereignty. States like Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Wyoming, Utah, and others become politically self-sufficient and reject all federal monies. Federal projects within states should come with no reigns or conditions. States need fund their own budgets within their means.
France has had a number of constitutions since the revolution. The US is the longest standing democracy. The goal of Obama and the statists is clear now – fundamental change away from the Constitution. We must take him at his word, not like Rush and O’Reilly. Rush has gone on and on about the hypocrisy of Obama. Obama is only hypocritical if he is not usurping the powers restrained under the Constitution. When he says he will force Cap&Trade and Climate Change policies on the US, he did just that without legislative action or treaty or with the consent of the governed. He did it by executive order on October 5. When he says he may not run in 2012, I believe him. I believe he will try to change the system by then.
The thought everyone is having – in the Congress, the administration, and all sides aware of the nature and scope of this political battle is, when liberty is defeated, will the libertarians and Constitutionalists go quietly into the night? How long will the oath keepers remain neutral? Will the oath keepers go quietly in to the night?
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