Dakota Beacon

Are we hearing voices?  It is a little confusing for those of us on the Right and in the Tea Party movement.  On the one hand we have former President Bill Clinton and pundit Juan Williams expressing concern that our “tactics” and “inflammatory” words will stir up the crazies and cause them to go out and commit mayhem.  Maybe someone will blow up a building or hurl an epithet and it will all be our fault.  We will bear heavy responsibility for the killing that will probably take place because we dared to disagree with government policy.  Just in time for the 15-year anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton libeled citizens’ peaceful protest of outrageous spending and taxation and unwanted legislation, comparing it to the unbalanced violence of Tim McVeigh.

Yet we are viewed by others on the Left as so tame that to get us into any trouble activists will need to “infiltrate” our rallies – Jason Levin worked that all out.  Organized mischief makers were supposed to be salted into the peaceful crowds and next to the WWII Vet with the sign that says “Taxed Enough Already” will be an agent – dressed as Hitler - holding up a sign expressing racist sentiment or a misspelled, stupid one, or an anti-American one. This part of the Left is so clueless that they don’t even know why we’re angry. 

They labor under the delusion that we are unhappy to have a Black president (never mind that he could not have been elected without White support and lots of it).  Having spent quite a bit of time around Tea Party people, I can assure these would-be “double agents” that they’re going to stick out like a neon sign.  The people engaged in the Tea Party movement are far too busy addressing things like America going bankrupt, preserving national sovereignty, skyrocketing unemployment, disappearance of the free-market capitalist system, election fraud, spending our next two generations’ earnings, allowing our national defense to fail, and the nationalizing of everything from auto makers to medicine to student loans.  They are worried about their children’s future. Who has time to notice what color the president is when he is hacking away at our Constitution as though he were taking down a hedge with a machete?

Are we dangerous revolutionaries whose words incite weird people to acts of unbridled violence and destruction?  Or are we a bunch of senior citizens simply afraid our grandchildren will inherit a third world dictatorship and endless poverty and lose the freedom for which our generation spent its life’s blood – so mild-mannered that we need to be spiked up by agents posing as “dangerous revolutionaries” or idiots?  Which is it?

Meanwhile we have the likes of Chris Matthews and company picking apart the remarks of Sarah Palin and other patriotic leaders for evidence of “sedition”. So what is this “sedition”?   Well, both Joe Klein and I looked it up.  We found that it means “conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state”.  So far, so good. So just who or what is Joe Klein’s “authority of the state”?  It seems his authority is the personality cult of Barack Obama.  Mine, on the other hand, is the timeless authority of the Constitution.  And right there, Amendment Number One, gives us the right to free speech.  We on the Right realize that while we find the Constitution liberating, Obama finds it “restrictive”.  It was good enough for most of our presidents, from Washington on.  Tea Party participants believe, as did Hillary Clinton (does she ever talk to Bill?), that it is not just our right, but our duty as Americans, to speak out if we believe government policy or leaders are wrong.

Tea Party patriots believe that when we see something which is against common sense or honor or conscience, we must speak out.  Is there something better we should do if we feel our nation is at risk?  The tradition of dissent has always been protected in America and must continue to be.  Growing up (even in public school) in the 50’s and 60’s we were taught the concept, “I don’t agree with what you said but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  What happened to that?  Have Matthews and Klein and company forgotten that without this kind of open discussion and opinion there would be no America?  And without such an open marketplace where would such as Matthews go to peddle his wares?

Taking a closer look at my – and Joe Klein’s – definition of sedition, and given that ours is a nation of laws and not of men, we might want to look at the conduct of this administration.  We have a president who has substantially violated our Constitution.  He has no authority to tell citizens what they must buy with their “after-tax” earnings.  But he has.  He has no authority to take control of private industry, divvy up its stock and give the majority of it to his cronies.  But he did. Since he has become our president our national debt has taken off like a rocket.  Does anyone even know what it is today?  He has put chains on our children and grandchildren in the form of massive insupportable debt, even while his wife, our First Lady, maintains a $1.6 million staff of 24.  

While posing as a “protector of the poor” he lied to gullible voters, leading them to believe in magic.  What did he DO for the poor in his own back yard?  Well, in Washington, D.C., the most promising educational program going was the voucher for qualifying, low-income families, allowing their children to attend the best schools, just like the First Daughters.  This president ended that program, only grandfathering in those already participating when they protested.  Other poor children will never have this opportunity – and the resulting loss for them will actually cost taxpayers more.  But we can’t have just anybody attending Friends School!  So, despite the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he promotes elitist denial of equal opportunity to poor minority children in his hometown.  Some “authority of the state”.  

His primary duty is to defend this nation, as its president.  What has he done instead?  He has run around the globe several times bowing to Arab potentates, insulting our allies, presuming to apologize for our country and its people and our history.  He has deeply insulted our only reliable ally in the Middle East, Israel, by elaborately snubbing their Prime Minister.  He has insulted Poland with cuts in defense and now he has unilaterally decided to cut our nuclear defense system.  No more development of superior weaponry – we are to remain frozen with whatever we have now.  We are going to be the first (and likely the only) world power to disarm.  Well, we have to, don’t you know.  We have been a real nuclear threat to other nations, right?  Let’s see, when was the last time we set off an atomic attack on another country?  Oh, yeah, that would be 1945.  Democrat Harry Truman was the guy whose finger was on the trigger then.  It is interesting to reflect that the Left wrung its collective hands in their concern that Ronald Reagan might prove trigger-happy, when our only atomic attack was ordered by President Truman and Reagan served eight years without launching a single nuclear attack.  (And no, I’m not criticizing Truman here.  He was right.) So it’s hard to make the case that it’s dangerous to let us have these things.

And, by the way, Obama has it posted that no matter what kind of biological, chemical or cyber attack is perpetrated against us we won’t retaliate with nuclear force.  How’s that for an effective deterrent? Every sane person knows that the only way to ensure peace and safety and reign in aggressor nations is to have something in our hand of which they can’t be sure.  (“If we attack Poland, will the U.S. blow us away?  Let’s not find out.”)  It is a given, at least among us grown-ups, that to protect ourselves we should 1) have superior power – nuclear and other, 2) keep it to ourselves just what we have and are capable and willing to use, 3) give moral support to our allies and don’t insult them, and 4) do not give aid and comfort to enemies. How does Obama score on this?  So, here, again, it looks like he’s at least ignoring if not deliberately flouting his duties under our “authority of state”.  We’ve seen this guy attempt to subvert a free election in Honduras; we’ve heard him praise his buddies, the Castros.  Yet he won’t sit down to dinner with the Prime Minister of Israel or even have a photo with him!  

Obama surrounds himself with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn, who look more like threats than the Tea Party crowd, having actually attempted to blow up the Pentagon.  Yet they’re solid citizens if you ask the press “corpse”.  All scary thoughts are supposed to come from the Conservatives and the Tea Party folks, but wasn’t the Unibomber inspired by the environmentalist movement?  Should the followers of Al Gore be held to account for that?  Did the Green community say something that spawned over a decade of random bombings?  Keep watching.  There will be efforts, like the charge of racial slurs, that can’t be backed up even with the motivation of Brietbart’s $100,000 reward for evidence.  (Won’t ANYONE come forward?)   If someone commits an act of violence, you can expect it to be brought to the door of the Tea Party movement.  And I think I’m safe in saying that it will, upon examination, be found to be another lie.

The press is sweating bullets trying to help the rest of the Left discredit the Tea Party people and to intimidate citizens in an effort to drive them away before November.   It won’t work.  The Left thinks we’re stupid – that is the only explanation for these tactics.  They are also out of touch and don’t even understand why we are protesting.  They look into their own twisted souls and find things like racism or violence, which have never been part of the Tea Party protests, and attempt to project them onto us and smear us.  

The Tea Party movement is not about racism or hate.  It’s about love of and pride in country.  It is about love of our children and hopes for their future.  It is about honesty and solvency in government.  It is about independence of Americans and about American sovereignty and security.  It is about reverence for the Constitution which defines us and is an integral part of America becoming the greatest nation on earth; it’s about our desire to preserve our laws and our culture.  It is about the sweet scent of freedom and opportunity; it’s about honor for our fallen heroes.  It is about America.  Freedom is in our blood.  This is w       hy you can’t stop it or destroy it.



Sally Morris is a member of Americans for Constitutional Government.  She wishes to acknowledge the enormous contribution to our resources by author Linda Chavez and recommends the book, Betrayal (2004, Crown Forum, Random House) to patriots everywhere.