Someone just yesterday showed me Noel Polk’s 12/22/09 Starkville Daily News Letter To The Editor, “Why has Tea Party waited until now to complain?”. I hear this question asked often, so I think this late response is still timely.
Polk wrote,
“What I want to know…is where were the Tea Partiers and their self righteousness when George Bush and Dick Cheney began the pointless politically-motivated money-hemorrhaging that’s now spending us into the oblivion that they now blame Democrats for? Would somebody please explain that to me? Please?”
It is unfortunate that Mr. Polk did not recognize that his answer is contained in the very way he asked his question. In his question, Polk correctly pointed out that Bush and Cheney (AND nearly all Democrats, but with many opposing Republicans, he omitted to say) BEGAN “the money-hemorrhaging that’s now spending us into…oblivion”. The “Tea Partiers” only came onto the scene (to strongly “protest” — not weakly “complain”) AFTER the money-hemorrhaging came to be recognized as the new trend of the new administration and its Democrat majority. Conservatives did not agree with Bush’s politically-motivated waste from the start, but for all we knew, that waste could have been a one-time “error”. We who spontaneously rose up to make the Tea Party Movement, did so only later, when it became obvious that Bush’s single error was being multiplied many-fold in the Obama program.
The Tea Partier’s delayed response was not unreasonable, as our founders explained in the Declaration of Independence, when they anticipated the question would be asked of them as to why they did not react sooner to the abuses of the British. They explained,
“…experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves…”
In modern terms, that means reasonable, peace-loving people tend to put up with a lot of abuse before they finally start doing something about the wrong they have been enduring.
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present (administration) is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”
In modern terms, that means the repeated TARP, Stimulus, Bail-Outs, Health-Care and other packages, commitments, taxes, borrow-ings, and paper-money-printing actions being made or attempted by the current administration are not “pointless,” as Polk claims they are, but show themselves to be part of a deliberate unConstitutional design and program to change America into a socialist and poor nation away from the free and prosperous nation it has been up to the arrival of the current administration.
Polk can demean our standing up to such tyranny and national suicide as “self-righteousness” on our part if he wishes, but we Tea Partiers think that we are in good company with our founders who resisted the same abuses with the same motives.
I am glad to see that Polk recognizes that the “politically-motivated money-hemorrhaging” that is going on today, (with near-unanimous approval by the democrats and near-unanimous opposition by the republicans) is a waste that is “spending us into …oblivion”. Since he admits to realizing this hemorrhaging will destroy America-as-we-know-it, perhaps he would consider joining the efforts of Tea Partiers, and other concerned Americans, who are exercising our rights to stop it.
Thank you.
Robert J. Allen, Tea Party member