My earnest apologies for the unintended length of this post. This seems to happen on all of my political posts.

Did you hear about the Tea Party? No, not the fun kind. I’m referring to the nationwide peaceful tax protest that occurred a couple of weeks ago. TEA stands for ‘Taxed Enough Already’, but the event is actually named after the famous ‘tea parties’ that occurred at the beginning of America’s stand against England (the one in Boston was not the only one or even the first one, just the best publicised). These modern-day ‘Tea Parties’ (they are planning another for Independence Day), like the originals, occurred all over the nation, but were organised on a local level. As such, they are just the type of event Daddy most enjoys speaking at.

Daddy keynoted the Tea Party in Ripley, Mississippi. He worked in the kingship of Christ, the historical understanding of the founding of the American Republic, the massive differences between a republic and a democracy and the problems with the latter, the duties of Christian families, the importance of a right foundation, and lots of Thomas Jefferson quotes, and ended up with one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard him give. (Direct quotes are italicised in the following summary)

He began with a quote from Benjamin Franklin, who, when asked after the 1787 Constitutional Convention, ‘What kind of government did you give us?’, replied, ‘A republic, if you can keep it’. The United States of America was not founded as a democracy (a system which eighteenth-century writer Alexander Tytler said ’cannot exist as a permanent form of government’), but as a constitutional representative republic.

Simply stated, we were given a constitutional democratic republic built on Biblical principles and what used to be called ‘ordered liberty’.

A pure democracy is the rule of men, a representative republic is the rule of law. A pure democracy is no more than mob rule, in which the rights of the minority are disregarded, but in a representative republic, majority rules, but the rights of the minority are protected. In a pure democracy the passions of the masses can be used by the most shrewd, ruthless, corrupt, and manipulative in society, so that a handful of would-be elitists, feigning compassion, can increase their own power using the promise of public money, so that the people will vote for their own enslavement. Democracies reward politicians, republics promote statesmen.

Franklin’s remark, Daddy told the audience, was a challenge: can we keep the last vestiges of constitutional liberty, or maybe even restore and reclaim the republic we have lost. After quoting Jefferson’s remark, ‘All governments rule by the consent of the governed’, he answered the obvious question, why then have most peoples throughout history chosen tyranny?:

Because liberty is hard. Liberty gives us the freedom to fail; liberty gives us the freedom to go broke; liberty gives us the right to be poor; and since liberty gives us the freedom to think and speak, liberty gives us the right to be wrong and make fools of ourselves. Liberty gives the right, while we are equal in our creation and equal before the law, to end up with unequal results.

After getting the attention of his audience, the speech took a somewhat surprising turn. Daddy spoke of the work of Christ and the grace of God in his life. He believes that if it were not for this gracious work, he would have fulfilled his early ambitions to ‘be one of those people taking [our] liberty’.

But what does all that ‘pie-in-the-sky’ philosophy and theology have to do with an anti-tax rally? Everything, Daddy believes. He quoted from the Scriptures, ‘If the foundations be destroyed what can the righteous do?’ By not answering foundational questions, Daddy said, we are doomed to keep wasting time and energy on the same faulty solutions that got us into this mess.

With very few exceptions, the current socialistic tree with its bitter fruit that the humanistic, liberal Democrats in power are growing had its roots deeply in the previous administration of humanistic, neoconservative Republicans . . .Are we here for nothing but to reclaim the White House for the GOP?

Quoting Richard Weaver’s statement, ‘Ideas have consequences’, and R J Rushdooney’s claim, ‘All ideas are inherently religious’, Daddy pointed out that we cannot ’segment our minds’ and believe that moral issues like abortion are religious, but economic issues such as skyrocketing taxes are not. 

Ultimately, all income redistribution and burdensome tax schemes are idolatrous and anti-liberty at their roots. 

The Bible says, ‘The earth is the Lord’s’,while the government claims, ‘The earth is the government’s’. By taxing property, for instance, the government lays claim to the land; with income taxes, it says that the labour of men belongs to it. Current taxation levels, Daddy said, are based on the idea that everything belongs to a messianic government.

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights . . .’ This was of course written by Thomas Jefferson, certainly among the most atheistic of the Founding Fathers. Yet he, along with the other Founders, acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence that, ‘There is a Creator, rights come from Him, and government exists to protect those rights’. This, Daddy believes, is the origianal American view of law and government.

The Founders built a government based on certain understandings that are religious at their core: Man is sinful. Power corrupts. Given control of the government and free rein to tax and make laws, man, even with the best intentions, will consume power and wealth, oppress his neighbours, and take life, liberty, and property from them.

Based on these understandings, the Founding Fathers created a limited government. The people, acting through the representatives of the free and independent states, created a constitution assigning a limited number of competing powers (what we would call checks and balances) to the three branches of the federal government. The Constitution does not empower the Federal government to intrude on our lives or lord over the states; rather, it was designed specifically to chain down the federal government.

But in the twentieth century, a new set of foundational principles had developed. The American system of government was now based on the assumptions that, ‘God either does not exist or is irrelavent; evolution is our creator; man is basically good–only his environment, or lack of education, or lack of money, or race, makes him do bad things; therefore the moneyed, educated elitists have the right and the duty to use the power of government to help speed up evolution and advance civilisation, and to either improve the lot of those on the lower rungs of society, or eliminate them.’ In other words, ‘We are going to improve the lot of mankind if it kills them’, and according to Daddy, it often does.

We have, as individuals, as a state, and as a nation, accepted the premise that rights come from government and government exists to help people. This is the most bloody and tyrannical idea in human history . . . The question of who God is, who man is , what rights are and where they come from, and the proper role of government, are more than just theory; they are life and death.

The economic crisis is fruit the roots of which are in the hearts of ‘we the people’ who have elected leaders that think government is the solution for everything.

Finally, Daddy offered six things we can do (or stop doing):

      1. Stop worshipping Washington and the government

     2. Stop believing lies and letting other people do your thinking for you

      3. Start with yourself and your family

      4. Stop being part of the problem

      5. Get involved at the state and local level first

      6. Vote principle over party politics

He closed with the words of Stonewall Jackson: ‘Duty is ours, results are God’s’.

If we do not have repentance, revival, and reformation, we will surely have escalating revolution and tyranny.

Stay tuned! We hope to have a video of this speech uploaded in a few days. I’m so proud of my Daddy. 8)