Salisbury Tea Party Part II

We have gathered here today to make our voices heard by all our politicians, especially those in Washington, but what is it we are saying? 240 years ago our countrymen dumped the king’s tea into Boston Harbor. Why? Because the king and parliament had adopted policies and imposed taxes that were destroying their ability to pursue their economic happiness. They understood, as we are beginning to understand, that economic freedom is the foundation from which our liberty flows. If the government has the right to our income before we do, we are merely slaves given an allowance. If the government has the right to determine how we utilize and dispose of our property, we are merely caretakers. If the government thinks that it, rather than our Creator, endow us with our rights, then we are mere subjects, dependent upon the whims of those in power. This nation was conceived to remove man from the arbitrary power of kings and despots and allow him to shape his own destiny apart from the dictates of a distant government that knows nothing of his needs and desires.

This nation was founded by men who were subjects of a king and who rose up to remove the shackles of tyranny to embrace the privileges and responsibilities of liberty. They believed that it was the individual, not the government, who knew how best to order his affairs for the preservation of his God given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For almost one hundred years we have allowed a government conceived for the preservation of those rights to mutate into a state that has reduced us to subjects once again. We have traded the privileges and responsibilities of individual liberty for the promise of physical and economic security, promises the majority are finally beginning to find empty. We are finally waking up to the fact that the siren song of a state run utopia is merely the prelude to our enslavement. The declaration states that “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while the evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” This has been true for decades but we are finally seeing the writing on the wall and now we realize that our silence will result in the final destruction of the vision of the founders and the nation itself. We find the evils sufferable no longer!

For too long we have allowed our government to make war on our faith, our values and our liberty. And we have been complicit, allowing them to tax and regulate ever larger portions of our lives in the hope that we will be more secure. We can shout, we can complain but we must also pull ourselves off the government teat and take responsibility for ourselves. If we are going to raise our voices and say that we want our liberty back, we must once again take responsibility for ourselves. It is we who must provide for our retirement, save for a rainy day, take responsibility for our health care and the education of our children. It may seem a sacrifice to us but it was everyday life for our grandparents and great-grandparents.

We stand on the edge of the abyss. If we allow the final nails to be driven into the coffin that was the founder’s vision, there will be no return. But we cannot merely shout “stop here” for the statist will merely pause until we become accustomed to our new bonds and then move ahead once again to add anew. We must put men and women in office who will dismantle the fascist power that has evolved over the last hundred years and return to us the constitutional republic we were created to be. We are not powerless yet but it is we who must take up the banner once held by Washington and Jefferson and Adams and Madison, the banner of Liberty, not for a moment, but for the duration of the struggle. The fate of our great country rests upon our shoulders. May we not shrink under the burden but stand boldly in the face of tyranny and in so doing, make our selves worthy heirs of the American Revolution.

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