An Open Letter To My Liberal Friends

re: the recent "tea parties"

Dear Liberals,

I know you want to dismiss our movement as racist. I know that you think we don't care about "the most vulnerable" among us. I know you want to claim we are anti-government and worse, even terrorists (or at least wannabes). I know that some of you think we are mouth breathing rednecks. I understand your ideological bias. I have my own biases and I catch myself in them as well sometimes. It is that blind bias that sometimes keeps us from seeing the forest because all of the trees that seem to get in the way of our view. Let me attempt to help you understand exactly what we are doing and who we are.

The tea party movement is not just about paying taxes. We all must pay taxes to support a certain amount of government. We need to educate our children, protect our citizens and ensure that we have adequate infrastructure to provide those critical services. It's not about Republican or Democrat. It's about responsible representatives who view taxes as the people's money, not their private little slush fund to favor whatever special interest group that contributes the most to their re-election fund.

Many of you want to point a finger at Bush and the Republicans for their irresponsibility and that's a fair charge. It's also why the Republicans lost their majority. Ostensibly, it's why Obama was elected. He promised to change the way Washington DC conducted business. He promised to attack wasteful spending and to end earmarks (even though he was one of the bigger practitioners of the earmark art).

Instead, Obama and the Democrats are on track; not to just increase the national debt like Bush and company, but to double the debt before his first term is even ended. Indeed, Bush was bad for the budget, but comparatively speaking, Bush was an amateur at spending. Obama, Reid and Pelosi are consummate professionals!

The people in the tea party movement are not a bunch of selfish, gun-toting racists. We are middle class Joes who have mortgages, car payments, credit cards and utility bills. We get up in the morning and go to work so we can pay our bills and our fair share of the taxes. We are patriotic Americans and we love our country and our liberties. We are not anti-government - indeed, we want to preserve our republican form of government. Many of us are veterans who took an oath to defend this great land from all enemies, foreign and domestic, who seek to steal our liberties and our way of life and we don't believe we've ever been released from that oath. Most of us believe in a God, but there are also some amongst us who do not. It's not a requirement. We are not Timothy McVeigh wannabes plotting some heinous act of insurrection. We abhor that kind of thinking.

Many of our detractors point out that the original Tea Party in 1773 was about taxation without representation and it is our duly elected Representatives who are doing what we elected them to do. Their point would be valid if we were protesting present day taxes. That's not what we are doing. What we are protesting is the taxes our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be forced to pay to service the debt Obama and company are incurring today. Our grandchildren aren't asking for this. They don't even know it's coming and before they are old enough to drink from a cup, they are already tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

How can you not see what the future holds for our kids? The party rages on, but at some point in the not too distant future, the bill will come due. Obama and the Congress will be forced to raise taxes and it won't be just on those making $250,000 per year. It is impossible to tax that bracket enough to pay for these excesses. The costs will be passed down to you, me and then on to our progeny and it won't be cheap!

People cannot be taxed into prosperity. It doesn't work that way. Government cannot create wealth. What government can do is provide for a stable and unobtrusive environment so that good jobs can be created and money can be invested. In that sense, it's not about the government actually doing anything to create prosperity, it's government staying out of the way.

What it all boils down to is we want what you should want for yourself, your children and their children. We want opportunity, liberty and the ability to own our lives. We don't care about the color or gender of whoever sits in the Oval Office. We don't want to overthrow the government or march on the White House with pitchforks and torches. All we want is for government to be our servant, not the other way around.

As Lincoln reminded us at Gettysburg, government should be OF the people, BY the people and FOR the people, not a bunch of career corruptocraticans whose only real interest is keeping their cushy job. That, my friends, is what our movement is about.

VW