What We Want

What We the People Who Attended Tea Parties in Body or Spirit Want

Many pundits and leaders suggest the Tea Party demonstrations are an act of “desperation.” Well, if waking up at the eleventh hour to realize our Country has been hijacked elicits a touch of hysteria, then sure, we are feeling desperate. But that is not why the word desperation and others like it seem so carefully chosen. The real idea is to paint the Tea Party movement with broad and disparaging sound bites. That way, hundreds-of-thousands if not millions of protesters can be snidely dismissed, as when critics snigger, “ The ‘teabaggers’ do not even know what they are protesting for,” or when we’re condescendingly referred to as “those people waving teabags around.”

Well, maybe we are just lackeys bussed in by Karl Rove. Or maybe we are all unemployed and upset because our care-package has not yet arrived. Or maybe, just maybe, we know exactly what we want but critics do not like it because that particular sound-bite distills down to Liberty, and in a world crazed by political-correctness, Liberty cannot possibly pertain where guilty Americans are concerned. So for all you moral relativists, we will spell it out:

We want our Government’s current spending binge reduced or repealed as much as possible because we recognize that any tax cuts promised today are nothing but payoffs, and tomorrow’s tax burden will be insufferable. We do not want our grandkids’ kids to live under this yoke!

We want Government to adopt pay-as-you-go spending rules – at all levels! – rules that align with an income based on fair taxation. That means all taxes – Local, State, and Federal – when added together from cradle to grave should never exceed forty-nine percent of a citizen’s total lifetime income. Anything more constitutes slavery. And forty-nine percent should only be called for in times of dire National emergency. Otherwise, a lifetime tax-cap of thirty-three percent comes closer to
keeping faith with the spirit of our heritage. Along with that, some regulation to curb the excesses of Capitalism would be welcome. But replace it with Socialism? No way!

We want the Government the heck out of U.S. Corporations. Let the failures fail and restructure if they can, and otherwise let the rest operate without a political officer looking over their shoulder.

We want to know where the TARP money went and why its fate has been kept secret when we were promised transparency. We want to know who really pulls the strings at the Federal Reserve.

We want energy/environmental policies based on facts and science, not fear enabled by climate-modeling gurus and a PR machine. We want policies that take us into the future without cutting off our past at the knees – policies that build a bridge, not a cliff.

We want our borders closed and illegal immigration stopped. Cold! We want illegal aliens to be treated humanely but not given a free ride or invited gratis into the political arena to become a voter-block for the give-away Left.

We want mandatory photo IDs and proof of citizenship as minimal requirements to participate in elections.

We want the “politically correct” class to show a little more tolerance for those who have shown so much tolerance through the years we allowed political correctness to grow into a monster. Shame on us! It may be late but at last we are paying attention!

We want acknowledgement that, while taking pride in diversity and Religious Freedom, this Country's founding was primarily influenced by Christianity. Yes, the Founding Fathers espoused the separation of Church and State, but not separation from the values and moral imperatives of Religion: “ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These threads run common to all peaceful religions, and we honor them.

We want term limits for all elected officials because career politicians grow corrupt. We need turnover. While we may throw an occasional “baby out with the bath water,” that sacrifice is necessary to purge the cesspool our bath water has become.

We want the First and Second Amendments to stand unsullied and inviolate. Period!

We want volunteerism to mean Volunteer-ism. Making it mandatory is an oxymoron and smacks of indoctrination. It runs contrary to promoting values that might lead one to volunteer of their own Free Will.

We want the Left to stop chipping away at Conservative Values and Morality so as to use social breakdowns as an excuse to codify amorality.

We want all the apologies for our Country’s existence to cease and desist! Give credit where credit is due and recognize that for all the mistakes the United States of America has made, her positive influence far outweighs them.

We want our leaders to stop using the rhetoric of failure. Stop demoralizing our men and women in uniform! We want our Veterans to be honored, not profiled!

We want to retain full control of our National Sovereignty. No treaties attacking our Rights; no bench rulings citing International Law.

We want an end to the vilifying of private sector achievers – the picking out and even cultivation of a few bad apples to create public examples for the purpose of stirring class envy. These attacks really rankle when so many elected officials go unpunished for the parts they have played and continue to play in creating this mess.

We want the restoration of proper checks and balances in our Government. We want to see judges who legislate from the bench get removed from the bench. We want the Executive Branch to be checked when it attempts to sweep whole agencies into its sphere of authority. Where is the due process to either cede such power or proclaim it excessive? We want a
Legislature that is prohibited from squelching or bypassing inconvenient minority dissent.

We want and desperately need journalists to honor the sacred trust bequeathed to them. Report the unvarnished facts without spin; tell the Truth when our elected officials have forgotten how or refuse to.

We want people to wake up and stop mouthing, “ We hope this President is the best and most successful we have ever had.” Think for a moment what that really means: More government takeover of businesses. More government meddling with our Freedoms. More government picking through our pockets. More government Control of our lives until we are so benumbed we no longer remember or care what it means to be Free.

We want to end the rhetoric of race-baiting. We are not immune to the allure of affirmation that would attend a successful Afro-American Presidency. But that does not make this President’s policies correct, which in turn makes knowing how misguided they are all the more painful. None of which makes us racist.

We want the recognition we deserve for holding one of the largest demonstrations in the history of this Country. The Tea Party mobilized hundreds-of-thousands if not millions of people, and for every one who attended there were dozens more who wanted to. This was a peaceful outpouring of True Patriotic Concern on a grand scale. There were no vandalized buildings, no tear-gas grenades, no arrests, and we even picked up our litter. What news could be bigger? But besides “desperation” and "teabaggers" all we get from the critics is, “ What’s next?” Please take this as a small down payment.

We want our fellow Americans to wake up and realize that labeling your conservative friends and neighbors domestic security risks is an act of despicable profiling. Our Freedoms – those of all American’s – are being systematically dismantled.

If all this makes us desperate then we are guilty as charged. But we are not going away quietly, and the more people we reach the more who will join us in the drive to renew the Vision of Our Country's Founding Fathers. That is what we want!

Respectfully yours,
We the People