What is the Tea Party? A little clarification

Many people, especially liberals and those who are comfortable in watching the mainstream/biased news media, have no idea what the Tea Party is about, why it started up and who it’s comprised of, in addition to what it represents.

Instead of attending a Tea Party rally or having a conversation with a Tea Party Patriot, these uninformed citizens will parrot everything they’ve been told to think about the Tea Partiers (known as Teabaggers by the mainstream media & liberal elites), despite everything they hear being extremely biased, hateful and based purely on opinion of an idea that’s been implanted in their mind, since they’ve had no physical experience with the movement. Without questioning, they call us racists, bigots, stupid, ignorant, extremists, terrorists, astroturf, and bible-bangers, just to name a few.

I’ve been involved with the Tea Party movement for my own reasons since the beginning. I didn’t attend a rally until the first Tax Day on April 15, 2009, but I considered myself a Tea Partier and Tea Party Patriot as soon as the idea was realized nearing the end of February of that year.

As a Conservative, I had become fed up with government legislation as usual. I was watching our leaders throw our taxpayer money down the drain on frivolous things and my train of thought wasn’t being represented by the representatives that we voted into office. It was time to step up or shut up. I, along with millions of others, chose to step up… and we’re still standing to this day.

In the beginning…

Before the Tea Party, fiscally conservative Americans were getting upset with the spending spree that Government has been on since 2008 with taxpayer money. It was only around the end of 2008 where people started to wake up, as spending had been out of control for a while before then, but nothing like this – and the costs were not adding up simply due to the war.

People were getting fed up with the following:

A. Expanding, Big Government

B. Excessive & Irresponsible Spending:
1. the first stimulus package (which was passed by GW Bush and a liberal Congress had a large negative outcry and was ignored – cost: $168B)
2. TARP (which was passed by GW Bush and a liberal Congress – this had an enormous outcry, much like the Stimulus Bill that passed earlier in the year, and again the people, were not listened to – cost: $700B)
3. the Auto Bailout (passed by Obama and a liberal Congress – again, met with enormous outcry, like the previous bills before it… and ignored – cost: $81.8B
4. Homeowner Assistance Plan (again, met with opposition and ignored – cost: $275B)
5. Total costs, before the formation of the Tea Party: $1.224 Trillion ($1,224,800,000,000.00)

C. People were not being listened to by the government and mass media was misrepresenting the information that the people were receiving. If you tried to contact your representative in the Senate or House, you couldn’t get through, you’d receive a voice-mail message, or you’d talk to their assistant who would “take a message.”

The mainstream media ignored the dissent of the people and refused to question the administration about any of the ridiculous spending taking place.

D. The mainstream media was also not fully vetting Barack Obama as a viable candidate for the most powerful office in the world, as President of the United States. If not for conservative entertainment talk shows (on television & radio), we still wouldn’t know who he is. Even to this day, the mainstream media refuses to treat him like any other President… and they refuse to offer any tough questions during interviews or report facts to the citizens of this country. They haven’t been doing their job and they’ve shown obvious bias since 2007, prior to the 2008 elections.

The Tea Party started as a result of all of this, but not until Rick Santelli of CNBC actually ranted on live television about the astronomical spending of the Obama Administration, calling for a Tea Party. He was mocked by his colleagues and the liberal mainstream media, but his words were heard by the American populace, thanks to conservative radio/television and Fox News, who all reported on this.

About one week later in late February, Tea Party protests broke out across America on several different dates.

The first nationally organized party was April 15, tax day, 2009.

Looking at the above, it can easily be assessed as to why there’s been this uprising of American taxpayers. They’ve been taxed without representation for quite a long time, now, with no end in sight, their (our) voices unheard. The original Boston Tea Party was derived from the same reasoning. The colonists were not represented in government/legislation, but England continued to tax them, despite their numerous outcries prior to the movement which eventually lead to the Revolutionary War.

Constitution-Bound: One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

While the spending was running rampant, the debt was increasing to astronomical numbers that we couldn’t even conceive of ever paying back. Even though Obama promised to lower the federal budget and eliminate a deficit, the deficit continues to grow into even bigger numbers than we’d ever have thought possible. The deficit in 2008 under Bush was $700B, in 2009 under Obama it was $1.4T and in 2010, so far, it’s $1.3T. The government continues to borrow money from our political enemies (China), giving them more political power and creating a worthless USD. This borrowing and spending, and the addition of taxes is going to enslave generations of Americans to come for the foreseeable future, unless something is done here and now. President Bush was responsible for adding $2.5T to the national debt. Obama is expected to add $4.9T by 2016, just by the bills he’s passed thus far. This doesn’t include any spending down the pike that may or may not be coming.

It wasn’t until this had been talked about, that Americans had seriously started looking back to the Founders for help and guidance. People started reading and asking questions about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. We started holding politicians accountable for their actions, by holding them to new and Constitutionally Conservative standards.

When we had a political foothold on the Hill (really only a few months after its’ beginnings), the Tea Party movement, that was built from fiscal conservatism and responsibility, began to call out the corruption in government, the lies and backdoor deals of politicians, the pork bills that were piggy-backing on bills that legislators weren’t reading, etc. It was then that we added social conservatism to our movement. Overtaxing and overspending is something to get angry about, but what fuels this in legislation? An ideology. Like certain news organizations and talk show hosts had warned, prior to the 2008 election, the people holding office were overwhelming Socialist in ideology… Obama and his friends were Marxists and they had/have a plan to “fundamentally change America” (his own words).

This isn’t the America we grew up with… the preceding generations didn’t grow up with a laissez faire attitude, they didn’t expect the government to take care of their every need and didn’t expect anything for nothing. They believed in working hard, doing your best, God and thanking God for what you have, America and the beacon of light it was for freedom, and they had strong, conservative family values. This current administration, unlike the previous, is trying to undermine these conservative values. They truly are fundamentally changing America and the American dream. They’re taking over/nationalizing/socializing private industries, left and right, continuing to spend our children and grandchildren into debt & slavery, taking God out of politics and public life, belittling American citizens, undermining the Constitution, replacing it with case law, ignoring the needs of States and acknowledging State’s Rights, they’re no longer defending the borders and preventing illegal immigration, they’re depleting our national security and defenses, and they’re throwing our international allies under the bus. Americans have had enough…

So while the Tea Party is comprised of people of all colors, ethnicities, religions and political affiliations, it’s truly a Conservative movement… because we want the government to be accountable. We want the Constitution to matter, the Declaration of Independence to matter… and we want all people, in government and out, to be held responsible for their actions, equally. We want everyone to be treated equally, but not provided for equally. We all believe in working for what we have, making our own way, smaller and less-instrusive government… we believe in charity for our fellow man, not regulated by our government, but regulated by ourselves. We believe in John Adam’s Capitalism/Free Market values, which allowed this country to become the most prosperous in the world, to have ever existed. We believe in God, for without which, we have no inalienable rights provided to us by a higher power – thus making Government the highest form of power that we answer to.

Tea Party Patriots believe in so many of the same things, but joined for so many different reasons, it’s difficult to define the term. That’s why I could write this post forever… Not everything that I stand for, is everything that someone else stands for. There are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Christians, Muslims, Jews, white people, black people, etc. in this movement. We’re all different, but we are united. We’re unhyphenated Americans who are Constitutionally-bound. We want to be heard, we want Representation, we want our liberties and smaller government, we want corruption the Hell out of OUR government and we certainly damn well better get the TRUTH.