- The Tax Day Tea Parties -- A Great Day for America

The Tax Day Tea Parties -- A Great Day for America

Written by Larry Greenley

Thursday, 16 April 2009 18:08

In the aftermath of the Tax Day Tea Parties, which were attended by hundreds of thousands of concerned Americans yesterday, here’s one man’s warning about the most prominent threats facing our nation:

(1) Greatly expanded government spending, for missiles, for so-called defense generally, for foreign aid, for every conceivable means of getting rid of ever larger sums of American money -- as wastefully as possible. (2) Higher and then much higher taxes (3) An increasingly unbalanced budget, despite the higher taxes.... (4) Wild inflation of our currency, leading rapidly towards its ultimate repudiation. (5) Government controls of prices, wages, and materials, supposedly to combat inflation. (6) Greatly increased socialistic controls over every operation of our economy and every activity of our daily lives. This is to be accompanied, naturally and automatically, by a correspondingly huge increase in the size of our bureaucracy, and in both the cost and reach of our domestic government. (7) Far more centralization of power in Washington, and the practical elimination of our state lines.... (8) The steady advance of Federal aid to and control over our educational system, leading to complete federalization of our public education....

I know this is an extended quote, and therefore most of us are reluctant to slow down and read a block of text this long; however, please do read the above quote and consider how much it corresponds to what you heard speakers say at your local tea party. Or, if you didn’t go to a tea party, consider just how much the quote matches what worries you about our nation’s economic and political situation. I’m betting most of you will agree that the quote reflects very accurately what’s wrong with America in 2009. One difference, of course, is that point five about government controls of prices, wages, and materials is not currently accurate; however, the inflation that is in store for us will very likely lead Congress to consider implementing such controls in the near future.

And, now for the reveal. Those warnings were spoken by Robert Welch at the founding meeting of the John Birch Society in December 1958, a little over 50 years ago. They are still very timely and amazingly prophetic.

The forces that Robert Welch saw at work in the United States in 1958 are still at work in 2009. The difference is that so many millions of Americans now see what Robert Welch saw 50 years ago. This widespread understanding of our perilous situation led hundreds of thousands to take the time to attend a couple thousand or so local Tax Day Tea Parties yesterday to protest high taxes, massive deficit spending on bailouts and stimulus packages, inflation, and more centralization of power in Washington.

There’s good news and bad news about yesterday. First, the bad news is that many establishment Republicans insinuated themselves into various prominent tea parties in order to position themselves to profit politically from the rapidly growing ranks of tea party participants and sympathizers. However, a replay of the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 in reaction to the liberal partisanship of Bill Clinton is not what’s needed today. That Republican takeover of Congress did not halt either the centralization of power in Washington or the deficit spending.

Now for the good news. Certainly many, and hopefully most of the tea party participants understand that our nation’s political and economic problems are not due exclusively to either Democrats or Republicans. In fact, many major tea party organizers explicitly prohibited politicians of either party from speaking at their rallies. Also, the tea party movement represents a further development of social networking on the Internet. First, we had the Howard Dean Meetup phenomenon in 2004. Next, we had the very extensive use of Meetup, Facebook and other Internet websites in the Ron Paul and Barack Obama campaigns of 2007-8. Now, already in early 2009 we see the emergence of Twitter as an important factor in the tea party movement. One of the originators of the national Tax Day Tea Party movement was Top Conservatives on Twitter (TCOT).

So, after this long buildup, the good news is that the tea party movement appears to be truly a grassroots movement that is suspicious of both major parties and that favors limited government as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the theme of the upcoming Independence Day Tea Parties has already been announced as “Learn the Constitution.” Which goes to show that the tea party movement is a combination of national leadership by various online groups and intensive local and national networking among both individuals and organizations via social networking platforms. Hopefully this intensive and extensive networking will serve to preclude topdown, partisan control and deception of the grassroots tea party movement participants.

Meanwhile, the staff and members of the John Birch Society, which practically invented the constitutionalist, conservative grassroots movement in the 1960s, will continue their historic role of educating and organizing grassroots activists in a nonpartisan way to preserve our national sovereignty and personal freedom under the U.S. Constitution. The strategy for accomplishing this goal is to create grassroots pressure on Congress to adhere to the Constitution and simultaneously to create a political atmosphere in which a majority of constitutionalists can be elected to Congress.

Here’s a nine-minute video of excerpts of Robert Welch making two speeches at a dinner meeting in 1974. In the first speech he is quoting himself from his speech at the 1958 founding meeting of the Society. This segment includes the warnings quoted at the beginning of this article. In the second speech Mr. Welch is looking ahead fifteen years from 1974 and giving his recommendations for how to preserve our national sovereignty and personal freedom. I believe that this nine-minute video would have been well-received at any of yesterday’s tea parties. Take a look:

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