Give Us Liberty (7 page)

As an elected official who took the oath of office swearing to defend and uphold the Constitution, should you today feel a greater allegiance to a president, or a political party? I believe that answer is, emphatically, NO.

This is a big vote, one likely to be studied and second-guessed for decades to come. With an understanding of the intense political pressures each of you face in this tough election year, I ask you to oppose this bailout. . . .

As a public choice professor, I used to begin class each semester
²⁸
with Armey's Axiom number one: “The market is rational and the government is dumb.” Those quick to call for more regulation forget the power of markets and refuse to acknowledge government culpability in the current mess. Time and again, governments the world over have attempted to outsmart the market and the current legislation is no exception. And time after time, markets respond, toppling the best-laid government plans as they move to correctly price the underlying assets in exchange.

This letter was being passed around the House floor several hours before the vote by members of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus of about a hundred Republicans then chaired by Jeb Hensarling.

T
HE
F
AT
L
ADY
S
INGS

O
N SEPTEMBER 29, WE
gathered at FreedomWorks' headquarters to watch the final deliberations on the House floor. The staff crowded into an office, watching C-SPAN on a small television. With the sound off, we followed the ticker of yeas and nays on the screen. We were tired and resigned. The fight was over and we considered the vote a formality, a fait accompli.

But the vote tracker began to tell an important and surprisingly different story. We started to yell and clap and cheer for the nays as opposition to the bill grew. It kept growing. Turning up the sound and seeing the final tally, we were as surprised as anyone that the House bill failed.

Against all of our expectations, at 2:07
P.M.
, the first legislation was defeated 228–205, with 133 Republicans voting against their president. FreedomWorks had been doing everything we could to stir up opposition to the bailout bill, but our splash of cold water had been consumed by a grassroots tsunami that crested over the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In retrospect, September 29 is clearly the day the Tea Party movement was reborn in America. You can almost hear Samuel Adams calling us into action: “If ye love wealth better than liberty
²⁹
, the tranquility of servitude, than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!”

There was a massive wave of spontaneous grassroots outrage that rose up against the government's proposed actions, temporarily taking back the people's house from the political elite. While FreedomWorks, our tiny coalition of like-minded organizations, and a handful of true blue legislators toiled away, surrounded on all sides by the Beltway establishment, the citizens of America—for a few days at least—took their country back. The
New York Times
reported: “Americans' anger is in full bloom
³⁰
, jumping off the screen in capital letters and exclamation points, in the e-mail in-boxes of elected representatives in the nation's capital.” We were told by our allies who work in Congress that constituent communications were 100 to 1 against the Paulson Plan. It was a shining, if all too brief, moment where grassroots America and the cause of liberty beat the Beltway establishment. While the bill would ultimately pass, it had stirred the passion of the grassroots freedom movement.

A few days after that glorious House vote, in what we now know was a harbinger for things to come during the health care debate, the Senate quickly porked up the bill to buy the additional votes needed to pass it and send it back to the House to be rubber-stamped. These “emergency” provisions included Section 503 of the act that, according to the official Library of Congress summary, “Exempts from the excise tax
³¹
on bows and arrows certain shafts consisting of all natural wood that, after assembly, measure 5/16 of an inch or less in diameter and that are not suitable for use with bows that would otherwise be subject to such tax (having a peak draw weight of 30 pounds or more).”

The Democrats, the liberal apparatchiks at the Center for American Progress, the SEIU, and the Obama administration's partisan advocates in the media all love to ask the same question of the Tea Partiers: “Where were you when the Bush administration was violating the principles of fiscal responsibility, accountability, and limited government?”

The answer for many is, “On September 29, 2008, I stopped yelling at the TV, got up off the couch, picked up a mouse and the phone, and decided it was time to take America back from Washington.”

As the Washington political establishment was about to discover, these newly minted citizen activists were just getting started. As the economy faltered and the government grew, this nascent group of activists began to forge the modern-day Tea Party movement.

Chapter 4
What We Stand For

A
LTHOUGH
T
EA
P
ARTY ACTIVISTS
come from a variety of backgrounds, they are united in a core set of beliefs. That is the inherent strength of the movement. When you have principle to guide your activism, you do not need an organizational hierarchy.

You'll notice this is a short chapter, and that is intentional. It just doesn't take a lot of words to say that we just want to be free. Free to lead our lives as we please, so long as we do not infringe on the same freedom of others. We are endowed with certain unalienable rights and delegate only some of our power to the government to protect those rights. Defenders of limited government understand that the U.S. Constitution lists the specific powers it delegates. If it's not mentioned, we retain that power. This is why the original U.S. Constitution was only four pages. In a telling contrast, the recently proposed European Union Constitution was 100 times longer at 400 pages. That's because it
does
take a lot of words for rulers to tell unfree people which rights they will be given and how they must lead their lives. That's why Obama's health care legislation was more than 2,000 pages long.

Members of the Tea Party movement are focused on defending individual freedoms and economic liberty because one does not exist without the other. The overwhelming majority of activists are just responsible citizens trying to defend something they cherish: constitutionally limited government. This is a movement stirred into action not out of partisan bitterness but as a reaction to what they view as a government that has grown too large, spends too much money, and is interfering with their freedoms. When you speak with activists, no matter where you find them, four recurring themes inevitably become clear.

1. T
HE
C
ONSTITUTION
I
S
T
HE
B
LUEPRINT FOR
G
OOD
G
OVERNMENT

F
IRST AND FOREMOST, THE
Tea Party movement is concerned with recovering constitutional principles in government. Our nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to protecting the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the individual, not of the collective or groups of special interests. The miracle of the Constitution is the simple genius of limited government and its singular devotion to protecting individual liberty.

Our Founding Fathers designed a constitutional system based on private property and the rule of law to protect the individual from an overbearing federal government. An American's freedom is based on individual rights endowed by our Creator, secured by the Constitution. Among these are economic liberties that allow us to provide for families and pursue our own happiness. For more than two hundred years, American citizens have used their personal and economic liberties to pursue their dreams and provide for their families. Along the way we built a prosperous nation. American wealth was not an accident but a direct result of our freedoms.

Advocates of big government do not understand this. They take our freedom and prosperity for granted. In recent years we have watched as private property has been taken from families by the government and given to developers through the abuse of eminent domain. Under the health care legislation passed in 2010, the government mandated that all individuals must buy government-approved health insurance, whether they want it or not. The government should be concerned with protecting my liberty, not my liver.

The founders designed a government that was to do only that which was both right and necessary; the rest was to be left up to the states and individuals. It is simply the best organizational chart for running a society ever created. However, this division of labor only works if people mind their own business. The problem is that politicians and bureaucrats often do not know their limitations and make it their business to mind yours.

The Tea Party movement is asking to simply be left alone. The federal government should only exercise those powers we the people have delegated to it through our Constitution.

2. I
N A
F
REE
S
OCIETY
, A
CTIONS
S
HOULD
H
AVE
C
ONSEQUENCES

T
HE SECOND MAJOR THEME
running through the Tea Party movement is the call for personal responsibility. The founding documents built institutions that allowed for individuals to chase their dreams and be responsible for their own successes and failures. Tea Partiers value equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. For us, it is all about the rights of the individual over the collective.

These free and voluntary transactions are at the heart of our society. But when we are protected from the carelessness of our own actions, we tend to act foolishly. That applies to both business and individuals.

The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter noted
¹
that failure is an essential part of a functioning market economy. He described it as “creative destruction,” as resources are constantly rearranged to their highest value. Without failure, you cannot have innovation. Without innovation, our standard of living stagnates.

For years, we have watched as people borrowed on credit cards and bought homes valued beyond their means. At the same time, businesses also borrowed and lived beyond their ability. Banks took disproportionately large risks and the big three automakers agreed to union demands for unrealistic employee benefits that they could not afford.

When it came time to pay the piper in the recession, we watched bailout after bailout. The system broke down as individuals and businesses were shielded by government from the consequences of their actions.

Those who had restrained themselves, saved, and budgeted were told their tax dollars would be used for the bailouts. And not just current tax dollars, but hundreds of billions of dollars in debt was taken out as well. Debt that will have to be paid out of future earnings.

3. T
HE
F
EDERAL
G
OVERNMENT
I
S
A
DDICTED TO
S
PENDING

T
HE THIRD THEME FOUND
in virtually every Tea Party gathering is the conviction that the government is spending too much while unfairly expecting our children and grandchildren to pick up the tab.

Tea Party activists understand that the opposite of the invisible hand of the market is the invisible foot of the government. Every dollar spent by the government is taken from the private sector. Nineteenth-century French philosopher Frédéric Bastiat called this the “seen and the unseen
²
,” as the government points to everything it does with tax dollars, but what is not discussed is what would have been created by the private sector with that same money.

The economist Milton Friedman warned us that the true rate of taxation is government spending. With trillion-dollar deficits projected for years to come, we fear the greatest threat to our freedom and way of life will come from our out-of-control deficit spending. Inevitably the government will be free to either deflate our currency or impose catastrophically high taxes.

Today's spending is tomorrow's taxes. Whenever the Tea Party is protesting spending it is looking at the long term and protesting future taxation. Higher taxes degrade our standard of living, leaving citizens with fewer choices and fewer dreams.

4. O
UR
B
LOATED
B
UREAUCRACY
I
S
T
OO
B
IG TO
S
UCCEED

T
HE FOURTH DOMINANT THEME
common to Tea Party activists is an understanding that the government has grown too large and invasive. The government can't control its own border or run the post office, let alone manage a bank or auto company.

The relationship between the private sector and the government is similar to that of a horse and a jockey. The winning combination is a strong and fast horse with a nimble and light jockey. When the jockey grows too large and the horse is starved, eventually the horse will collapse under the weight of the jockey.

The bloated public sector robs the private sector of much-needed capital investment. Capital is like fertilizer: when it's spread on the private sector it grows the economy; when it's fed to the government it grows more government.

Advocates of bureaucratic centralization have also invented a new nomenclature to support their policies, such as earned versus unearned income. Only the government can force you to hand over nearly 15 percent of your salary in Social Security, and then complain that Americans do not save enough.

And government begets more government. Whereas individuals in the real world have to live with the consequences of their decisions (unless they get a bailout), government does not because it can always get more money from the taxpayer. The only check on its growth is the ire of the citizenry. Government is also staffed by people who do not worry; they have the ultimate in job security. When a government program fails, the advocates of big government inevitably claim it failed because it was underfunded, not because it was a bad program.

Big government is driven by two audacities: (1) the presumption that people are dumb and don't know what's good for them, (2) people are corrupt and dishonest; therefore it is incumbent upon the government to take money and spend it on citizens' behalf. On the other hand, the Tea Party has trust in the practical genius of the American people to be responsible for making decisions.

Possibly the best illustration of the separate philosophies came in an exchange between former Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas and a woman representing the education establishment. She wanted more government money and control of education and Gramm wanted more parental control. According to Washington folklore, the exchange went something like this:

GRAMM
: There is no one in Washington who knows and loves my children as much as I do.

LADY WHO REPRESENTS THE EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT
: I take exception to that Senator Gramm. I believe I do.

GRAMM
: Oh yeah? What are their names
³
?

Every society has to find a balance between liberty and security. Europe has chosen to put more weight in security and subjects the individual to the needs of the collective. The Founders intended to create something different—a system that favors liberty. We value liberty highly and this commitment to the individual is what makes America unique. As Ben Franklin once said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

We now find this commitment to personal and economic liberty being challenged by the government's size. President Obama and Congress are looking to “Europeanize” the United States through a legislative stampede of government control: the nationalizing of our health care system, cap and trade energy taxes, and aggressive unionization. Tea Party activists know you cannot have European-size government without European-size taxes and a corresponding loss of liberty.

The financial collapse of Greece should be the canary in the coal mine. Greece is the first Western country in recent memory to experience a sovereign debt crisis. In 2009 the Greek budget deficit was 13 percent of GDP and investors did not believe the Greeks could credibly get the budget under control. The Congressional Budget Office reported that the United States' 2009 budget deficit was 10 percent of GDP
⁴
.

Clearly the United States is on an unsustainable path. In less than five years the interest on the debt alone
⁵
will approach $500 billion. How long will it take before the market loses its faith in our ability to pay?

T
HE
S
OLUTION
I
S
I
N
O
UR
H
ANDS

S
OON AFTER THE ADOPTION
of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government they had formed. He replied “a republic if you can hold it
⁶
.” Franklin understood the threats of special interests and enemies of liberty from around the world and within the fledgling nation.

While activists like Mary Rakovich and the others profiled throughout the book tend to share the common views described in this chapter, there is still great diversity among those who claim the Tea Party mantle. Make no mistake: disagreements exist and not all activists are in lockstep on every issue. But these individuals share a bond of bravery. In the face of criticism and doubt they walked out of their living rooms and into the street to fight for something they believe in.

The best way to start something, these novice protesters discovered, is to start it. Just get out there and do it. It was messy at first and each made their fair share of mistakes, but they learned on the job and formed powerful coalitions of private citizens that are beholden to no corporation, no union, no patronizing politician. Self-sufficient and self-sustaining, these networks live off the land and can strike at a moment's notice. They are the future of American grassroots activism.

F
OLLOWING HER GALVANIZING PROTEST
in Fort Myers, Mary Rakovich could have returned to anonymity content in knowing that she had done her part. After all, few protesters could claim the kind of success she had achieved on their first foray into activism: coverage on national television, the ire of her opponents, congratulatory calls from friends and fellow citizens. Instead, she went right back to work.

Barely two weeks after storming the Harborside Center, Mary traveled to Phoenix. “Imagine my surprise when I found out the next stop on the president's bailout and stimulus road show was Arizona,” she said. “I just had to do it again.”