The following is part 2 of a 3-part series in which I respond to my liberal host’s query regarding the Tea Party. (Again, our wives pulled rank and with a teenager in the next room, we changed the subject of our conversations for the balance of the weekend.) Click here to read part 1.
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I did think about this, over those next few days and on the seven-plus hour ride back to Chesterfield. I felt that I needed to be able to do more than (and I did do this) tear the Richmond Tea Party’s five planks off of something in my briefcase and hand it over. I think that those tenants are easily shrugged aside by those determined to remain comfortably unaware of our actual purpose:
Constitutional Adherence
Limited Government
Fiscal Responsibility
Virtue & Accountability
Free Markets
I mean, can’t we all imagine a liberal’s response to these grand goals? They may be a daily diet to us, but to our critics they are easily dismissed as vague ideals behind which we can continue being all that we are accused of being. Although I strongly support the above beliefs, how can we translate them effectively? How can we state, respectfully and person to person, what we want?
My mind wouldn’t let this go, not on the beach, at the dinner table, or on the road. I’m sure my host was asking for an answer more correctly provided by my scrap of paper with the above points on it, but I was looking for something from the core, from the gut. I wanted to answer my friend directly, by explaining what I wanted from him. Not from America, Washington, the press, or even the Tea Party. I saw him as those who see fit to hate me, lie about me or, at a minimum, disregard me as irrelevant.
(to be continued)
