The following is part 3 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 and here to read part 2.
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So, what do I want, anyway? What responses do I wish I’d had ready, something to spark an interest in my actual motivations?
- I want you to know that I see myself as your defender, not as your enemy.
- I want you to trust that I am able to provide facts as a basis for my concerns.
- I want you to know that I have invested incredible time researching, reading bills, studying history, questioning my sources, questioning myself, looking for better ways to solve problems, considering consequences, and that this has been my practice for (literally) decades.
- I want answers, direct and complete, from all sides, for all ears, at all times.
- I trust you to research my detailed concerns yourself, with your mind.
- Better still, I challenge you to distrust the motives of the White House, the press, and Congress as readily as you distrust me, for just one month, on at least three issues of concern to you.
- I want you to ask yourself whether, should you discover your own issues with those you now trust with so much power:
1. Will I be allowed to demand answers?
2. Will I be trusted?
3. Or, like John Pride, will I be forced to step aside and be quiet? - I would like you to read the Health Care, Financial Reform, and other bills. I would like you to ask your elected officials, the press, unions and others at least twenty specific questions about:
1. The almost open-ended power of the Commissioner,
2. The new powers of the IRS,
3. The incredible powers being assumed by the White House, and
4. The wholesale ideological influences being written into our nation’s laws.
(You will have closer to a hundred questions, trust me.) And, I’d love to know a) the questions, b) who responds, and c) the exact response. - I hope you’ll accept that, when I gather with others and demand answers of our politicians, I am not trying to defeat you, but to get your attention, and your help.
- I would like you to know that I see you as my defender, not as my enemy. I don’t hate, fear or disregard you. I need you; you are my strongest ally, and our political leaders have no greater fear than our willingness to communicate without their oversight.
After all these decades of heightened political animosity, I know it’s comforting to see me asking that a bill be read, that a process be observed, promises kept, laws enforced, transparency real, and my concerns addressed…all to little or no avail.
Think about it, please. If straightforward business was being carried out, even in politics, would they need to act in these arrogant, openly devious ways? Again, I have facts, if you’d only trust yourself to know them. In my view, they’re forbidding your access to the truth as absolutely as they are forbidding my freedom to tell it. Perhaps the time will never come when you have to be concerned that your creation has become your owner, as it is surely becoming mine as each day passes.
Do you honestly consider yourself exempt, tomorrow, from the same consequences that I face today?
Look into it. Discuss it with us, keep us openly honest, not sidelined and silenced, and not through any self-serving politician or group (from either side), ever again. That’s what we really want. Help us make it happen.
