My Tea Party Speech

I have received a good number of emails from people asking me if they could get a copy of the speech I delivered at the recent Tea Party in Omaha. So, rather than send out a mass email, I thought it would be easier to just post it here. Thanks again to everyone who participated in the Omaha and Lincoln Tea Parties and I look forward to seeing you all at the next one on July 4th.

Thank you all very much for coming here this evening in peaceful defiance of a government that has clearly overstepped its bounds.

I speak to you today not as an elected official, but as an average American who is enraged beyond words at the actions of this Congress and this President who seem to believe that the best way to help our nation recover from this recession is to tax us, our neighbors, and spend our children into utter oblivion.

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil and in its worst state an intolerable one.

“For when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”

Those rebellious words were written by the great Thomas Paine and how true they are. I was thinking recently about how dearly we need men like Mr. Paine right now, at this very moment in our own history, to provide our elected leaders with a reality check.

This budget, this administration, and this course of action our Congress is leading us down was not what was envisioned nor intended by our Founding Fathers who bestowed to the world the idea that was America. But you know what?

I think that what we have right now, brewing and manifesting itself all across the country today by average American citizens who share our frustration about the reckless government spending, is the very reality check our Congress and President need.

They cannot ignore us anymore.

These Tea Parties demonstrate that Americans have a limit; Americans value serving a cause greater than themselves. The great thing about serving a cause is that when things go terribly wrong, you have the chance to go out and DO something about it. You can change it. We can change it. We are changing it.

America is under attack from within. Our future, and our children’s future, is being decimated by unprecedented government spending and financial recklessness. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of sitting at home and yelling at my TV. If I wanted to live in France I would move to Paris.

I believe that our elected officials have a duty to show us, the taxpayer, exactly how they are spending our money.
That’s called transparency. And it’s something we practice right here in Nebraska. Transparency shouldn’t be a privilege that our government occasionally doles out to us whenever it feels like being benevolent.

Let’s be clear about something: Our elected leaders serve us. We are their boss. And the money the government uses to build its infrastructure, pay salaries, fund their pension plans, and support their outrageous pork projects comes from us.

The government didn’t earn this money; they took it from us in the form of taxes. Some politicians believe that paying high taxes is an act of high patriotism; that it’s part of being “American.”

Nonsense.

Being “American” means having faith in your neighbor to do the right thing; it means believing in the sanctity of our individual liberties; it means defending at all costs the spirit and original intent of what our Framers inscribed in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution; and above all else, it means having the courage to take a stand against a tyrannical government even if it means you must stand alone.

But today, in cities and towns and homes all across this vast and incredible country of ours, people are taking a stand; people are standing up to a government that has absolutely lost its mind.

And we are not alone.

If this movement is going to be successful it will have to be maintained by us. The media is not going to help us one bit. But that’s fine. I like a good challenge.

It is an honor to stand among you today, shoulder to shoulder as we make known our grievances to this government that is doing everything it can to ignore us and discount our cause.

As Ronald Reagan said: “We have come to a time for choosing. Do we believe in our capacity for self-government or do we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves.”

God Bless you all and God Bless America!