Successful Tea Party Movement Must Include Pro-Life Issues, Not Just Economy

LifeNews.com Note: Tom Glessner is a pro-life attorney who is the president of NIFLA, the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. NIFLA is an organization with more than 1,200 affiliated pregnancy centers that provides legal, medical and practical help for pregnancy centers across the country.

Political change is blowing in the wind but it is not the change promised by Barack Obama when he ran for the presidency. For sure, Obama has brought political change to the nation, but his transformational policies have meant bigger government, higher taxes, federal subsidies of abortion on demand, and greater governmental control over the lives of American citizens.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens across the nation have raised their voices to protest Obama’s policies of change. They are crying out for a different change that will honor the integrity of each individual and create an atmosphere where true liberty in all spheres of life – economic, cultural, and spiritual- reigns. Political pollsters are now predicting a huge seismic shift in the political landscape this November. The recent Glenn Beck sponsored rally in Washington D.C., attended by thousands upon thousands of grass roots activists, indicates that this public outcry of protest is real and powerful.

The Tea Party movement is comprised of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents from all walks of life. The political ruling elite, the corporate world, and the media have completely failed to comprehend this populist movement dismissing it as marginal, extreme and even racist. However, this movement is not composed of ignorant and bigoted individuals, as suggested by the political class. Rather, it is an authentic grassroots movement of thoughtful and patriotic people demanding real change from an out-of-touch political establishment.

The Tea Party movement, for the most part, centers its protest on economic issues and concern about the loss of freedom that an ever-growing federal government brings. These concerns are valid and appropriate. Most leaders of this movement also believe in the sanctity of life and the need to halt the wholesale destruction of innocent human life through abortion and other life related issues such as embryonic stem cell research. However, many in the Tea Party movement have made it clear that while they are sympathetic with the pro-life cause, the abortion issue is not formally part of the Tea Party agenda.

Economic issues are a vital concern; as is the growing size of the federal government and its overreaching into the lives of ordinary citizens. The overwhelming burden of excess regulation and taxation upon businesses and individuals is alarming. In the same manner, however, the killing of 1.25 million unborn children annually from abortion must be a grave concern. Accordingly, a failure by the Tea Party to incorporate the serious pro-life concerns of millions of Americans into its agenda will be fatal to achieving success.

Perhaps, the Tea Party should take a lesson from the old fashioned three-legged milking stool. When I was a child I visited my aunt and uncle on their dairy farm and was intrigued watching my uncle milk the cows while sitting on a three-legged stool. I asked him why he used such a funny chair to milk the cows. He explained that a four-legged chair can be unbalanced if one of its legs is a different length than the others and it could even tip over if you leaned backwards. A three-legged stool, on the other hand, balances evenly and won't tip over even if one of its legs is longer

We should learn something from the old-fashioned milking stool. There are three legs to a successful agenda that will change America for the better. Each leg is critical and the current grassroots movement for change in America will collapse if any of these legs is ignored. These legs are:

1) Revival of the Economy: This leg requires the establishment a strong robust economy that creates full employment and does not burden small businesses with taxes and oppressive regulations that hinder job development. Limited government and reduced taxation are at the core and are necessary to bring the nation out of the serious economic recession/depression in which we find ourselves.

2) Maintaining a Strong National Defense and Protecting Homeland Security: This leg requires a serious commitment by the government to win the war on terror and protect our country’s border from those who would illegally enter and do us harm.

3) Protecting the Family Unit and Restoring the Right to Life for All: The social issues – protecting the sanctity of marriage and restoring the right to life – are issues of equal importance. Millions of Americans, including myself, have placed these issues at the top of the priority list for the next generation of political leaders to seriously address.

To date, while it appears that most Tea Party leaders verbally support all three legs of this “milk stool” some, such as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, assert that the social issues (and specifically abortion and the right to life) must take a back seat to the other two legs, which are seen as more important.

A further example of this viewpoint was shown in a recent interview of Sarah Palin with Sean Hannity of Fox News. Gov. Sarah Palin, a committed pro-life leader, was asked to name the top five issues facing the country today and the deaths of 1.25 million unborn annually from abortion was not on her list. If, indeed, this is the approach a new Congress takes after the November mid-term elections, then the agenda of the Tea Party movement will fail.

America must be forewarned. A nation that fails to protect the lives of its most vulnerable members has set a course for itself that will lead to its eventual destruction from within. The killing of future generations through the act of abortion has already taken a toll on the demographical future of the nation and the Western world. Unless this trend is stopped then, notwithstanding the impact of the Tea Party movement, our culture and nation will have effectively committed suicide.

The invention of the three-legged milking stool was truly ingenious. Will the current populist movement for change understand this and formally incorporate the life issues into its agenda? Time will tell and the future of America hangs in the balance.

It's not all about you.

And again, you're deceiving yourself. Those who refuse to deal with the core moral problem and promise you the moon on the money front are lying to you. Every bit of political history of the last couple of decades reveals this vividly.

The raw selfishness and myopia of the libertarians is astounding. They claim to want what the Founding Fathers wanted, but the reality is that they don't have a clue.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Most of the brave men who signed the Declaration of Independence (and Revolutionary leaders who didn't like George Washington) were men of privilege. They ALL understood that they were likely fighting a losing battle and would very likely lose everything and be executed for treason. In the end many of them DID lose all or nearly all.

But do you know what the greatest irony is, with maybe one or two exceptions, the Founding Fathers personal finances would have been far better off if the Revolution wasn't fought and they knew this BEFORE the War started. The American Revolution was a HORRIBLE idea from the personal financial standpoints of nearly every Founding Father, they recognized this and did it anyway. They weren't running around worried about what "actually has the biggest impact on me." They were risking everything for principles, not greed.

We've been saying for months now that liberatarians (aided and abetted by the MSM, RINOS, and Democrat operatives) were going to attempt a coup in the Tea Party movement to force social issues off the table, and here's why we must fight back:

Friday June 4, 2010

US Elections: Why Social Issues Matter

Chichester believes that present fiscal crisis is direct result of left's war on life and family

Commentary By Dr. Brian Kopp

AUSTERLITZ, New York, June 4, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The upcoming November US elections are being held under the shadow of unprecedented global economic turmoil. As the chaos striking European nations deepens and threatens to spread, American conservatives are concerned that the politicians they support comprehend the origins and implications of this economic crisis and are willing to combat it effectively.

Tim Chichester, a candidate in the GOP primary for the US Senate seat occupied by Democrat appointee Kirsten Gillibrand, is working with the New York state Tea Party movement to educate voters on the true origins of the present crisis. An unapologetically pro-life veteran of the culture wars, Chichester believes that the present fiscal crisis is a direct result of the left's war on life and the family.

Chichester says, "Frederick Engels focused on social issues as the key to transforming society to the socialist model; he firmly held that religion, traditional marriage and family structure must be destroyed so as to bring about social conditions that would usher in socialism."

According to Chichester, "These economic dislocations and disasters are the exploding assets of Western civilization. They are the by-products of social assaults, collateral damage in socialism's unrelenting war on the family. Every major economic ill we have can be directly traced to social policies. The promotion of divorce, promiscuity, abortion, pornography are all heavy artillery shells aimed at creating disconnected, disaffected and malleable individuals with no moral anchor or foundation."

"All of these policies", continues Chichester, "have enormous economic side effects as the individuals are severed from normal and natural social connections. Those policies that attack the family produce declining populations.

The American economic effects of abortion alone are estimated at over $50 trillion of lost GDP. Adam Smith noted that prosperity was associated with growing populations and poverty with declining populations. We must reverse these trends if we are to survive as a republic."

And Chichester sees a philosophical war emerging as a result. "What I see at stake in these elections goes far beyond balancing of the federal budget, desirable as it is. What is at stake is whether or not we will still have our republican form of government by the time these troubles pass - whether or not our children will grow up truly free. I see this as a last stand against what is coming. I do not expect to go down to Washington and come away unscathed, or have a long comfortable career. I expect to go to the Alamo, to fight to retain the Constitution during what is to be the Second Civil War: A war against the idea that man has unalienable rights. A war between Socialists who see man as property of the state and those who see property as inextricably bound to individual liberty and creativity. A war between the violent sterility of Socialism and the creative prosperity of a Godly people protected by a Divinely inspired Constitution."

Chichester believes that those claiming that the current recession is almost over, with economic recovery on the near horizon, are delusional. He likens the current market indicators to the receding waters preceding an economic tsunami. "As a Catholic, I understand the moral implications of abortion, population control, etc. I understand in greater detail the economic and social penalty to be paid in adhering to behavior that is inherently evil. When a society adheres to a great evil, the impact is obvious. Our world is ready to see the enormous economic and social penalty that has accrued over the years because of our disregard for the life ethic."

A vocal minority of Tea Party conservatives, primarily among the small libertarian faction, is insisting that social conservative issues be set aside in this election cycle to focus solely on "fiscal conservatism." The fiscally conservative Libertarian Party is even threatening to run a candidate in the Kentucky Senate race against one of their own, Rand Paul, because of his support for a federal abortion ban and his opposition to gay marriage.

In this election, Chichester is urging social conservatives not to be deceived by "fiscal conservatives" seeking to forge a larger coalition based on marginalizing social issues, because this war is one which fiscal conservatism alone simply cannot win.

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