Posted on 10/02/2010 4:52:11 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The Tea Party is a thoroughly modern movement, organizing on Twitter and Facebook to become the most dynamic force of the midterm elections.
But when it comes to ideology, it has reached back to dusty bookshelves for long-dormant ideas.
It has resurrected once-obscure texts by dead writers — in some cases elevating them to best-seller status — to form a kind of Tea Party canon. Recommended by Tea Party icons like Ron Paul and Glenn Beck, the texts are being quoted everywhere from protest signs to Republican Party platforms.
Pamphlets in the Tea Party bid for a Second American Revolution, the works include Frédéric Bastiat’s “The Law,” published in 1850, which proclaimed that taxing people to pay for schools or roads was government-sanctioned theft, and Friedrich Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” (1944), which argued that a government that intervened in the economy would inevitably intervene in every aspect of its citizens’ lives.
The relative newcomer is “The 5000 Year Leap,” self-published in 1981 by an anti-communist crusader shunned by his fellow Mormons for his more controversial positions, including a hearty defense of the John Birch Society. It asserts that the Founding Fathers had not intended separation of church and state, and would have considered taxes to provide for the welfare of others “a sin.”
If their arguments can be out there (like getting rid of the 17th Amendment, which established the direct election of senators by popular vote) or out of date (Bastiat warned that if government taxed wine and tobacco, “beggars and vagabonds will demand the right to vote”), the works have provided intellectual ballast for a segment of the electorate angry or frustrated about the economy and the growing reach of government.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"The Law", by Frédéric Bastiat
"The Road to Serfdom", by Friedrich Hayek
“The 5000 Year Leap", by W. Cleon Skousen
Primary source documents.
Many of the links are dead but this site is a good place to get names for further searches. Lots of interesting stuff to be found. Testimony of Ben Franklin before parliment about his predictions for what would happen if Great Britain applied more pressure. Text of the tea act of 1773.
http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/primarysources.html#bc
Obscure ideas?, Eh, Kate.
The brief paraphrases you selected certainly have a charm to them. especially taking money from some to give to others as theft. And after passing through the kidneys of government to fatten our imperial masters, the improvident are subsidized in their poverty.
Doesn't that just sum up the entire thesis of this "so-called" journolist? What a shining example of what the public school system and leftist professors are teaching these days. Far better to be dead and brilliant for your time than to be brain dead and clueless while still breathing.
The Tea Party Movement is the fastest growing political anti big government movement in American history and its momentum is not abating it is increasing and thank God for it.
The Tea Party has its roots in the Constitution of the US and the founding principles of the heroes of the American Revolutionary War as written in the Declaration of Independence and then the US Constitution.
A bizarre article, even for the NYT: For example, putting terms like “the rule of law” in quotation marks, as if it were some oddball concept.
So does the writer have a problem with going back to Americas roots? If your tree is dying, you find the problem and treat it.
THE NEW FILM “BATTLE FOR AMERICA” WITH DICK MORRIS
ORDER “BATTLE FOR AMERICA” THE NEW CITIZENS UNITED FILM WITH DICK MORRIS
Dear Subscriber,
I’ve teamed up with Citizens United, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes and a bunch of other good people to do a film entitled Battle for America. It is the ultimate weapon for the 2010 elections!
It lays out the case against Obama, Reid and Pelosi and how America hangs in the balance during this coming election. It has become a staple at Tea Party events and is achieving iconic status as the ultimate statement of what is at stake this November.
It is fast paced, lively, creative, entertaining and very, very compelling.
Please order it today and arrange for your friends and family to see it. It is the WMD of this election! It will persuade anybody within reach to vote Obama’s puppets out of office. And they’ll drive through a wall to get to the polls to vote for this change!
Click here to watch the trailer!
Click here to order the film!
I just spoke at a Tea Party event in Orlando and we sold 300 copies in about half an hour! People were buying the film for their friends and neighbors.
When you go hunting, you arm yourself. When you go hunting for votes, you need to arm yourself with this movie!
Get it right now!!!!!
Thanks and keep the faith,
Dick Morris
AS THE ELECTION APPROACHES, WE ARE TRYING TO EXPAND THE E-MAIL REACH OF THESE COLUMNS. PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY
THANK YOU!
It's the main reason the feds get their knickers in a knot... they have NO authority or ability alter it's established precepts!
-----
If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave.
John Adams, Rights of the Colonists, 1772
That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
Thomas Jefferson, Rights of British America, 1774
The daily propaganda from the left.
Written in a really weird style - it is sort of accusatory -
“Intended for the Bible to be taught in school” - ... expecting the reader - well educated by the modern left - to pull back in horror. Never mind that teaching the Bible in school was THE LAW in many states at the time of the revolution.
The next sentence - could add clarity - such as “of course that was the law back then” or even the were “those were difference times”.
It is kind of funny - the author quotes many things, but never addresses any facts head on. That is the weirdness. it assumes a point of view - and lack of education - of the reader.
When it comes to the Bible vs Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, I will take the Bible every time.
Published originally by Benjamin Morris in 1864 and available now through American Vision in an issue republished in 2007.
This book destroys any argument that tries to portray the founders and the century leading up to the writing of the Constitution as anything other than profoundly and deeply Christian.
While it was not the purpose of the founders to make the Constitution a religious manifesto they deliberately instilled into the Constitution principles that were central to the Christian world view. The most important such principle is that the powers of the government are derived from the people, not the inverse.
The Declaration of Independence serves as the template for the Constitution. That first document is visibly Christian.
There is no sense in which the founders intended that the Constitution depart from the ideas and principles of the Declaration. "The Christian Life..." makes that case with stunning clarity.
Indeed. Thank you for sharing your insights, dear Amos the Prophet!
Absolutely correct.
The Judeo-Christian foundation of our country is directly attributable to its founders as well as the heroes of our American Revolution against the tyranny of the British government.
That foundation, as established in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, was divinely inspired by the spirit and the faith of those men and women - just like the Bible was divinely inspired to be written by those who witnessed history.
The old ways of America were the Christian-Judeo ethics ways and since God the Father of Israel (Elohim) exists and His only begotten son Jesus Christ is Lord , the Word of God will always hold true.
The ways of the Lord are right ways, the just shall live in them.
The NYT has no problem shilling for long-dead writers like Marx, Mao, Stalin and Hitler.
If the NYT had its way, those four faces would be on Mt. Rushmore.
Like Captain Ahab on the back of the stricken white whale, the leftists cling tenaciously to their dogma that freedom and ecoinomic incentives are no longer necessary to generate prosperity. History has clearly demonstrated that the only alternative is the whip and chains, but the libs insist that the past will not be repeated and this time we’ll “get it right”. They’re in complete denial.
It's that ol' "rule of law thing".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.