0911 Freedom to do TEA
Once any free nation achieves a level of prosperity, it is natural, given the fact of human nature, for its people to fall victim to their success. It is at those points of social malaise that greater dangers exist than any frontal military threat. Taking one’s ease is, after all, much more attractive than working. It is always simpler and less expensive on many levels for enemies of individual liberty to watch as a people first fattens itself then proceed to waste away under the supposed benevolent care of central planners.
There are no greater civil weapons against this downward spiral of slow surrender than the First and Second Amendments. Freedom of assembly is at the core of it all.
When the First Amendment was ratified in December of 1791 along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, the world was a very different place. The need to insure the “right of the people [to] peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” was born out of hard experience still fresh in the minds of those who laid their lives, fortunes, and sacred honors on the line.
America has achieved prosperity to the point of superpower status. In the last fifty years her people have fallen victim to her success. Too many of us took our ease, tacitly accepting the growing size, power and cost of a federal bureaucracy. Somehow moderates and conservatives began to accept the lie that the responsibilities and limitations designed by God for principled self-government must be either sacrificed to a nanny state or have no morally viable state at all.
In 2010, having caught a glimpse of Washington’s vision of democratic socialism in America, the First Amendment came alive in town halls and tea parties – much to the consternation of would-be central planners. The beauty of it is that our founders’ system, given continued due diligence and civility by every day citizens, still works. Honorable politicians of both parties are beginning to listen.
In the House, democrats Baird and Minnick have teamed with Republicans Walden and Culberson in an effort to, as Culberson has said, step toward “real-time democracy”. They are pushing for a rules change that would mandate legislation and conference reports be posted in full on the internet three days in advance of a vote. Republican Representative Jenkins introduced H. Res. 835 which would ban the practice of adding amendments after legislation has been approved in committee. H. Res. 835 would also require internet posting within 24 hours by a committee after their vote.
On the Senate side, seven democrats and one independent sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledging constituents’ frustrations and calling for health care debate transparency. They asked that both the legislation and Congressional Budget Office scores be posted online 72 hours in advance of any action.
Michigan voters worked also. According to Michigan Capital Confidential, Genesee County TEA party activists helped defeat a ballot proposal which would have raised property taxes by $100 million over ten years. The activists simply met people door-to-door. They were out-spent 100 to one.
Rasmussen surveys in September and October found that 83% of Americans want legislation posted online in advance and that 73% favor free market solutions to health care. House Republican John Boehner has called on President Obama to allow C-Span coverage of now secret health care meetings.
Yes, the world has changed in the last 200 years but some things haven’t. The right and effectiveness of assembly for the “redress of grievances” still lives and still works.