by Steve Watson

The co-founder of the modern day Tea Party political protests has slammed imitators of the concept, referring to them as “partisan political perverts”.

Constitutionalist grass roots activist Chad Peace was part of the original team of people who organised Boston Tea Party re-enactment protests in 50 different cities in late 2007, in support of Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential campaign.

The protests became extremely popular, and continued throughout 2008 and into 2009, prompting thousands of people to engage in peaceful political protest.

Tea Party protests earlier this year prompted the FBI to initiate a comprehensive surveillance program, and in some cases the National Guard was even readied as a response.

Chad Peace says he was proud to be a part of a movement calling for government accountability, honesty, respect, and sincerity, but he now reveals his disgust at what he sees as a hijacking of the Tea Party concept by “golden idols”.

“I was convinced that the average American was beginning to see through the veil of scripted partisan sermons, designed to coddle fears and perpetuate the superficial battle between a “left” and “right”.” Peace writes in a commentary article.

However, Peace states that over the course of the last year, the Tea Party movement has been co-opted.

“In short time, desperate partisans were soiling the sheets.” Peace writes.

“At some point, reality began piercing my passion. The tea party boat started becoming a wagon of whiners. Propelled by the moving mouths on TV and the talking heads of such ironically named organizations such as the “American Family Association”… the movement lost its focus.” he continues.

“A movement founded on the principles of independent analysis, it has become a yelling fest for punch-drunk cynics armed with incoherent talking points.”

Revelations of staged Tea Party protests organised by Fox News and Glenn Beck have served to frame the concept within a strictly mainline conservative political focus. Not only that but they have provided the left leaning media mouthpieces with ammunition to attack and ridicule what started out as a legitimate grassroots activist success story.

The common conception of the Tea Party protest now languishes a far cry from it’s Libertarian begininngs.

“What I see is a bunch of people reciting partisan political sermons, coddling fears, and perpetuating a superficial battle between “left” and “right”; drowning the well intentioned idealists that remain.” Chad Peace writes.

However, Peace does believe that the movement can be taken back and still act as a force for political change.

“As the battle rages, I have more faith than ever that an independent revolution will come. When the absurdity of our political process rises to the point where tea bags become a right wing rally cry and the left still manages to drop in the polls, there is a growing opportunity for the increasingly disenchanted to drive a stake right down the middle.”

by Dr. Edwin Vieira

[The following is the full text of an address presented to the National Heritage Center for Constitutional Studies at its 2009 Constitution Day conference.]

The Tenth-Amendment Resolutions from State Legislatures, the Tea Parties, the Town Hall Meetings, and other manifestations of WE THE PEOPLE’S feedupidness with monkey-business as usual in the Disgrace of Columbia—even the massive congregation on the Mall last September—are some of the most enlightening, encouraging, and energizing developments that American patriots have witnessed in a long time. For these events are all premised on the idea: “We don’t want you!”—that WE THE PEOPLE do not want any more, indeed they demand a great deal less, interference in their lives from rogue public officials in the General Government.

These events notwithstanding, the problem remains that too many among WE THE PEOPLE will start but then stop right there, with “We don’t want you!” That is not enough.

The complaint “We don’t want you!” needs to go further, to the resolve, “We won’t have you!” — that WE THE PEOPLE intend to rid themselves of the General Government’s interference.

And to make this resolve effective, WE THE PEOPLE need to design and put into effect remedial action, so that they can say with finality: “We don’t need you!”

The sequence must be—

(i) We don’t NEED you!” which makes it realistic to say:

(ii) We don’t WANT you!” which combined with the ability to make WE THE PEOPLE’S wants effective will lead to the necessary and sufficient action:

(iii) We won’t HAVE you!” and finally will yield the desired result:

(iv) We are RID of you!”

If WE THE PEOPLE have the ability they can give “teeth” to the desire, take the necessary action, and thereby accomplish their goal.

But what will all of this require?

• WE THE PEOPLE need to create actual workable institutions that take advantage of the political and legal position THE PEOPLE hold—i.e., as the ultimate sovereigns.

• WE THE PEOPLE need to create actual workable institutions that take advantage of the economic resources THE PEOPLE command—that THE PEOPLE are the true source of all real wealth in this country, and are in actual physical possession of most of it.

True enough, the Establishment holds bundles of paper claimsto wealth, many (if not most) of them generated through the unconstitutional Federal Reserve System. But the insuperable problem for the Establishment will be how to collect on those claims if WE THE PEOPLE simply refuse to honor them. Anyone in the paper-currency racket who doubts that these claims can be declared unenforceable should read the Supreme Court’s decision in Craig v. Missouri, 29 U.S. (4 Peters) 410 (1830).

• WE THE PEOPLE need to create actual workable institutions that are politically, economically, and legally independent of the General Government:

Institutions that can compete with the faulty and fraudulent mechanisms that rogue officials in the General Government have foisted on this country in the key areas of economic and political control, particularly in the areas of (i) money and banking and (ii) what is called “homeland security”.

Institutions that can replace these fraudulent control-mechanisms with proper means to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”. And

Institutions that will enable WE THE PEOPLE to defend themselves against retaliation from rogue officials in the General Government and from the private centers of multinational economic power.

In sum, WE THE PEOPLE must combine their economic resources and abilities with political and legal authority in large-scale organizations that will reflect the power inherent in numbers.

This cannot be done by or through the General Government at the present time, because the General Government is the main locus of this country’s problem, not the source of any solution for them.

It cannot be done through political parties, because parties (along with other factions and special-interest groups) are the control-mechanisms in the “divide and conquer” strategy the Establishment employs to prevent WE THE PEOPLE from asserting their political sovereignty in their own interest.

It cannot be done by individuals or private groups alone, primarily because: (i) private individuals and groups enjoy no independent legal authority; and (ii) there is probably no way to create a sufficiently large and effective private operation in any State, let alone throughout the entire country, in time.

It cannot be done by the State governments alone, because it is not simply a political question of governmental finance and administration, but will require a revamping of the entire private economies in each State, too.

Therefore, it will require both (i) participation by the State governments, because they have the legal authority and the ability to mobilize people in sufficient numbers, and (ii) mass action by WE THE PEOPLE as a whole.

The only establishment or institution that combines all of these elements is “the Militia of the several States”, the “well regulated Militia” that the Second Amendment tells us are “necessary to the security of a free State”.

But a true constitutional “well regulated Militia” exists in not one State in this Union today.

So, WE THE PEOPLE need to revitalize “the Militia of the several States” in order to regain and retain popular control over State governments, and through them to regain and retain control over the two fundamental powers of sovereignty: (i) the Power of the Purse—i.e., currency and credit, and (ii) the Power of the Sword—i.e., community self-defense.

Revitalization of the Militia will enable WE THE PEOPLE to exercise community self-reliance and ultimately true self-government in “a free State” with a sound free-market economy.

Americans need to combine all of the following elements in a single plan for mass action:

1. Revitalization of “the Militia of the several States”.

·The Second Amendment instructs every American that “[a] well regulated Militia” is “necessary to the security of a free State”—not just “useful”, and certainly not “optional”, but“necessary”. And not “necessary” in only some general sense, but specifically with respect to “the security of a free State”—which means that, according to “the supreme Law of the Land” itself, the very survival of constitutional freedom in this country depends upon the Militia.

The Constitution identifies no other establishment, institution, or entity as “necessary” for this vital purpose, or for any other purpose.

(i) total organizing, arming, disciplining, and training of THE PEOPLE to handle any emergency;
(ii) State production and provision of arms, ammunition, and accoutrements for the Militia—with all individuals to possess their arms and ammunition, whenever obtained from whatever source, as part of their Militia service—thus ending all of the General Government’s oppressive “gun control”; and, perhaps of most immediate importance,

(iii) assignment to the Militia of oversight over all new institutions of “economic homeland security” within the State.

by Gene Healy, CATO

“No more czars!” is the new tea party rallying cry, as conservatives across the country fear that President Obama has unleashed a legion of unaccountable bureaucratic overlords on the body politic.

Having helped oust Van Jones, Obama’s “green jobs” czar, Fox News’ Sean Hannity swears that he won’t rest until he’s gotten “rid of every other one.” But if he succeeds, will the country be appreciably freer, or the government noticeably smaller?

No, it won’t, because the conservatives’ current bout of czar mania elevates symbolism over substance. All the focus on a scary moniker for certain executive officials misses the real problem: Unconstitutional delegation of power to the executive branch. Whether those illegitimate powers are exercised by unconfirmed presidential advisers or the president himself is quite beside the point.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., notes that you won’t find the word “czar” in the Constitution; but you won’t find it in federal law either. That’s because “czar” is a media-coined, catchall term for presidential assistants tasked with coordinating policy on issues that cut across departmental lines.

Officials dubbed “czars” range from the truly powerful, like Nixon’s National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, to the ineffectual such as cybersecurity czar Melissa Hathaway, who quit last month because she lacked real authority.

Often, czars are mere figureheads, appointed to signal concern over the latest hot-button issue. As one presidential scholar puts it, “when in doubt, create a czar.”

True, it’s problematic that some of these appointees aren’t vetted by the Senate, and that presidents claim czars don’t have to answer to Congress — as when the Bush administration asserted in 2002 that executive privilege shielded then-homeland security czar Tom Ridge from testifying on the Hill.

But as the Washington Independent‘s Dave Weigel has pointed out, many of the “czars” who appear on the conservative target list already have to be confirmed by the Senate. Others don’t, but when Obama is hell-bent on taking over the health care sector — one-sixth of the U.S. economy — it’s bizarre to agonize over the allegedly unchecked power exercised by the likes of the AIDS and urban affairs czars.

Similarly, while it’s great to see a 9/11 “Truther” like Van Jones denied a federal salary, few of those cheering Jones’ defenestration can coherently explain what the green jobs czar actually does, or the threat he was supposed to represent.

What, was Jones going to give 9/11 “Truthers” and black nationalists jobs weatherizing homes? Will we stop wasting money on such projects now that he’s gone?

In contrast, the “pay czar” and the “car czar” have considerable power, and such offices have no place in a free country. But it was Obama himself, not his car czar, who summarily fired the chief executive officer of General Motors. Is that power less disturbing when it’s exercised directly by the president, rather than delegated to a so-called “czar”?

Blame Congress. The “pay czar” grew out of a provision Congress passed with the stimulus package, ordering the Treasury Department to come up with rules on executive compensation for firms taking Troubled Assets Relief Program money.

The auto bailout itself is a result of congressional fecklessness. Many in Congress protested when President George W. Bush used the TARP statute to lend billions to Chrysler and GM. How, they asked, could that possibly be authorized by a law allowing the purchase of “troubled assets” from “financial institutions”?

If they’d bothered to read the bill, they’d know. Those terms were so loosely defined in the statute that they gave Bush and Obama a colorable argument for reshaping the bailout as they saw fit. Here congressional outrage was more than a day late and $700 billion short.

There’s plenty Congress can and should do to enhance oversight over executive branch officials. Yale Law’s Bruce Ackerman argues that “we need to seriously consider requiring Senate approval of senior White House staff positions.” But as long as Congress continues to write blank checks to the executive branch, it’s the height of hypocrisy for them to complain about that branch’s unchecked power.

This is the video I spoke about on the show during the first hour today.  Watch:

Keynote speech at the Ohio Rally for State Sovereignty, August 1, 2009, Judge Andrew Napolitano

Let me set down a couple of fervent beliefs that animate everything I do and everything I say.

I believe that God created heaven and earth and every single individual on the planet.

I believe that the God who gave us life gave us liberty and that freedom is our birthright.

I believe that the States created the federal government and not the other way around. And that the power that the States gave to the Federal Government – they can take back.

When we were colonists, and the King and the Parliament needed money from us, and they always seemed to need money, they devised ingenious ways to tax us. One of them was called the Stamp Act. The Parliament decreed that every piece of paper that the Colonists had in their homes; every book, every document, every deed, every lease, every pamphlet, every poster to be nailed to a tree had to have the King’s stamp on it. You think going to a Post Office is bad? You had to go to a British Government office and buy a stamp with the King’s picture.

Question. How did the King know that his picture was on every piece of paper in your house? The Parliament enacted a hateful piece of legislation called the Writs of Assistance Act which let the king’s soldiers write their own search warrants, and bang down any door they chose to look for the stamps or anything else that they were looking for.

It was the last straw.

We fought a revolution. We won the revolution. We wrote the Constitution. The constitution doesn’t grant power, it keeps the government off our backs.

When they were debating the Constitution in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, there were two great arguments – one by the Jefferson and Madison crowd and one by the Adams and Hamilton crowd. Jefferson argued, though he wasn’t physically there in Philly, as he did in the Declaration of Independence that our rights are ours by virtue of our humanity. That as God is perfectly free, and we are created in his image and likeness, we too are perfectly free. The big government crowd – yes they had them even in those days – argued that you can’t have freedom without government, and that government gives us our rights, and therefore, that government can take them away. This is not an academic argument. Jefferson and the natural law argument prevailed because the Constitution was written to keep the government from interfering with our natural rights.

And so, your right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to travel where you want, to worship as you see fit, to keep and bear arms to defend yourself against a tyranny. And, after the right to life, the greatest and most uniquely American of rights – and I say this in front of the seat of the government – is the right to be left alone.

We wrote a Constitution to ensure that the government would never interfere with these rights. Think about it – if rights come from the government, then the government, by ordinary legislation, or presidential decree can take them away. But if the rights come from our humanity, then unless we violate someone else’s natural rights, the government cannot take our rights away.

This is not just a democrat, upper case D, or a republican, upper case R, problem. It’s a problem with government today. There’s a republican version of big government just as assaultive to our liberties as the democrat version of big government.

We fought a revolution because British soldiers could knock on our doors and demand that we house them, and demand that we turn over property to them because they could write their own search warrants. In the Patriot Act, the most hateful piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, a republican congress and a republican president authorized federal agents to do the unthinkable – to write their own search warrants. And the republican administration didn’t even let members of the House of Representatives read the Patriot Act before they voted on it.

Why should the government be able to spy on us? We should be able to spy on them!

When some judge is rationalizing away our liberty, or some congressman is plotting to take away your freedom or your tax dollars, we should know what they do every minute that they do it.

I was speaking to a group of congressman from a neighboring state – I won’t tell you which state it was, but they don’t play football there – and they came up to me and said “this is the first time we have heard that the Patriot Act allows federal agents to write their own search warrants.” Remember, in the Constitution, we put in the 4th Amendment, the right to be left alone, to make sure that if the government had a target, no matter how guilty the target, no matter how widespread is the belief in the guilt of the target, no matter how dangerous is the target, the government has to go through a neutral judge with a search warrant before it can get to that target. These members of Congress said, “we didn’t know that the Patriot Act allowed the government to bypass the courts and write any search warrant they wanted.” Then I asked them a question I knew the answer to already – did you read the Patriot Act before you voted on it? The answer – no. What were you voting on? A summary we received. Let me guess who wrote the summary – some lawyers in the justice department, right? Of course.

Would you hire anybody to run your business that committed you to a violation of the very reason you’re in business if they didn’t even read the document by which they were making that commitment? Of course not.

The camera is the new gun. There’s nothing that government dislikes more than the light of day, and cameras recording what the government is doing, whether it’s on a street corner, or in there, or in Washington D.C., we have the right to know everything that they do and why they do it, and when they do it, and how they are taking our freedoms.

I have another one of my basic core beliefs. The individual has an immortal soul. Every individual is greater than any government.

Your government is based on fear and force. You don’t have to take my word on it. The 2nd president on the United States, John Adams, said “Of course the government is based on fear.” And the first president, George Washington, said “Government is not reason, it is force.” I think they knew what they were talking about.

Now fast-forward to modern times. Whenever the government wants something, it scares us. During the civil war, Lincoln tried civilians in this state where no battles occurred, by military tribunal. After he died the Supreme Court invalidated everything the military tribunals did. During the first world war, the Wilson administration locked up 2000 people called anarchists – same thing as enemy combatants. No trial, no charge, just jail for the duration of the war. In World War II, FDR locked up 150,000 Japanese Americans, people born in the United States, who got no trial and had no charges, and when the war was over were given $25 and told to go home.

Today we have federal agents. You know I get in arguments with my friends at Fox News, and one of them, I don’t have to tell you who it is, but is truly the most irascible person there. And he said to me, you know you have a problem with Guantanamo Bay, and you have a problem with the Patriot Act, what will you do if I get sent to Guantanamo Bay, will you visit me? And I say, Bill – no, because they’ll probably keep me there as well.

Government likes to say that it’s taking an oath to uphold the Constitution. In the years that I was on the bench, it seemed that every time government lawyers were in my courtroom, if the government was prosecuting someone who was legitimately guilty or whether it was a mistake, or whether somebody was suing the government because government contractors or government doctors, or government workers made a mistake – the government doesn’t come in to the courtroom to enforce the constitution, it comes into the courtroom to evade and avoid it. That, ladies and gentlemen, must be stopped.

This is a great moment in our history. A crowd of this magnitude on a beautiful day, in the boiling sun, in the most middle-American of great middle-American states…comes together not because the president is a democrat, not because his predecessor was a republican, not because a war is just or unjust, not because the Fed is stealing or printing – you’re here because you believe in human freedom.

It is the essence of our existence that we should be free. But remember this: the government hates freedom. It is an obstacle to every one of their designs. Whenever they write laws, whenever they take your tax dollars, whenever they regulate your private behavior, whenever they tell you how to spend your money, whenever they tell you what medicines to take, whenever they tell you what food to eat, whenever they tell you with whom you may or must associate, they are taking away your freedom and they love to get away with it. And they cannot get away with it any longer.

In the long history of the world, very few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger. This is that moment and you are that generation! Now is the time to defend our freedoms.

Jefferson was no saint but he was the greatest of our American presidents. He believed that the individual was greater than the state. He believed that the states were greater than the federal government. And when he wrote that our rights come from our creator, and that our rights are inalienable, he forever wed the notion of natural rights to the American experience and the American experiment. We must be vigilant about every right that the government wants to take away from us.

You’ve heard the president say, present president and his predecessor, “my first job is to keep you safe.” He’s wrong! His first job is to keep us free. It is his only job to keep us free.

Shortly before he died, Jefferson lamented, that in his view of the world it was the natural order of things for government to grow and freedom to be diminished; how ardently he wish that that wouldn’t happen. And in order to prevent it from happening he had a very simple remedy, “When the people fear the government, that is tyranny. When the government fears the people, that is liberty!”