Our institutions of government are not designed to rule over us and make life care-free; our government is designed simply to free us from the mundane tasks of self-government while we pursue life, liberty and happiness. To win this struggle we have to start by remembering that.

Fellow activist Linda Hoover recently wrote of our task:

I don’t see where we have the same abilities to push back that they have to push us around.  I think a big piece we have to face is that we are out-financed (they have George Soros, all of our tax dollars, you name it), out-muscled, out-infrastructured, out-prepared and otherwise largely sitting ducks for this takeover.

The politicians are all sworn to uphold a corrupt system that is being manipulated with both skill and speed.

As I see it the goal is clear: the river of government has overflowed its banks and flooded the country. It is our job now to control the flooding and put government back within its banks. Maybe the protective levees of the Constitution were not strong enough; maybe they were in disrepair.  Mitigating the damage before all is swept away has to be the first task. 2010 is damage control.

Here’s what the liberty movement is doing, with great success:

• Articulating broad goals and objectives
• Supporting and electing candidates who believe in these goals
• Learning or re-learning the principles of our citizen-led republic
• Teaching, communicating and organizing

From out of  nowhere in February 2009, today polls show as much as 36% of the population self-describe as tea partiers. We have had tremendous success: That’s a higher percentage than either political party–yet the movement is not and has never claimed to be a political party.

We are not sitting ducks. We were sitting idly by, but not now. They only have power because we gave it to them, temporarily. Either they surrender it peacefully when we ask for it back in November, or they will try to seize it illegally. If they do that, they will cause a civil war which they will surely lose. Either way, we win.

Don’t waste your time and energy hating Barack Obama or trying to figure out where he was born: he is nothing. I have more respect for a dung beetle, which at least performs a useful function. He is neither Messiah nor demi-god; he is merely the end-product of a process of historical development whose end was predicted centuries ago. He and his kind can never succeed because they can never create, they can only destroy.

Likewise, it doesn’t matter very much if they are socialists, Marxists, statists, thugs, or a combination of all of the above. Either way, they’ve got to go.

So stay the course. Continue to organize, to educate, to recruit, to vote. And to pray. As Linda concluded:

Me, I’m going to church this morning, and going to keep asking for a miracle — not from the couch mind you.

In looking back at the Revolution, the Founders believed it was nothing less than Divine Providence that allowed them to prevail against the greatest power of the day. God will again provide a miracle.

We are that miracle.

The core problem is that our government has become a government of the elites and for the elites with enough bones thrown around to make a majority of the population either subservient or dependent on government handouts. This Aristotle called Oligarchy, an unjust form of government. The corresponding just form is Aristocracy, in which the elites rule not on their own behalf but on the behalf of all. Many on the left who call themselves Progressives believe that’s exactly what they are doing. They think they are smarter than the rest of us and can rule on our behalf better than we can rule ourselves. They tell us they are bringing us justice.

They are wrong, of course. Our country was founded on the principle that the people, through democratically elected representatives, can and ought to rule themselves. James Surowiecki, in The Wisdom of Crowds, convincingly makes the case that crowds are always more right than the most expert of experts. Trust the people, with some safeguards against mob rule, and you have the principle behind the Constitution.

Long before Surowiecki wrote his book Plato, in The Republic, sets up a form of government in which the wisest rule by common consent; in The Statesman he admits  that this is just an illusion and ultimately relies on a Nocturnal Council to rule in secret. Does that remind you of the midnight votes in the Senate? Plato, history shows, was wrong; Aristotle was right. The Founders studied Plato and Aristotle and others in a depth unknown today. In the 1940s, Friedrick von Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom, in which he convincingly proves yet again that rule by experts doesn’t work. His book was extremely popular in the early 1950s, even being reprinted by Readers’ Digest. When Glenn Beck mentioned it earlier this month, it shot to #1 on Amazon’s best seller list. Today it is still #7.

In short, neither form of rule by the few works as well as a true republic in which the interests of all are balanced. Hayek shows that even Aristotle’s just form of government by the few is fated to become unjust.

The fight, then, is about who is going to rule this country: the people or the political class? Will this country remain, as Lincoln said, a government of the people, by the people and for the people? Or will it be the rule over the people by the self-appointed elites? Talk about “the failed policies of the last eight years”! They are pushing the failed policies of recorded history.

This fight is all about the re-founding of America on its original principles. We may not look like the America of 1787, but the principles are the same.

“They tell us, Sir, that we are weak – unable to cope with such a formidable ADVERSARY. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week, or next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed ….Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying spinelessly on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? . . .Sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just GOD who presides over the destinies of nations . . . The battle, Sir, it’s not to the strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave . . . There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! . . .Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace! – But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! . . . Why stand we here Idle? What is it that Gentleman wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, ALMIGHTY GOD! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!”

Delivered at St. John’s church in Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775. This is just the ending of the speech; the full text can be found here.

You see, Thursday night she rammed HR 5175, the DISCLOSE Act, through the House by the now familiar 219 – 206 vote. This is a blatantly unconstitutional act that targets the Tea Party movement. As if that’s not bad enough, she reportedly used a provision called “Martial Law” to call for the vote without debate.

Are we at war and I didn’t know it?

Apparently we are, and I therefore feel compelled to again honor my oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

This is not just a shot across the bow of the Tea Party movement–it is aimed directly at us.I read on Tea party sites and lists all the doom and gloom about this act, and it is bad. I need not repeat the details here. The argument I’m hearing is: yes, it is clearly unconstitutional but it won’t be declared so until after the election. Therefore we’re screwed.

Say what?

When we speak out anyway, our cases won’t get to court before the act is declared unconstitutional. If they can play the legal “chicken” game with our free speech, so can we.

Are you going to let this unconstitutional act, assuming the Senate passes it, stop you from speaking out?
Are you going to tell the IRS what your health insurance plan is when you file your 2010 taxes?
Are you going to pay Colorado’s unconstitutional internet sales tax?

Are they going to throw us all in jail? Dear God, let me be the first one on my block! I hear the food in the El Paso County jail is pretty good and I know the sheriff.

The time for civil disobedience is coming.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God – Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin

Colorado Attorney General Suthers spoke first, explaining how bad Obamacare is: not only for health care in general, but also for the unprecedented intrusion and control in people’s lives. I intend to devote a separate blog post to his talk–it’s that good.

He mentioned that when the attorneys general case reaches the Supreme Court the decision is likely to be 5-4 and the outcome is not certain. That was the perfect lead-in for me, because this petition is about a second line of defense; it is about erecting a state-level barrier to forced health care. The left knows that once they control your health care, they control your life. In Locke’s classic statement of liberty as being composed of life, liberty and property, your “property interest” in your own being is the most basic of all property rights. It did not take them long to assert their right to control you by taxing tanning beds, a fact Rep Steve King mentioned.

L to R: Tom Tancredo, aide and Rep Steve King

Yes, Rep Steve King (IA-5) was there and talked, among other things, about the passing of the health care bill and Republican efforts to stop it. He relayed a story of how Michelle Bachmann decided to call the tea partiers to the capitol to protest; how they went home only to come back within 48 hours. I found the story fascinating as I had been following it at the time from the emails I was getting from the Tea Party Patriots.

Before he spoke, Rep. King spoke to my wife about the petition–apparently this was the first he had heard about it–and spontaneously pulled out a business card and wrote on the back of it: : “I support the petition to Repeal Obama Care!” and signed it. Now that’s not exactly what the petition does–it asserts Colorado’s 10th Amendment rights to block Obamacare–but it’s close enough. We certainly appreciate the sentiment and note that the House Republicans have already introduced a motion to repeal the bill. It failed, of course. This time. I think the Republicans should open every session with such a motion, much as Cato the Elder ended every speech with the phrase, “Carthage must be destroyed.”

Ordinary, conservative, every-day, hard-working Americans have already stepped outside their comfort zone by going to Tea Parties, organizing in 9-12 groups, joining Constitution study groups, emailing, writing, faxing and calling their elected representatives. Nobody’s home, folks.

It is time to stop lobbying the current office holders. They’re not listening to us: they’re listening to big unions, big business, and their centralized party apparatchiks. But don’t take it from me, listen to Dennis Prager at the University of Denver just two weeks ago, on the evening of the state assemblies:

In the words of the immortal Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Barack Obama is not the problem; George Soros is not the problem. We the People who have allowed them to have power and influence over us are the problem.

As Prager pointed out and as Glenn Beck points out, this has been going on a long time. We’re not going to fix it overnight; I hope to see tangible progress in my lifetime.

This week I have planned a series of blog posts highlighting what we need to do in the next five months to save our republic and restore liberty.

I’m in this for the long haul. Are you?

When is the party going to get a clue?

Maybe the defeat of Senator Bob Bennett by grass-roots conservative Mike Lee in Utah will give pause. Or Gov. Crist’s withdrawal from the Florida GOP primary under pressure from Marco Rubio. Both men, by the way, are supported by Senator Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund, which I’ve highlighted before.

In Colorado, the party’s State Assembly is this week and I’m a delegate. RSCC pick Jane Norton has decided to petition on to the primary ballot just in case.  Her campaign under Josh Penry has gone negative and just today I got an email from a prominent supporter of hers attacking Ken Buck’s character and distorting his record.

Last week I got an email from the Scott McInnis campaign making a fine distinction between McInnis, who held a “consistent” stand on immigration versus Maes, whose stand “evolved”…to end up in the same place. Who cares? Only a lawyer trying to win a debate.

This is politics as usual. These negative personal attacks are what the American people are sick of. This year the fight in the Republican party is about principle: does the party stand on the conservative principles it says it does? More importantly, do it’s candidates? Arguments like “I have more experience in politics” and “I know the players, I can get things done” don’t hold nearly as much weight as they may have in the past. In fact, they are liabilities.

Here’s the clue: if you want to win in the primary AND go on to attract independents and even non-Marxist Democrats, then you had better show that you are a person of principle and that those principles prominently include limited constitutional government, fiscal responsibility and the free market.

This year’s election is not about your political career; this is a battle for life and liberty. If you’re not in this for God and the Constitution, get out now.

This fall is a referendum on liberty. The left has most notoriously shoved health care legislation down our throats, but they have done much more besides. Most of it is happening not in the Congress, but behind the scenes in the administration; This is Snowden’s secret. We must elect a conservative Congress, but will they have the nerve, the insight, the will to put a stop to the radicals in the administration, which will continue to move ahead at full speed?

My friend Jeff Wright puts it this way:

The nation will turn from the blue and red to the “red, white and blue” again.  Red is valor, white is peace and blue is liberty. I’m sick to death of the red or the blue political nation. Neither of those positions deals in truth, only different distortions of it.

I have a friend in the UK who feels exactly the same way. Regarding the recent election, he says of the parties,

all of them are left, right, centre according to what and who their audience of the day is.

It is our job as citizens in 2010 to elect not parties, but persons; not party faithful, but those faithful to the Constitution; not career politicians, but career citizens. This struggle will not be over on November 3rd; it will only have begun. Our goal is clear: in the words of Abraham Lincoln:

that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Onward, for Liberty!

Reclaim the Blue did not make that list but did make a list of Other Cool Libertarian Blogs.

If you had told me even two years ago that I was libertarian, I wouldn’t have believed you. This despite the fact that I taught political science and believe wholeheartedly in the writing of Locke and the Founders. I always believed that I was politically “moderate” or “middle of the road” and perhaps at one point in our country’s history I might have been. But the 60s radicals who I didn’t like back then have been busy undermining the foundations of our Republic for decades. I haven’t moved and at its core, I don’t believe the country has either.

Libertarianism isn’t about legalizing marijuana–it’s about Liberty. I’m still a social conservative but I believe we have no more right to use the power of government to coerce people into our way of thinking than the Marxist left does. I’m for a free market: that’s economic liberty. Government is best which governs least: that’s political liberty.

Since 2009 libertarians, conservatives, the unaffiliated and the politically unaware have come together in what the formerly mainstream media calls the tea party movement but which is in reality the Liberty Movement.

Libertarians and libertarian thought have been foundational in this movement and I am proud to be a part of it.

They are ours only so long as we stand up for them.

In 1788, Patrick Henry was a delegate to the Virginia Convention to consider ratification of the Constitution. He was not for it because he felt it created too strong a federal government; he was one of those who championed the Bill of Rights along with it.

Today the Tea Party movement advocates limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets: in short, a return to constitutional government. Why? To preserve our liberties. If nothing changes, we will surely become economic slaves to the government.

Justin Blackman writes in the same vein in an article he wrote for American Thinker, Fighting Statism. In it he writes,

Individual rights must be the rallying point for reclaiming liberty.

He provides some good examples of how both parties are taking us down the same road.  It is well worth the read. The American Thinker has long been on my list of blogs and this article is a good example of why.