Is it time to consider civil disobedience?

 

 
Americans can sit by and watch government ignore the Constitution and all the principles that made the country great.

Or they can take action, like they did in 2010.

 Americans can get out into the streets and let the government know, in no uncertain terms, they will not accept the imposition of Obamacare, they will not accept the endless spiraling debt, they will not accept unlimited government, they will not accept intrusions into our personal liberties, they will not accept rogue government doing what it pleases, when it pleases and to whom it pleases.

In fact, it might be time to resort to civil disobedience in defense of the Constitution.

For instance, I am not going to participate in Obamacare. I’m not going to do it as an individual, and I’m not going to do it as an employer. I would like to be joined by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of others – maybe even millions.

While I’d like to see millions of tea-party activists back out in the street as we saw in 2010, perhaps we need to do more than hold placards and sing songs. Maybe we need to stage sit-ins like Martin Luther King did. Maybe we need to submit ourselves to arrest by the tens of thousands, overwhelming the injustice system.

Washington has become unresponsive to the people and the rule of law. Elections are manipulated, and the turnout in 2012 suggests tremendous disillusionment with the choices Americans are being offered.

Why shouldn’t they be?

As you read this column, Democrats and Republicans are conspiring to find a path to business as usual – endless borrowing and spending, raising taxes on the productive class of society, while creating more dependency on government by the rest.

Government acolytes like to talk about “unsustainability.” They use the term to suggest that levels of a natural component like carbon are going to destroy us all, magically raising sea levels and bringing about catastrophic events. At the same time, they seem oblivious to the real problem of unsustainability – endless borrowing and spending and taxing, even in an economy that is sputtering at best.

We’ve got to recognize what makes America special is the rule of law and the will of the people, a Constitution that limits the power of government and protects the rights of individuals.

Everything is upside down and inside out.

Before our very eyes, government is empowering itself to exceed the strict limits the Constitution places on it. And when government does that, it naturally infringes on the rights of the people.

The founders of this once-great nation struck a delicate balance between government authority and the rights of the people.

Today’s leaders – Democrats and too many Republicans as well – have tipped the scales in favor of oligarchy.

The tea party accomplished much during 2010. But it wasn’t the kind of long-lasting change we expected. Even the tea party was co-opted by politicians and those chasing the almighty dollar. But it began with all the best intentions as a grass-roots movement free of self-interested leaders. Those who did the hard organizational work simply wanted to save their country from the abyss.

As the author of “The Tea Party Manifesto,” I want to see the excitement we all experienced in 2010 re-ignited.

We had Washington running scared in 2010 – and the elections that year reflected the numbers mobilized by the tea-party movement.

However, those politicians who were the beneficiaries of that vote have betrayed us.

The man who was made speaker of the House as a result of that election is now clearly part of the problem.

That’s why a renewed, reinvigorated tea-party movement needs to recognize simply electing a new set of politicians is not enough. Politics isn’t something we do every two years. It’s a 24/7, 365-day activity that never ends. Once politicians are elected, they need to hear from you. They need to see you. They need to fear you.

That’s where we failed after the 2010 election. And the disillusionment so many of us felt after that experience drove too many to become less active.

If you love America, it’s time to get back out into the streets. It’s time to organize your neighbors in your own community. It’s time to challenge the media as we did in 2010 – even when they disparaged us or ignored us.

Maybe we even need to declare a national strike to make our power felt.

I don’t have all the answers. But it’s time to start thinking outside the box. It’s time to learn the lessons of our adversaries and put them into practice.

These are desperate times. We are losing our liberty. Government is running amok.
Are we going to lie down and watch the American Dream die?