Message to July 4th Tea Party-goers — VOICES for REASON

Are you thinking of going to a Tea Party on July 4th? Is it because your tax dollars are being used to “stimulate” the economy and to bail out bad decision makers, and that seems unjust?  Because the money earned by responsible people is being confiscated and spent on rescuing those who are experiencing financial woes? Are you going because Washington’s policies seem unfair? Are you going for  justice – for yourself and for all hardworking Americans?

 We’ve all seen the bumper stickers: “Honk if you are paying your neighbor’s mortgage.” But is that all you are paying for? It’s time for a minivan full of new bumper stickers. Honk if you are paying for:

• Your neighbor’s children’s education.
• Your neighbor’s health care benefits.
• Your neighbor’s unemployment benefits.
• Your neighbor’s Social Security.
• Your neighbor’s electric bill.
• Your neighbor’s subsidized hybrid car.

Honk if you are subsidizing dozens more of your neighbor’s lifestyle choices out of your paycheck.  Honk if you are tired of being your brother’s keeper.

You’ve earned your income and assets. It’s your property and in the name of justice only you should have the liberty to judge how best to spend it in pursuit of your own happiness and your own life.

Life, Liberty, Property, the Pursuit of Happiness: These are the rights our government was created to protect. When the government confiscates your property to subsidize someone else’s choices, it has gone from protecting your rights to violating them – in the name of giving others what they have not earned. Whether that unearned benefit takes the form of education, health care, Social Security, mortgage assistance or anything else some bureaucrat decides is in the “public interest,” the government’s message is the same: “You earn it, we’ll spend it – your values, rights, and life be damned.”

As Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged: “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” This Independence Day, it is in the name of justice that Americans should say to their government: “Enough!”