V oices of the Tea Party is a real-time collaborative forum for Tea Partiers around the country that delivers in-depth information on tactics, strategy, and policy from on-the-ground activists through the use of inexpensive and easy to download e-books. The series will serve the vibrant online community of everyday Americans who launched and continue to drive the Tea Party movement, by taking their collaborative discussions to a much higher level. Tea Party supporters around the country will now be able to instantly access best practices that have succeeded elsewhere, hear the stories of others in the movement, and learn from Tea Partiers with specific policy ideas and expertise. Perhaps more important, they will be able to engage with other thought leaders by submitting their own e-book proposals for possible inclusion in the series. (Please see our website for details: broadsidebooks.net.) Readers and writers alike can thereby join the important national discussion within this ever-expanding community of citizen-activists who have dedicated themselves to securing the movements core values of constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets.
Series editor Michael Patrick Leahy has been one of the driving forces of the Tea Party movement from its inception. Hes a co-founder of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, which sponsored the very first national Tea Party demonstrations; the February 27, 2009, Nationwide Chicago Tea Party; and the April 15, 2009, Tax Day Tea Party. He is also the author of The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement , to be published by Broadside Books in January 2012. His website is http://www.michaelpatrickleahy.com.
W hen I was a child growing up in Texas in the early 1960s, my grandmother often told me that I have the blood of Patrick Henry in my veins. She knew this to be so because her mother and grandmother had told her, and the strong oral tradition of our family reinforced that idea again and again. We were a working-class family, descendants of backcountry Virginians who had migrated first to Tennessee and then to Texas. Years later, I would try to confirm her story. My research has brought me tantalizingly close to a connectionthe same county in eighteenth-century Virginiabut I have never been able to completely confirm or disprove the claim. Still, with seventeen children and fifty-six grandchildren, Patrick Henry did his part to populate the frontier.
But whether I share a portion of his DNA or not, I certainly share Henrys ardent libertarian convictions. As I look back at my own life, and the events that drew me to the Tea Party movement, I am left with one inescapable conclusion. The spirit of Patrick Henry has guided me.
When we think of the Founders, we often envision a band of like-minded men and women who respected each other and worked harmoniously toward a common purpose. This wasnt true of the Founders, and, as my experience has shown, it isnt always true of the Tea Party. Yet both groups were very effective at accomplishing important common goals.
Patrick Henry came from the rough side of town. His father was a Scottish military officer, and his mother, descended from the Virginia aristocracy, was considered to have married well beneath her. They lived on the Virginia frontier, in the midst of the border-country Scots-Irish who filled out the empty spaces on the edges of America in the early eighteenth century.
We think of Patrick Henry as an educated man, because of the famous speech in which he said give me liberty or give me death, and because he was a successful lawyer. But like many of us, Henry was very skilled in one specific arena, and not at all in others. His great skill was the ability to speak extemporaneously. He was spellbinding, able to capture the hearts and minds of his audience by appealing to their deepest concepts of honor and duty. And yet, he really wasnt much of a scholar. He was said to be such a poor writer that he could barely draw up even the simplest legal documents. But he succeeded as an attorney because he knew how to speak before juries of the common folk. They liked him, related to him, and trusted him.
Henry was known as a radical in his day, and his Anti-Federalist positions caused those who wanted a strong central government constant irritation. He believed that the states should be sovereign, and would not relent in his opposition to the Constitution until the first ten amendments were accepted and added to the document. Jefferson and Madison despised him personally and, because of his lack of education, looked down on him as a social inferior. Henry returned the compliment, considering them pampered, overly theoretical dilettantes. This mutual contempt stood between these men for decades, and it is said that when Henry died in 1799, sighs of relief could be heard from Monticello and Montpelier.
Henry was a true revolutionary who always looked for opportunities to take action and to speak in support of his positions. His oratory was powerful and influential, able to reach into the core of the listeners and inspire them to join the cause, or to take his positions. Even though he had failed at business, was known as an idler, and was an irritant to his fellow Founders, they admired his demonstrated ability to get things done.
In 1765 Henry proposed the Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions, which are considered by many historians to be the most anti-British legislation passed by the colonies. It was one of the acts that lit the decade-long fuse that ultimately ignited the Revolution. Henry took advantage of the fact that several of those loyal to the crown were absent when he proposed the resolutions, and he succeeded in getting them passed. During his address to the Virginia House of Burgesses, the loyalists accused this young and inexperienced legislator of treason; they shouted at him and demanded his expulsion. He simply said, If this be treason, then make the most of it.
As a patriot, I naturally admire Jefferson and Madison. But I relate more to Patrick Henrys hands-on style and his bias toward action. Perhaps he did habitually fail to plan and prepare, but his masterful seizing of the perfect opportunity enabled him to get things done in the eighteenth century, and it continues to get things done today. It seems to be characteristic of Tea Party activists to oppose and speak out against those who would dictate and mandate without regard for the will of the people. Henrys example is still followed, and his spirit is still alive.
Like my illustrious ancestor, the Patrick Henrys of the world today will not be successful if they work in isolation. We need our Madisons and Jeffersonsthough we often find it difficult to deal with them. Indeed, it is the present-day combination of these styles that has brought success to the Tea Party movement, as it did to the American Revolution, and it is the continued internal dialogue and never-ending debate that will drive it forward.
I was born in Texas, and when my parents divorced in the summer of 1967, my mother, who worked for NASA, transferred to Washington, DC. We lived in Alexandria, Virginia, until the summer of 68. Those twelve months brought historic change to this nation, and though at eight years old I couldnt understand it, I saw some of it firsthand. Ten years later I graduated from high school and joined the US Navy. During my enlistment I married, and my wife and I began our family. After my military discharge we settled into a regular life. I planned and schemed to provide more and better for my family. Like everyone else we knew, we were chasing the American dream. Life was good. I found a career that allowed me to provide more than enough for my family. My wife was able to remain at home to raise our young children; however, I was required to travel often. My travels took me far from home, sending me around the world for weeks and sometime months at a time.
