Joseph Farah - The Tea Party Manifesto: A Vision for an American Rebirt

A Vision for an American Rebirth

BY JOSEPH FARAH

THE TEA PARTY MANIFESTO
A Vision for an American Rebirth
Published by WND Books, Inc.
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Written by Joseph Farah
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ISBN 13 Digit: 978-1-935071-28-0
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THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT is the most exciting, dynamic, powerful grassroots political movement of my lifetime.

Its a movement that arose spontaneously in the nick of time to save America from what seemed like a fatal drift off course from self-government and liberty.

But questions are arising about what is at the heart and soul of this movement.

For what exactly does the tea party movement stand?

Its a question you will see debated in the media and even among tea party activists themselves.

Since this movement arose quickly and spontaneously, without well-known and easily identifiable leaders, and without a founding document, its not an easy question to answer.

Yet it is a question that must be answered if this movement is to grow, prosper, and be a continuing influence on the country in years to come as I sincerely hope it will be.

After five years of running the most successful, independent Internet news agency, WorldNetDaily devoted to traditional American-style watchdog journalism, specializing in exposing fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption in government and powerful institutions I found myself faced with a recurring question from visitors to the site:

Thank you for exposing the problems we face as a nation, day after day, week after week. But how do we extricate ourselves as a people from the growing threat of government power grabs? Whats the solution?

The more I heard it, the more I began to take this frequent challenge seriously. It was difficult enough to investigate and expose the problems facing the nation in a daily news format. It was clear any effort to provide solutions to the pressing problems of the day would require a different venue, a different format.

So I began working on a book that could provide a coherent vision for individual action one that would help answer those frequent questions from visitors to WND.

Taking America Back: A Radical Plan to Revive Freedom, Morality and Justice was first published in 2003, followed by a paperback edition. While the books initial public reception wasnt spectacular, it became much more popular after the election of Barack Obama and the rise of the tea party movement that began in 2008.

When I was asked to be a keynote speaker, along with Sarah Palin, at the first national Tea Party Convention in Nashville in 2010, the coordinator of the event, Judson Phillips, introduced me by saying, He was a tea partier before there was a tea party movement.

Those words still make me smile today.

I do like to think my call for a popular uprising in America to hold government and other powerful institutions accountable to the rule of law and the will of the people helped in some way to trigger this movement, though I know that connection is tenuous at best.

I do believe, however, I can claim with some degree of accuracy to have predicted the rise of this movement.

In 2008, in my book None of the Above: Why 2008 Is the Year to Cast the Ultimate Protest Vote, I explained why neither of the two majorparty candidates deserved to be president.

I offered up two scenarios:

The election of John McCain would mean the Democratic Congress would get most of what it wanted during his four-year term due to McCains history of conciliation with the other party. As a result, the economy would continue to sputter out of control. But the Democratic Congress would not get the blame in 2010 and 2012. McCain would. There would be no popular uprising. Americans would be rightfully confused about who to blame. Democrats would likely gain more seats in Congress in 2010, and Barack Obama would likely win the presidency in 2012.

The election of Barack Obama would mean Democrats would be in complete control of the White House and Congress. They would push through their radical agenda, which would cause a historic popular backlash. Democrats would pay the price in the midterm election and, again, in 2012. But even more important than the political revolution would be the renewed engagement by citizenry a development that could have the long-term impact of taking America back.

What I recognized was that McCain would not have set America on a right course. He supported the bailouts during the presidential race. He might have supported smaller bailouts in 2009, had he been elected. But he would most definitely not have provided principled opposition to the fundamental takeovers of the free-enterprise system.

The economy would still be in trouble and guess who would be getting all the blame?

Thats right. It would be the Republican president and Republicans in general. Although there would be bipartisan support for expansive and unconstitutional growth of the federal government, citizens would not be rising up attempting to reclaim their country through thousands of tea parties and other demonstrations. And there would be few viable alternatives for voters in the midterm congressional elections.

As the economy continued to stagger through 2012, McCain would be demonized for all the problems our country experienced in his four-year term, and Barack Obama would be getting ready for his first four years in office with a Congress stacked with even more Democrats and with even less opposition.

The only real difference would be that we delayed even greater pain for the country.

I believed, and still believe, America has a chance to wake up from its political sleepwalk. We needed to be jolted awake by experiencing the consequences of these horrendous policies, and Republicans had to be forced to rediscover their roots in and commitment to limited government.

For many Americans suffering right now through Obamanomics, its probably still hard to imagine that John McCain would have offered, through his brand of bipartisan compromise, nothing but a scapegoat for Democrats to blame for their own policies a scapegoat they will not have in 2010 and 2012.

On the other hand, people are waking up all over this country in just the first eighteen months of the Obama administration. Theyre seeing that socialism doesnt work. Theyre already marching in the streets by the millions. Ordinary, hard-working Americans who have never carried a protest sign in their lives are mobilized for action. America may never be the same.

Some thought I was crazy for saying that Obama could actually be a blessing in disguise for the future of our republic.

I recognized there would likely be more short-term pain under Obama. But I also predicted it would result in long-term gain.