Don’t you find it curious that the fans of the Tea Party find liberty and property to be of inseparable importance? The word equality is nowhere to be found except to excoriate others who believe in equality. They claim if you talk about wanting equality you are a Statist. You are someone who wants everyone to be the same because you have somehow failed to succeed financially; you feel that in order for you to feel better about yourself others should be limited in their individual endeavors.

Although the Declaration of Independence talks about our being born equal it is true that we are each our own individual person with different abilities, uniquely our own. Each of us deserves an equal opportunity to succeed with our distinct abilities and we should shout from the mountaintop and complain the moment any one of us is deprived of that right. Women for example should be paid the same as a man for the same job.

This is utter nonsense! When we declared our independence from England, we did so to break the bonds of a tyrannical despot who chose to ignore their rights as Englishmen. When we declared our independence we did not say that we were not interdependent on each other. Each colony shared in the effort, refusing to purchase English goods. They were in sympathy with their fellow colonists from Boston. Boston was suffering from the outrageous punishment that Lord North and Parliament meted out to the Bostonian”s by closing down Boston Harbor. The British closed the Harbor as punishment for the Boston Tea Party.

The current Tea Party is nothing like their forebears. Their interest is only in a self interested type of cooperation. Today’s Tea Party really would prefer not to be taxed at all. They claim that they earned their money and that they should keep it, they claim that they can spend it better than the government. They claim that what is taken is illegitimate and a reduction of his private property thereby enslaving the individual and denying him of liberty.

We do not live on some deserted island with no responsibilities to one another. If we are lucky we have a family, and live in a community. Our towns provide needed services that we need if we are to live in a community. Services cost money and that is why we have taxes to pay for things that we can not individually provide for. These services are too numerous to mention but to just name a few, your town or city needs water, a police department and a fire department, a few lights to see by wouldn’t hurt either. Nationally there are many services that we citizens can not provide for each other that our taxes go to pay for.

These reactionary conservatives today throw out these lofty words like self government while at the same time quote Madison on why government is needed. You can not have it both ways, in this modern day we are interdependent on each other. It is a fiction to think that self government is possible.

If you are an employer you need customers, usually a bank, and workers. The same goes for a nation. Our successes have come from our ability to work together especially during a crisis.

Alexis De Tocqueville, described a uniquely American trait in the following way: “As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only to answer to this single question: How much money will it bring in?”

Yes, and this uniquely American quality has brought us the Great Depression and our latest economic fiasco the Great Recession.

Now the right wing, loves to disparage the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, claiming that everything he did regarding the New Deal was against the Constitution, and the enumerated rights so named.

Conservatives, true Conservatives, not these reactionaries, now recognize that Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism from itself. He recognized the need to regulate greed so that the Great Depression did not repeat itself.

We have seen a wholesale attempt to dismantle the safety net that the New Deal put in place to protect the American people from the greed of those who could influence the economy in a negative way.

One of those safeguards was Glass-Steagall. That law which President Clinton got rid of prohibited banks from doing non-banking business such as investment banking. If that law would have been in place a lot of what transpired would not have been possible.

Government exists to protect us from mass fraud. It is interesting that the only person who went to jail was Madoff and that was only because he ripped of wealthy people. If we do manage greed you can guarantee that we will have history repeat itself.

Today we see the beginnings of another housing boom. We have not fixed the issue of banks being too big to fail and due to government being unable to solve that problem we are most likely to see it happen again but the next time we might not be able to save the economy.

Government serves a great purpose in providing a safety net for those who are put out of work due to the greed of others. Government has a place to help protect seniors with Social Security and Medicare. And guess what it is not unconstitutional, it is part of the general welfare, interstate commerce and tax provisions of the Constitution.

Life is not meant to be everyone out for just themselves. That kind of attitude is just not a Christian one and it is just darn right not neighborly. We are witnessing this new form of Social Darwinism and insensitivity when it comes to emergency disaster relief and feeding the poor. I get the feeling that some of us wish the poor would just die, and those without health care would hide away and disappear. But for the grace of God go I. We are one nation under God and indivisible. But I am afraid that the new reactionaries on the Tea Party side want to claim God but deny others the basic necessities of life. I can not see the example of Christ’s teachings in any of their espoused religiosity.

Let us reject these naysayers and reject those who are committing tyrannical acts even they are in the minority.