SWGA Politics

Tom Knighton: Plains Tea Party Speech

What follows is the actual text written up.  This were not the exact same words spoken at the July 4, 2009 tea party, since I tend to ad lib a bit at the podium.  However, Jeff wasn’t the only one who asked that my speech get posted, so here it is, by popular demand!

I love it.  Who could imagine this many supposed right wing extremists in one place, and not even the threat of violence?  Amazing, isn’t it?

My name is Tom Knighton.  I’m the Vice Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Southwest Georgia.  I’m here to talk to you all a little bit about liberty, which makes sense considering what day today is.  Everyone thinks they know what liberty is, and for the most part they probably do to some extent.  But the question is, do you realize how little we actually have and how the powers that be have tried to take it away?

Take a look around for a second.  All these people gathered together, and no one with clubs beating us down or shooting us just for being here.  Those poor souls in Iran envy us right now.  But let me ask you this?  Do you folks know what all has to go on to have an event like this?

Somewhere over a thousand tea parties are going on this weekend.  Probably a lot more than a thousand.  I don’t have exact numbers, but one website had over 1,400 tea parties just registered with them.  There’s probably a lot that aren’t registered there.  At each one of them that’s held on public property, there had to be an application for a permit to gather.  There was probably a fee at most of them.  Some of them had to jump through hoops like hire security and whatever else the local governments came up with.  All so we can voice our concerns about the government.

Now, let’s say we didn’t do that.  Let’s say we just gathered together and starting walk down the street as one huge group.  What would happen?  The police would come out.  They’d arrest us…probably take us to jail.  If anyone resisted, then who knows how similar it would look to Iran.  Just look at what happened in a lot of places back in the ‘60’s.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be the first to concede that we’re a whole lot better off than Iran.  For one, we actually CAN protest our government.  My point is that instead of just taking to the streets to protest, local governments all over the country have put up roadblocks to keep publicly voiced dissent to a minimum.  Of course, we can still say what we want…for now.

You see, ever since a maniac walked into the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and starting shooting, people have started talking about “hate speech” legislation again.  These people want to eliminate our rights to say things about certain groups of people.  Now, on the surface to a lot of folks, this doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.  After all, we’re all American and we kind of need to get along.  Hey, that’s at least a sentiment I suspect most of us could get behind too.  Let’s put aside all the other stuff and just be Americans!

Here’s the thing though.  Once you start banning people saying certain things, who’s to stop it from getting out of control?  Let’s say I actually believed these people wanting hate speech legislation when they said things like how they believe in the first amendment, but people can’t be trusted not to incite hate with their words.  Let’s say I actually believed that hate speech legislation was a good thing.  My question is, where would it end?  Would it end up turning the pastor teaching that homosexuality is a sin into a criminal?  Would it be shifted so that anyone who criticizes Congress is guilty of hate speech?

Our Founding Fathers, contrary to what you might have heard, were actually pretty smart guys.  They weren’t perfect, but they were smart.  They honestly believed that free speech is essential for a free society.  They truly believed that people needed to be able to speak their minds without fear of prosecution in order for this nation to really be free.  They were dead right.

We the People need to be able to say “this guy’s a crook” or “that one’s spineless” without worrying.  It’s how ideas get exchanged.  It’s the most basic way that ideas get exchanged.  It’s how our nation was formed and how it’s grown to be the greatest nation in the history of mankind!

But those founders were smart guys.  They had all kinds of ideas that were well ahead of their time.  They didn’t want a national religion, because they didn’t want one group taking precedent over any other.  They wanted a free press; so that the press could criticize the government when they felt it had crossed the line.

Really though, all of this boiled down to what the Founding Fathers wanted more than anything else; checks and balances.  I think it’s safe to say that everyone here already understands how the branches of government keep a check on one another, so I’m not going to treat you like you don’t.  But freedom of speech and freedom of the press are part of the checks and balances too.  They’re tools of the single most powerful branch of government, one that’s not spelled out in the Constitution, but even the politicians of today have to at least pretend to care about it.

That is the branch of We the People!

We – you and I – are the ultimate power, and free speech and free press are the tools we need to keep government in check.  Unfortunately, we haven’t been doing to good of a job with the latter.  Mainstream media leaves out an awful lot, which I suspect everyone here already knows.  Cap and trade passed the House last Friday.  No matter where you stand on cap and trade, that vote was monumental.  It is probably the most sweeping legislation passed in ages, and that’s saying something after the Patriot Act.  Now, let me ask you one thing:  How much news coverage did you get?  Almost none.

One of the most important piece of legislation in our lifetimes, and it wasn’t as important as Michael Jackson’s death.  Yeah.  Nice job there free press.

Of course, by now you’ve found websites that distill the news in a more palatable way for your personal political ideologies.   That’s the great thing about that free press.  When it’s coupled with the internet, there’s no stopping liberty.

Of course, you can’t accuse congress of not trying, that’s for sure.  Not only have they tried to erode our freedom of speech, but there’s been talk of the FCC enforcing the Fairness Doctrine, which would require media outlets like talk radio to offer opposing viewpoints.  Now, I like the idea of differing opinions being available.  I’ve been one of those voices before in the print media.  It serves a valid purpose, and I don’t think anyone will disagree with the idea of people being able to get both sides of a story.  Of course, we have this awesome thing called the Internet that lets people to it for themselves, so thanks but not thanks!  I don’t want the government telling the press what they can and can’t do.

Now, back to those checks and balances I was talking about, there’s another one that a lot of people have a real problem with.  It’s that pesky favorite of us “right wing extremists”, that silly right to keep and bear arms.

Some folks just don’t like guns for whatever reason.  Hey, they’re not for everyone.  Me?  I’m a fan, but they’re not something that everyone will get into like I did.  It really doesn’t matter though, because they were put there as the ultimate checks and balance, the insurance policy for the whole bill or rights and we all know what kind of attacks the second amendment has had to endure.  Things like the assault weapon ban from ’94, or HR 45 that would put our ability to own guns in the hands of the Attorney General who will get to choose who owns guns and who doesn’t.  We wouldn’t even be able to pass guns down to our children without their permission!  And this is on the one amendment that was put in place to ensure that We the People wouldn’t be anyone’s slaves.  It’s kind of hard to oppress a people when they can shoot back.

That’s OK though.  We can take our nation back.  We can take our freedoms back.  But there are a few things that we have to do and have to understand.

First, we can’t accept any more assaults on any of our freedoms, no matter what kind of freedom it is.  We have to make it clear that the government has taken enough, and that we hold both parties responsible.  We can’t allow them to seize any more power, no matter what kind of crisis there is.  One thing that history has shown us over and over is that once they get power in Washington, they don’t ever want to let it go, no matter what.

Next, we need to find candidates that really believe in freedom, not those who pay lip service.  There are plenty who say things like “I believe in free markets, but we need to regulate them” and other moronic things.  Guess what?  If the government is regulating them, they’re not exactly “free” markets!  We need to press our General Assembly officials to make it easier for alternative party candidates to get access to the ballot.  Now, as a Libertarian, I have a stake is something like this but I believe you do too.  Right now, your choices are the progressives with an “R” after their name or a “D” after their name.  Opening up elections to competition is bound to clean up those two parties as well since now they have to compete, and not just for Libertarian candidates either.  There are a lot of alternative parties ready to step in and provide alternatives that don’t involve Uncle Sam running your lives.

Not only do we need to do these things, but we need to continue something we’re all doing…this right here.  Protest.  Protest a lot.  In the next year, a lot of people will be asking for your votes.  I don’t want them.  I want your blood, your sweat, and your spirits.  I want them to join me and the rest of us in gathering together to keep the protests going.  The left knows how to get things moving in their favor because they know how to protest.  They have people who get paid to protest.  We…well, we have real jobs.  But the principle’s just the same.  Protests like these tea parties will, in time, help shape ideas in the mainstream.  We will start to foster ideas that right now seem ridiculous to think will that they’ll ever go anywhere.

However, just a couple of days ago, in the most liberal city in the United States, New York City, they held a tea party in Times Square.  The ideas are spreading.  We just have to keep fighting the good fight.  We are changing hearts and minds with every protest.

Now, we were discounted in April.  We were marginalized by most major media outlets.  We were degraded by cable television pundits.  We were accused of racism by supposed stand up comics who now consider themselves political commentators.  And it will probably happen again.

However, I can’t help but this of Shakespeare.  In my favorite work, Henry V, there’s a line when the English laid siege to a town that when the blast of war echoes in your ear, you should imitate the actions of a tiger.  It’s my favorite speech of all of Shakespeare’s work, but for us, it’s not right.

You see, we don’t have tigers here in the U.S. unless they’re in zoos.  We do have the good old rattler.  Calm but dangerous, they’re easy to discount but only if you don’t know better.  I like that much better.  It suits us as Americans better I think.  And when people degrade us, insult us, and accuse us, then let’s imitate that old rattlesnake, look up and simply say:

Don’t.

Tread.

On.

Me.