Bob Basso's plan for the Great American Tea Party, where we the people are supposed to mail bags of tea to their “unrepresentative Representatives” has some merit. My purpose here is to challenge our thinking as to what a free nation really looks like, and what should and can be done to move in that direction.
I believe the message Bob hopes to send would be better exemplified if the people first were to make a cup of hot tea, thoroughly squeeze out the bag, hang it out to dry, and then send that used up, dried out, shriveled bag of useless tea to their “unrepresentative Representatives” to accurately express the true feelings of many Americans today.
Bob's emotional portrayal of Thomas Paine gives the audience a charged performance filled with patriotism, but when he suggests a course of action that is both far from - and in opposition to - the thinking of Mr. Paine, I feel compelled to sound an alarm.
While there are several points made which I would love to counter or discuss with you and Bob, the most disturbing is his call to “Bring Back Universal Service”, which he described as 2 years of military service or 2 years in community involvement for everyone.
While I am absolutely in favor of every man and women offering their service to their community and nation, I am not sure that mandatory service is found anywhere on the road map to liberty. It would seem to be in direct opposition to the spirit of liberty referenced in Thomas Paine's Common Sense.
Paine, the pamphleteer of freedom and liberty, published Common Sense in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, on February 14, 1776. He quotes the Bible extensively, including Samuel, Proverbs, and Gideon.
Gideon was able to raise a massive all-volunteer army to defend the nation. The volunteers were so numerous he sent the vast majority of them back home. Even after the victory Gideon continued to say “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the LORD shall rule over you.”
History and the Bible have both defined the ability of government to force people to labor for its interest as bondage and slavery. Mr. Paine would not want to “be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away.” “Society in every state is a blessing, but a government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”
For the first four hundred years, ancient Israel provided all government and military service at the personal discretion of the heads of individual families, and maintained free courts where the people decided both the fact and the application of the law. In such a system the people are the fountainhead of justice within society. But then the people did something really stupid which changed the nature of their government, altered the character of their society, and eventually, the people themselves.
Throughout our long history, many nations were able to function without kings, presidents, prime ministers, any lawmakers who had the authority to conscript the people into public service. “...[O]ur modern reliance on government to make law and establish order is not the historical norm.”
Freedom of the people is dependent, not upon collective rights and privileges granted by governments, but upon the common exercise of virtue diligently practiced by the people. The virtue of a free nation can only remain viable if the people exercise them daily. “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government can render us secure.” “All who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”
The growth of virtue in society requires free choice in the hands of the individual.
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