And They Call Us the Extremists!

Since the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009, which was a direct reaction to President Obama’s massive expansion of the federal government, the Left has fought back with a fury, mostly by hurling insults like “fascists,” “radicals,” “Nazis,” “arsonists,” “terrorists,” “anarchists,” and the favored “extremists.” This is nothing more than a misguided attempt to discredit us with smear tactics.

But why?  If we true conservatives are really nothing but a tiny fringe movement, as they claim, why all the fuss?  Because we are a vital threat to their very livelihood – a livelihood that depends on a government that rewards the elites and punishes the rest of us.  Should we galvanize our movement to full control of the Republican Party, our candidates will emerge victorious, and their cash cow government is finished, and they know it.

So instead of taking the word of Reid, Pelosi, and Obama on what our movement is really all about, let us tell them! 

We are the true conservatives and rightful heirs to Jefferson, Goldwater, and Reagan. We believe in limited government in Washington.  We believe in federalism to safeguard the rights of the states. We believe in a government that is economical and accountable to the people. We believe in keeping taxes as low as possible and ending the national debt.  We believe in fair trade that ensures the success of our economy and the protection of our workers for unfair foreign advantages.  We passionately believe in a strict adherence to the Constitution as originally written to ensure the federal government remains within its bounds.  We believe in the rule of law, individual liberty, personal responsibility, and private property. And we believe in a non-interventionist foreign policy to ensure the protection of our nation and not to fight the wars of others.

Does that sound extremist to you?

In the early days of the republic, these same principles were known as Jeffersonian Republicanism, the same ideals that stood against the British Empire in 1776.

We believe passionately in these principles that Jefferson enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, revere the limitations and protections the Framers preserved in the Constitution, and live our lives according to God’s Word as our Lord Jesus Chris instructed us.

Our opponents, be they Democrats or the establishment of our own Republican Party, do not hold these values, for their actions tell us so.  They seek an all-powerful government in Washington that dictates to the states as if they were nothing more than mere provinces, high taxes to feed the leviathan’s growing appetite, crushing regulations to hurt small businesses, massive spending and debt, trade deals that link our economy with poor third world nations, a loose interpretation of the Constitution (if they ever believed in it at all), restricting personal liberty, and an internationalist foreign policy that sends our military around the globe to police the world.

Now, which one sounds more extreme to you? We who revere our Founding documents or those who do not and violate them at every turn?

And with our opponent’s ideals in mind, what have their policies wrought?

We now have over $17 trillion in debt, a critical national problem that has exploded under Obama, who once criticized George W. Bush as unpatriotic for running up too much debt.  This equals more than $54,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.  This could very well wreck our economy if it is not brought under control.  And yet they call us extremists for crafting plans to pay it off.

Our entitlement programs – Social Security and Medicare – that millions depend on, are in worse shape, with unfunded liabilities totaling over $123 trillion.  That’s $123 trillion we have to come up with over and beyond what the program will take in without any changes.  This is a staggering sum that equates to over $387,000 per person, or over $1 million per household. Yet they refuse to discuss reform, guaranteeing bankruptcy. And they call us the extremists at every turn for offering solutions to save the programs for future generations.

Our tax system is a genuine mess, covering thousands of pages of complex language that the IRS does not truly understand.  Call the IRS ten times with the same question and you are likely to get ten different answers.  High taxes choke the life out of businesses and working families.  Our Founders fought a revolution against a tax that amounted to no more than pocket change, yet today if you are successful, the government will take 40 percent of your earnings, a level of taxation that would have horrified Washington and Jefferson, yet our opponents want more and more.  And they call us the extremists for believing that the people should keep more of the fruit of their labor and that the government should be limited on how much they can take.

Our military is stretched to the breaking point, without adequate funds to keep it running in top form, all while we have instituted massive cuts with the sequester, and then we ask the military to perform more and more tasks without the tools to do them.  We are party to dozens of treaties that guarantee future wars if our allies ever get into one, against the advice of Washington and Jefferson.  We have troops and personnel in over 100 countries, with over 900 installations.  We are currently bogged down in a war in the Middle East we seem unable or unwilling to win.  We have seen tens of thousands of young men and women killed and maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan, many coming home with horrific injuries, and without adequate medical care.  Yet they call us the extremists for seeking to bring our troops home and subject them to no more of this insanity.

Under the guise of keeping us safe, the federal government has implemented a massive domestic spying operation under the NSA that reads emails, text messages, listens in on conversations, tracks cell phones, and monitors computer activity, all without a warrant, which is required under the Fourth Amendment.  And they call us the extremists for seeking to protect the privacy of the American people and wanting to uphold the Bill of Rights.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) subjects us to humiliating searches at airports, complete with body scanners that can take photos of us without clothes.  Agents grope children, elderly ladies, and cancer patients, all in the name of security, and with plans to expand the agency to bus terminals, train stations, highways, and even schools.  And they call us extremists for seeking to protect the dignity of all Americans when we travel.

Our borders are porous and illegal immigration is out of control.  Right now we have no clue how many are in this country in violation of our laws.  This same inept system is directly responsible for the tragedy of September 11, 2001, when 19 hijackers, all with outdated visas, used airliners to attack our countrymen.  And yet even after such a horrific attack, our borders are unsecured.  Cheap labor floods our marketplace, driving down wages, while the possibility of a terrorist attack emanating from across the Rio Grande remains very real.  Yet they say we are the extremists for insisting on a secure border and control of immigration.

National trade policy has eroded our once proud manufacturing base, hollowing out the very industries that won both World Wars.  We are told that unrestricted free trade is good for us, that we should throw open our markets to all the products of the world, while they shut off their markets to us.  Our trade deficit is now over $10 trillion since NAFTA, with millions of good manufacturing jobs lost overseas.  But we are the extremists for insisting on fairness for our workers and open markets for our products.

America has an abundant source of natural energy – oil, coal, and natural gas – that totals more than the entire Middle East.  The price tag of our resources has been estimated at $128 trillion, enough to pay off the national debt and fully fund our endangered entitlements.  Yet our opponents are enslaved to the environmental movement, engaged in a global warming hoax in order to take away our property rights and line their own pockets, while sending hundreds of billions of our dollars to Middle Eastern oil magnates, many of who hate us, and to poor undeveloped nations in a massive global socialism scheme.  But they call us extremists for wanting to develop our own resources, end our dependence on the volatile Mideast, and create jobs and keep our wealth here at home.

Every year one and a half million babies are aborted in this country alone.  It is the American Holocaust.  Since the Supreme Court legalized infanticide in 1973, more than 55 million babies have been murdered. Yet any attempt to end it is met with fierce resistance.  Even the enactment of a ban on abortion after 20 weeks has been nearly impossible to gain.  And yet we are the extremists for daring to question the morality of such a barbaric practice.

My friends, we are not the extremists.  They are.  We are not the ones calling for a “fundamental transformation of America.”  They are.  And they have slowly but surely fundamentally transformed the nation over the past 100 years.

A secretive body, the Federal Reserve, has almost total control over the US economy, that has accumulated trillions of dollars in assets for its stockholders, yet has presided over at least one massive depression and numerous recessions of various severity, which it was designed to prevent mind you, and eroded the value of the dollar by more than 95 percent.  They have stolen our national wealth, our gold and silver, replacing it with a worthless paper currency.  We conservatives did not do that.  They did.

A massive welfare state of 80 federal programs has trapped millions in a state of dependency to Washington, while transferring $20 trillion from producers to non-producers since the Great Society began 50 years ago.  We did not do that. They did.

We didn’t run up over $17 trillion in debt.  They did.

We didn’t bankrupt Social Security and Medicare.  They did.

We didn’t engineer the anti-free market policies that brought on the financial panic in 2008 and caused millions to lose their homes.  They did.

We are not the ones dividing the populous into different classes and races.  They are.

We are not engaged in a war on women.  They are.

We do not engage in political smear tactics reminiscent of Joe McCarthy.  They do.

We did not call for the takeover of the entire healthcare industry, nor did we perpetuate the lies that healthcare costs would come down, that no one would lose their coverage and could keep their chosen doctor, if we embraced Obamacare.

We did not support a massive trillion-dollar stimulus plan that failed to create any jobs but managed to line the pockets of Obama’s friends and cronies.

We did not use the IRS as a political weapon to target our opponents, nor did we allow an American ambassador and three other embassy personnel to be murdered in Benghazi, nor did we give guns to violent Mexican drug cartels that have been used to murder thousands including American citizens, nor are we blocking any attempts to investigate these outrages and hold public officials accountable.

We did not change the rules of the Senate to push through a radical agenda without debate, nor did we appoint justices and judges who have no regard for the law or the Constitution.

They are the ones trashing the original meaning of the Constitution, ignoring the Bill of Rights, setting aside selective laws, and refusing to enforce others.  Not us.

They are the ones who persistently push their radical social vision upon the nation, then attempt to shame us into accepting practices that we do not value, like homosexuality and gay marriage.

They are the ones trashing our history and our national heroes, denigrating Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson as racists, bigots, and extremists.

They are the ones attacking the Christian faith and banishing God and the Holy Scriptures from our public schools in direct violation of the First Amendment.

They are the ones who ban books and limit speech under the guise of tolerance.

They are the ones who destroyed the American education system.

They are the ones who are continually eroding our national sovereignty with global treaties under the banner of the United Nations.

They are the ones who send our sons and daughters to fight someone else’s war but won’t send their own.

My fellow conservatives:  It is not extreme to want to protect our constitutional republic, to seek a balanced budget, to pay off the national debt, to reform entitlements for future generations, to gain energy independence, to demand fair trade, to insist on the rule of law and a strict adherence to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and to craft a prudent foreign policy that doesn’t send our soldiers to die in foreign lands under the banner of promoting democracy abroad.

We are not extremists.  We are not destroyers but we are fighters striving every day to save our republic before it’s too late, before our liberties are permanently destroyed, before our debt is insurmountably high, and before our economy implodes.  We fight to save, but make no mistake, they are fighting to destroy.