Tea Party Charter: Defense of Property & Revival of

Virtues Equals Liberty

Marxists Know Freedom Cannot Exist Without Private Property

By Kelly O'Connell Sunday, December 12, 2010

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/31003

It’s obvious that a society highlighting freedom must also

honor virtue. For without the cooperation of law-abiding
citizens, government devolves into a police state or
anarchy. As virtue ebbs across America at every level,
from kindergarten to the Oval Office; from pulpit to
boardroom, an uprising demands an American revival.
This is the Tea Party, a spontaneous lawful revolt demanding a return to our ancestral
ideals and constitutional freedoms. This group represents a reformation of the
quintessential American virtues: a defense of life, liberty and property.

That these intrepid patriots arose without central planning or a galvanizing leader
remains one of the astounding occurrences in US political history. And so a debate
rages—What is the central motif of the Tea Party? Does this ragtag army, a modern day
Peasant’s Revolt—even have a theme? A central idea lies just under the surface. The
inchoate theme of the Tea Party is nothing less than America’s Declaration and
Constitution. The following is a brief elucidation and defense of the Tea Party’s raison
d’etre.

I. American Tax Protests as Tea Party Antecedent

The USA arose because of British usurpation of various illegal taxes. This can be
summed up as “taxation without representation.” These included the protests over the
Stamp Act, Townsend Act, and Whiskey Rebellion. The famed Boston Tea Party was
merely the most memorable. It can be fairly argued that without these precedent tax
protests there would have been no Declaration or Constitutional Congress.

One reason the Founders decided to protect property was a result of tax issues. In fact,
the entire Bill of Rights was assembled to protect the people from the undue power of
government.

II. Defense of Property: John Locke’s Great Bequest

John Locke was the first great thinker to enshrine private property. His innovation was
to demand from government an absolute defense of private property. Without this
evolution it would be impossible to imagine the modern world. Recall Karl Marx’s
Communist Manifesto, a supposed great work of innovation, is actually a throwback to
the ancient notion that government owned all property.
As John W. Danford writes in Roots Of Freedom, a Primer On Modern Liberty,

Locke was perhaps the first great thinker to grasp the rudiments of modern liberal
economics, and to incorporate a radically new understanding of wealth into his political
philosophy. He argued that the preservation of property—meaning men’s “lives, liberties
and estates”—is the basic justification of all civil order. He writes, “The great and chief
end , therefore, of Men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under
Government, is the Preservation of Their Property.”

When the Tea Party attacks deficit spending, reckless taxation, or other unjust takings it
is a defense not just of our Constitution, but our entire way of life. Let us recall, without
an unqualified right to private property, our entire system falls into ruin.

III. Civic Virtues, The Only True Secular Bulwark

The Founders were opposed to the establishment of a state religion because they saw it
hampering the equality of worship. It is an utter falsehood to claim the Founders were
anti-religion, although some were undoubtedly deistic. Yet none discounted the good
Christianity had done to civilize Europe and potential to humanize mankind. For
example, the most cited book in the Founding colonial era (1760-1805) was the Bible.
But on top of a Christian witness, the colonists understood that virtue had to be
inculcated in a civic setting for their society to prosper.

There can be no successful democracy without a republic of civic virtues. George

Washington & Jonathan Edwards offer several examples of American virtue instruction.
Washington trained himself for years with a list later discovered which enumerated 110
‘Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.’ The first few will
give a sense of the tenor:

1. Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that
are present.
2. When in company, put not your hands to any part of the body not usually
discovered.

Jonathan Edwards, the man still regarded as America’s greatest philosopher and
theologian had his own list of virtues, perhaps a bit weightier than Washington’s.

The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards (1722-1723)

Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat
him by his grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable
to his will, for Christ’s sake.

Remember to read over these Resolutions once a week.

1. Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory, and my own
good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the
time, whether now, or never so many myriad’s of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever
I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general.
Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever.

Humanistic Ben Franklin lists of thirteen virtues, including the last: “HUMILITY: Imitate
Jesus and Socrates.”

Now consider a list of biblical virtues early colonialists tried to emulate (1 Corinthians
13):

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does
not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in
wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things.

Bear several things in mind about the colonial idea of virtue. First, while colonists were
encouraged by the classical ideal, this was not their model. Second, the early Pilgrims
and Puritans, as well as later colonists and Founders all understood the very logical
connection between Christianity and the development of modern virtues. Third, the
Founders also understood that the creation of a practice of civic virtues must be
independent of the church, and the future of the Republic would stand upon this
edifice. And fourth, adults had to be encouraged to be virtuous as a way of sustaining
the Republic, and children therefore must be inculcated in this ideal. The McGuffey
Reader was instrumental in this task.

IV. Liberty, Our Most Noble Estate

What is “Liberty”? It is simple freedom and has been a hallmark of Western thought
since the Enlightenment, but its seeds go back to the Renaissance and Reformation,
and even further to the early Christian Church. There were certain aspects of liberty in
the classical world. But no pagan society believed man was free in the modern sense,
as outlined in the Bill of Rights.

According to Vetterli and Bryner’s In Search Of The Republic, Public Virtue & The Roots
Of American Government, the colonists became increasingly fixated on liberty the more
it was encroached upon. The issue began to dominate public discussions and was
especially discussed from the pulpits of colonial pastors. They write,

The sermons of American ministers repeatedly linked the fight against Britain with the
fight against sin. Engagement and zeal in both struggles offered the hope of a dual
salvation: The soul of the Christian and the Liberty of America. Liberty, or freedom is a
promise given in the Bible from Christ to His followers, as explained by Saint Paul in his
Epistle Galatians 5:1—

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves
be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
The concept of freedom was detailed in the Bible and yet it took thousands of years for
the implications of this to be developed in society. Lynn Hunt, in Inventing Human
Rights points how the English preacher and pamphleteer Richard Price, in Observations
on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy
of the War with America. discussed four aspects of Liberty in his support of the
colonists, citing:

First, physical liberty; secondly, moral liberty; thirdly, religious liberty; and fourthly, civil
liberty. These heads comprehend under them all the different kinds of liberty. And I
have placed civil liberty last because I mean to apply to it all I shall say of the other
kinds of liberty.

Such thinkers helped to develop America into a colossus of freedom. And today the Tea
Partiers demand their rights which the government has usurped.

V. Education & Religion, A Firm Foundation

Classical

The Classical period developed the notion of virtue within the context of both pagan
religious and secular settings, albeit without a biblical context. The Renaissance brought
back classical learning and their ideal of virtue. Such writers as Cicero focused on virtue
as being “public mindedness,” whereas the Founders saw that virtue was a set of good
habits that benefited the Republic which drew inspiration by private biblical piety.

Colonial

The Puritan educational ideal was a Renaissance classical model added to deep biblical
study. The Puritans were the model for the Founders who were deeply influenced by
Calvinist theology. As Douglas F. Kelly writes in The Emergence Of Liberty In The
Modern World, “In terms of population alone, a high percentage of the pre-
revolutionary American colonies were of Puritan-Calvinist background.”

Vetterli and Bryner write on this,

The idea of the necessity of virtue—developed as a “modern” doctrine and practice

from an amalgam of classical, medieval, Renaissance, Reformation and biblical
concepts—was commonplace. Out of this metamorphosis came the belief that virtue
and morality—specifically biblical morality—were synonymous, although they were
sometimes referred to as separate concepts.

Modern

Alexis de Tocqueville noted how habitually virtuous Americans were, the opposite of
today. What has occurred? America’s educational downfall began when John Dewey, a
crypto-Marxist, became the gatekeeper. The impact of Dewey’s ideas halted the
classical Puritan model. This coincides with the rise of Darwinism while forcing American
Christianity into a ghetto.

Darwinism established a respectable face of secularism upending America’s Christian

heritage. Marxism was the economic aspect of radical secularism Darwinism also
represented. So a secular worldview was cobbled together, wholly false but seemingly
defensible given apparent unity.

Conclusion

The Tea Party represents the richest tradition in the history of the United States—an
orientation towards our Declaration’s Life, Liberty and Happiness, ie Property. Further,
the Tea Party senses the decline in public virtue as represented by rampant public
corruption revealing an ax laid at the roots of the Republic. This is best illustrated by
the crazy deficit spending which achieves no economic product but threatens to
impoverish future generations of Americans.

We cannot gain our liberty back without the secret to the Founder’s freedoms, which
Vetterli and Bryner describe as virtue, “Christianity and its emphasis on virtue was a
central component of the intellectual environment in which the Founders matured and
acted.”

Today, lying, cheating, sabotage and theft occur regularly at the highest levels of
America’s government. This political morass represents a sickness unto death to the
American Republic, which if not addressed must kill the host. That the Tea Party is
willing to fight this grim battle needs celebration. This selfless, virtuous act of fighting
tyranny ought be saluted by every good American citizen as well as generations of
future patriots not yet born, if we can but survive our constitutional crisis.

Kelly O'Connell

Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised
in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for
the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended
law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in
Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic
articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also
been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned
West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private
practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico.

Kelly can be reached at: hibernian1@gmail.com