But we don’t want anyone thinking we’re hiding or revising history, so I’ve simply reposted the two original comments. Thanks for everyone’s understanding on this.

http://www.theamericanwrites.com/2012/05/bryan-college-station-tea-party-rejects-logic-mission-in-district-14-candidate-endorsement/

I cannot have a conversation with you, Nancy, if you are going to label me as “uneducated” in my opinions after asking what my basis is and then not allowing me to answer before calling me uneducated. If I cannot have political discourse with you without name-calling or aspersions being cast, then we cannot agree to fair debate where each one is afforded the opportunity to express their opinion and be open to learning from the other.

I am sorry you resorted to that tactic. I understand Hal means a lot to you. I had hoped that our long relationship would allow us to discuss and disagree without such attacks.

2. How can your “fact” of motive or intent be true unless Hal himself told you of his intent or motive? Or have you had extensive and far ranging conversations with Hal that allow you to have special insight into his inner soul?

3. Since you don’t know the intent or motive of Hal’s candidacy, it is simply your own uneducated opinion that his candidacy is ill-conceived.

4. Can you provide a list of how Hal’s campaign platform is “COMPLETELY against the principles of the Tea Party”?

Here is a list of John Raney’s positions that we found indicative of a lack of appreciation of Tea Party principles.

a) A willingness to work with Joe Straus – exhibits a willingness to submit his constitutional authority derived from the will of the people/constituents to become instead a vassal to a powerful overlord with alliances of which we the people are not privy. That is personal ambition rather than constitutional ambition which gives each elected official the authority to protect the life, liberty, and private property of all citizens.

b) Taxing the internet as means to protect the brick and mortar store – If the Tea Party doesn’t mean Taxed Enough Already….personal ambition as well as a lack of appreciation the conservative principle that government legislation should be non-excludable and non-rival. Punitive taxes are not a part of conservative economics. Likewise, taxing the future in order to protect the status quo is also not conservative economics. Instead we know that taxing the future stifles growth, which in turn stifles revenue.

c) Increasing methods of collecting revenue – Again TEA – Taxed Enough Already — we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a SPENDING PROBLEM.

In making all these recommendations, please know that it is adherence to these principles that remained paramount.

We simply offer recommendations and then encourage each individual to vote their own conscience.

There is nobody more personally ambitious, except for Barack Obama, in this entire slate of candidates than Hal Hawkins. The very fact that he waited until after the special election to throw his hat in the ring stinks of personal ambition….let alone his disregard for the extra costs he caused everyone involved because of his ill-conceived candidacy.

When leaders of the local GOP tell me they let Hal run as a Republican so he doesn’t run as a Democrat (his charisma and excitement are hypnotizing), that should also be telling of his ambition.

A vote for Hal is COMPLETELY against the principles of the Tea Party. Personal ambition holds no place in John Raney’s willingness to serve.

I am disappointed to see this, especially for the reason given. It does not make sense at all.

You may download ones for both the Republican and Democratic primaries at http://www.brazosvotes.org.

I would appreciate an answer and list of Candidates if that is possible.
Ervin L. Cain

John R. Street

Also, know that our Local Debt Brochure and Texas is Bleeding to Debt graphic are meant for sharing. Please feel free to use the pdf and graphic to create your low local debt brochure. We’ve been so blessed with the talent within our group and we want to offer assistance to other like minded groups in those ways we can.

Some of our local government entities are using CO to issue taxpayer debt when they know a bond election would fail.

Our new website (betterbradynow.org) is trying to teach and inform citizens in Brady, Texas and McCulloch County so they can act to hold local officials accountable.

As a matter of interest, the citizens of Robstown are acting.
http://www.recordstar.com/news/local_news/article_bd994ec2-ad01-554b-9a5e-13cc173c4bb2.html

http://biggovernment.com/cowens/2012/02/27/is-the-irs-attempting-to-intimidate-local-tea-parties/

Thank You

John R. Street
979-777-1486
street5318@yahoo.com

Your opinion on this issue seems to be based upon the logic that you need healthcare; therefore the coercive force of government can be applied to force Health Care Industry workers to provide that service for you via some method determined by government legislation rather than free will or self-interest.

What great charitable service are you providing to the community to warrant your ability to vote that the Liberty of others is to provide for your needs? Maybe if you don’t have a charitable service, we can appoint one for you to provide for the rest of the community?

If you insist that Health Care Industry workers are treated as though they joined the ObamaArmy®, then YOU must be a charitable service provider, too. No “Animal Farm” here, with you self-appointing yourself as a pig, and more equal than the rest of us comrades.

Your insistence and willingness to create a government that mandates others operate according to your self-made moral code sounds a lot like a state religion.

Thank God, our founders wrote a Constitution that clearly rejected the establishment of a state church!

Many incumbent politicians have forgotten that their power is derived from We The People in their district, not from political cronyism. Upon the point where an elected official become ambitious for power via any means other than from We the People in their district, they cease being a representative of the people and morph into a political hack willing to sell his vote to the highest bidder or to the one whispering in his ear, hinting of possible advancement.

Unless courageous men like yourself step in to challenge those incumbents morphing into political hacks, our Creator endowed rights such as Life, Liberty, and pursuit of happiness will continue to erode.

I encourage you to attend Empower Texans’- The Leadership Project as well as the upcoming FreedomWorks event.

Courage according to John Wayne was being scared to death, but saddling up anyway. So, we salute you for saddlin’ up to defend Liberty.

So, let’s go through your last comment.

1. While many states are declaring the individual mandate unconstitutional, my focus is entirely upon the liberty of those who will provide the health care services under ObamaCare®.

In going through the first Frederick Douglass definition of slavery. please consider:

Will those individuals be able to choose where they live and work under ObamaCare®? The answer is no.

Will those individuals be able to choose the profession or study of their preference? Again, the answer is no.

Will those individuals be able to practice the American founding principle of his Creator endowed right to pursue happiness according to his own personal desires? Again, the answer is no.

2. It is irrelevant for whom these individuals actually work; the full power of the Federal Government has subjected these individuals to lesser Liberty than defined in our Founding Documents.

What is Liberty if not the Creator endowed right to choose your own path, your own course of action, to make decisions according to your own self-interest?

3. In fact, could not the argument be made that ObamaCare® is exactly the same concept as “defacto slavery under Jim Crow” in which State gov’ts under the rule of the Democratic Party, voted to restrict the Liberty of African Americans through various commercial restrictions such as: back of the bus, giving up your seat, inability to be served in restaurants, as well as the threats from the KKK for those African Americans daring to vote Republican?

http://bcsteaparty.com/2011/05/the-truth-about-the-kkk/

To expand the “Jim Crow” reference, it could be argued that our local smoking ban via city councils is Jim Crow redux. During Jim Crow, the bus companies certainly didn’t want to segregate their paying passengers. However, they abdicated their liberty to run their private businesses according to free market principles by accepting such overreaching power of government. Economists Walter E. Williams and Thomas Sowell have done extensive research into the Jim Crow segregation practices of government into private industry.

I encourage you to reconsider your view of Creator endowed Liberty for all men.

Allowing others to live their lives according to their own pursuit of happiness is the very foundation of Liberty. Free men do not have to beg, scrape, and bow to gain permission from their own creation – The Constitution and our government – in order to fulfill their dreams. Such thinking is the foundation of classical liberalism.

If The United States of America ceases to be the only nation that reveres man’s Creator endowed rights, where will the free-thinkers, the inventive, the dissidents, the innovative go?

While President Obama called upon us to live as though we were in the Army, some of us don’t choose to join the ObamaArmy®. Without a choice, there is no Liberty. With the threat of coercion, there can be no real choice.

In your personal lust to co-opt the services of others, you at first treat other freemen as cattle, only to become a steer in the chute toward loss of liberty yourself to be fed until you serve no purpose.

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.” Frederick Douglass

In the Tea Party sponsored Saddle Up Cell phone text poll, I defeated the incumbent 73% to 27%…but we have a long way to go. He has a lot of DC and VA area PAC money. HE no longer represents our district. Will you support me in helping me address name ID need and if you live in the above counties, please volunteer to put a yard sign in your yard and ask friends to do the same.

I have signs, cards and flyers stashed in my home at Hilltop Lakes and will have the same at the Navasota Republican HQ…this coming week (Huntsville RHQ, Conroe RHQ, Coldspring RHQ and the Moosehead Restaurant in Crockett, Texas Tea Party PAC office on Sawdust road in the Woodlands. I drive HWY 6 to Hwy 21 to North Zulch to 39 Normangee very often and can meet you along the way. Thank you so much for your help and consideration. Lets prepare to get this country back on the right path. We must Pray for our nation, but we must also get everyone out to votes. God Bless you all.

Of course not all slaves were/are African Americans, and not all African Americans were/are slaves. But the vast majority of African Americans in the United States prior to 1865 were slaves, and the vast majority of African Americans lived under defacto slavery under Jim Crow until the 1960′s.

1) Personal opinion is neither relevant to reality or a debate argument.

2) You try to shift the argument to a different subject – the individual mandate.

3) Your statement: “the enslavement of an entire people” is a fallacy on several points:
a) Slavery is a state of coerced and subjected loss of liberty, not a people group.
b) No all members of any particular people group, apart from the Hebrews in Egypt, have been enslaved.

Not all slaves were/are African Americans.
Not all African Americans were/are slaves.

c) Slavery is still with us today in all its horror, but we ignore it.

4) The use of a personal attack in a debate means that you have no evidence other than personal opinion to support your position.

Therefore, I still assert with facts that your desire to subject individuals employed in the Health Care industry to serve you according to your demands via the authority and power of government is in fact slavery.

How is that not comparable to slavery? I state my references in fact and truth.

Your argument is based upon your personal opinion not on absolute truth. The flaw of the post modern existentialist mindset is that it bases its opinions upon personal likes and dislikes, rather than absolute truth and Natural Law.

You fail to recognize that others have no compunction to adhere to your personal likes and desires, anymore than you do to theirs. Numerous common phrases such as: “go pound sand”, “don’t let the screen door slap you on the behind on your way out”, and the great Aggie phrase, “Highway 6 runs both ways”, support this truth.

To believe otherwise smacks of the same arrogance that defines the character of every tyrannical dictator.

In Federalist 10 – Madison warns of the tendency of our human nature to gather in factious groups intent upon depriving other members of their own community of their civil liberties.

It is only by recognizing the transcendent authority that determines all men equal before their Creator, that we can view others not as servants, slaves, or as stepping stones to fulfill our own ambitions, lusts, and desires.

So, unless you can base your argument on anything other than your own opinion, my assertion that ObamaCare® is essentially slavery stands as absolute truth.

The BAD news: On Aug 1 of 2011 Congress authorized raising the debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion, and today’s vote is merely a symbolic vote, a formality built into the “McConnell Plan” that allows Representatives who voted FOR the authorization last summer to endorse a “resolution of disapproval” today, to pretend that they are fiscal conservatives. Here is an article about it: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/18/dont-let-debt-ceiling-political-theater-in-congress-distract-from-real-budget/

Do you know how your Representative voted? Each time?

I am terribly grieved to learn you are unemployed. I too have experienced that loss as well as the accompanying loss of property and sense of security.

Being a mulling type personality, in pondering through the complete denial of my civil liberties that accompanied my loss of employment, I came to appreciate all the more my own self-interest and the folly of trusting others with my own well-being.

Since that event (over 20 years ago), I have become a student of Human Nature. So, imagine my surprise when I begin to study the Federalist Papers and find the 83 short essays filled with a clear and concise appreciation of Human Nature as well as the clarity of a Constitution that recognizes our Human Nature and then provides the authority to govern so that the prime purpose is to ensure and defend individual liberty and the private property of everyone.

So, to apply this to your own grim situation, I would caution you from considering that the solution to your own seemingly lack of control of your own well-being could ever be to put authority over it in hands of some so-called benign and benevolent political party or government program. To believe that any group is filled with people of the character of a Mother Theresa is to not appreciate the reality of Human Nature.

The true solution to your problem is founded in a right opinion of your own self-interest. For instance, I have come to appreciate that I am best served by creating my own job and working for myself – and am even now going through the necessity of creating a new job for myself.

This liberty is the principle upon which our nation was founded. But, after generations of miseducation about the founding of our nation, we currently live in a nation bent upon outlawing that very liberty. Rugged Individualism is being regulated and legislated into a criminal activity so that everyone will be the same….except that Human Nature dictates that there will always be a superior class filled with the survival of the fittest human/animals and their friends.

We ignore Human Nature to our own peril and destruction.

I encourage you to think about these principles and hope you come to appreciate that the only way to have some modicum of control over your own well-being – is the path of individual liberty.

I will pray for God’s transcendent wisdom for you as you assess your situation and make decisions in searching for future employment. In my own life journey I have come to know without a doubt that God our Creator knows exactly where you are and of your every need and is willing and waiting for each of us to call upon Him for our every requirement.

Perhaps you should appreciate that being uninsured should remain a choice rather than a crime.

It is the totalitarian regime that views citizens as not-yet convicted criminals. See previous article.

As John Jay taught in Federalist 3, having a wrong opinion of your self-interest will affect your ability to survive.

Therefore, the zeal to make everyone responsible for everyone else’s health care would have you support a plan that, according to the above charts, costs more for service and raises costs on health care facilities. These artificially inflated costs are then passed on to the dwindling class known as the taxpayer. The taxpayer is then expected to continue working, even as his discretionary after tax money grows ever smaller due to the continually growing inflationary tax burden. The endowed right of pursuit of happiness reason that drives any individual to work hard in order to better enjoy life ceases to burn inside the working taxpayer. That working taxpayer is now a slave to the state, working out of fear, and politically silent because a word of criticism is a crime against the state with penalties both stated and unstated.

It is critical for the survival of our individual liberty that each of us appreciates that having good opinion of your self-interest acknowledges the folly of allowing anyone other yourself to provide for your physical and psychological well-being.

Liberty is maintained only by citizens thinking rightly about our own self-interest. Such correct thinking works by inversely affecting the greed, selfishness, and lust for power present in our human nature. As Alexander Hamilton noted in Federalist 1 and John Jay in Federalist 2 – where/when human nature is allowed to thrive, the public good suffers.

Newt Gingrich 31%
Michele Bachmann 28%
Mitt Romney 20%
Rick Santorum 16%
Ron Paul 3%
Rick Perry 2%
Jon Huntsman 0% (.34%)

Here is a link to their page (http://www.teapartypatriots.org/presidential-tele-forum-results/) which includes a graph of candidate support by Tea Party Patriot membership over [an unspecified] time. The results of this latest poll seem to be explained by the graph, which indicates that Gary Johnson and Ron Paul supporters within the ranks of TPP membership were purged shortly after the first poll was taken.

Let me know if/when College Station leaves ICLEI!

Sandy Sanders

I believe you are failing into the fallacy of Modernism that ascribes the meaning of words today applied as the definition to the same word in the past. Adams was certainly no universalist as we understand the word today – ascribing to all religions, regardless of history’s evidence to the contrary – all aspire to the same end product – eternity with the living God, Creator of the Universe.

Also, I challenge you on your assertion that Washington never spoke of his Christian faith. I invite you to attend our upcoming dvd meetup featuring the Wall Builders dvd library. You can view the Christian writings of our Founding Fathers at http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=8755

Also, I take exception to the mention of “overly emotional people” a typical atheist/ruling class assertion based upon a bigoted personal opinion of evangelicals. Human nature, as describes in the Federalist Papers, is a fixed understanding that all men recognized and understood. That man is capable of rising above his own human nature is the very quality that makes relationship, community, and a nation based upon the principles of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and therefore indicating the failure of Darwin’s Theory of survival of the fittest to accurately define the human condition.

That said, it is the understanding and appreciation of man as a created being as stated in the Declaration of Independence that identifies the necessity of freedom of conscience – because God Himself endowed man with the freewill choice to acknowledge Him. Therefore, if you support our nation’s founding documents, you have nothing to fear from evangelicals. I purpose that your cause of distress is merely your own rebellion against God, a problem shared by all men.

What I would rather point out is the absolute truth that any attempt to besmirch the character of anyone – in this case our Founding Fathers – in order to relieve your own conscience is understandable, but irrational. The truth remains regardless of what we may think of it or even whatever list of note worthy individuals that agree or disagree with you.

Truth has decreed that morality cannot be determined by public opinion because democracy is simply the work of factions [Federalist 10 - Madison] out to deprive the civil liberties of other members of their own community. Legalizing that which is inherently immoral creates social unrest, requiring ever more legislation and loss of liberty – particularly freedom of conscience.

Therefore morality must be transcendent to man, just as the concept of freedom of conscience, liberty, life, the individual potential of every man to be productive and prosperous, and the concept of the right of private property are also transcendent. The Federalist Papers while explaining how the proposed Constitution will work are also a collection of essays that describe the nature of man. The authors of the Federalist explain republican government to mean the ability of man to rise above that nature in order to create a liberty loving community and nation.

What we have discovered with the historic fall of the Soviet Communist State is that not only is man a spiritual being, but that those endowed rights that we so glibly mention cannot exist without a Creator. Darwin’s survival of the fittest – the Ruling Class Structure that believes wealth, authority, and status are indicative of some sort of natural selection is complete rubbish. Status and wealth are not indicative of leadership, intelligence, or any concept of superior humanity.

So, Richard, I ask you to learn to think for yourself rather than blindly accept the conclusions of so-called learned experts that purport to know that God does not exist or that our Founding Fathers were in no ways professing Christians. There is a great fallacy being perpetrated upon the minds of misseducated citizens that is based upon the erroneous idea that thinking the opposite of traditional understanding, or your parents, is the evidence of thinking for yourself. The truth is still the truth regardless of whether you accept it or not.

Contemplating God and His nature is one of logic and reason because the nature of God is absolute inviolable truth and righteousness. It is those so-called experts that purport to know about things of which they reject prima facie [at first glance] that are peddling the proverbial opiate of the masses – a mind deadening agent that ends the quest for absolute truth. A man can not live long in liberty and freedom of conscience in such an environment. The iron fist of group think will either confine you to acquiescence or you will be identified as insane.

The Tea Party Movement and the B/CS Tea Party treasure the endowed liberty of freedom of conscience. We invite you to study the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers and the Constitution with us. We believe that understanding and appreciating the truth is what sets all men free. You can read our notes on the Federalist Papers in the pull down tab: First Principles. I will be posting Federalists 1-5 in the near future. They are excellent discussion of human nature that remain treasures to the world because they are true.