Those who are gathering in grass roots Tea party protests need to realize that
the issue they are fighting for is bigger than rising taxes.The growing power
and scope of government is repudiating and threatening the freedom and
individual rights this country was founded on :


"On April 15, thousands of Americans will gather for modern day tea parties,
proudly named after the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Like our revolutionary
ancestors, we are protesting against growing government power, a government that
increasingly oppresses its citizens instead of protecting them.

But what are we fighting for?

Have we earned the right to call our protests by the same name the Founding
Fathers used? Believe me, they understood exactly what they were fighting for.

When those Bostonians boarded the cargo ship, Dartmouth, and hurled chests of
tea into the ocean, they were not just mad about high taxes. In fact, the Tea
Act that inspired the protest had actually lowered the tea tax on the colonies.

No, the colonists were driven by a certain view of the proper purpose of
government, which the Tea Act repudiated. That view, which would reach its full
expression in the Declaration of Independence, was that the role of government
is to protect individual rights-- to protect the sovereign individual's right to
life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

But over the past two centuries, the ideal of individual rights has all but
disappeared from public discourse.

In its absence has emerged today's massive regulatory-welfare state, which taxes
away nearly half our income, tells us what medicines we can take, what kind of
light bulbs to buy, and is rapidly consolidating control over America's banks,
insurance companies, and industrial giants like General Motors.

What happened? Why did we abandon the American ideal? Above all, because the
ideal lacked a moral defense.

To uphold the individual's political right to pursue his own happiness, we must
recognize the individual's moral right to pursue his own happiness. But just try
and say such a thing, and the voices will come from all sides-- that's selfish.

"It's selfish to want to plan for your own retirement--what about those who
aren't responsible enough to save? It's selfish to oppose bailouts for
struggling homebuyers-- why should they have to move? It's selfish to earn and
keep a lot of money for yourself--what about those struggling to make ends
meet?"

And it's all true: the pursuit of happiness is selfish.

That's why you need the individual freedom of a capitalist system--to pursue
your own interests, to act on your own judgment, to make your own life the best
it can be.

That's why you need to crusade for individual rights, not just against the
latest Washington power grab.

To mount such a crusade requires more than protest slogans and picket signs. You
must resolve to morally defend the individual's right to live for his own sake,
not as a servant of society.

So long as you are willing to concede that self-interest and the profit motive
are immoral, and that self-sacrifice for the "common good" is a moral ideal, you
will continue to see freedom diminish and prosperity decline.

In my judgment the only philosopher to provide such a moral defense of
capitalism is Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged and Capitalism: The Unknown
Ideal. So I'll close with her words:

"The world crisis of today is a moral crisis--and nothing less than a moral
revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the
political achievement of the American revolution. . . .

[You] must fight for capitalism, not as a 'practical' issue, not as an economic
issue, but, with the most righteous pride, as a moral issue. That is what
capitalism deserves, and nothing less will save it."

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