My Dialog With Robin Lennon, Kingwood, TX Tea Party President

I am a political activist that wants real change. I do not believe that we can effect change by remaining in our own comfort zone. If you are only engaging with those that think like you, progress cannot be made and understanding among ideologies is non-existent. In that light I have started over the years joining groups with ideologies completely foreign to my own to understand differences with the expectation of reaching the position best for America.

Recently I joined the Kingwood, TX Tea Party Facebook group. Upon being accepted I left the following message.

Thanks for accepting this staunch Liberal into your group. I hope to listen a lot and contribute my opinions when I think appropriate. I promise to be 100% civil and I trust that you guys will as well. Only through dialog and attempting to understand why folks take the stances they take can we solve problems. We all live in the same country and no one is going anywhere so like it or not we must find a way to coexist in a manner that we can maintain our ideologies and still like one another. While I find the Tea Party sometimes perplexing, OK (most of the times) rest assured that I have no hesitance to be friends, have a cup of coffee and have mutual fun.

I also left a message that I am now unable to find on the site that stated that the reality was that we had likely 95% in common with the Tea Party. The implication being that if they realized that they are after the wrong boogieman that we are in the same boat. That solicited following letter from the President of the Kingwood, TX Tea Party Robin Lennon. I must admit that I read the letter several time and still do not understand where she was going with it. Maybe you can make more of it than I can.

My Response to KW Dems President on our KWTP Facebook My Response, July 23, 2011 Egberto, you like to say that you are 95% in agreement with Tea Partiers, but I beg to differ. Such a statement ignores the crux of our differences. The truth of the matter is that we probably only have 5% in common. After one of our candidate forums you attended you told me that the problem with our tyrannical government is not its philosophy or policies but that the men and women implementing them are corrupt—flawed. About the flawed nature of the politicians we are agreed. Where we differ is that I believe, along with our Founding Fathers, that every man, woman, and child is flawed. We are sinful creatures and as Lord Acton said, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” By now, those who know history realize that the unrealistic premises of progressivism have been with us for a long time. They rely on a false premise—that man has evolved beyond the baseness of violence and intolerance. PHOOEY. Anyone who has read of the atrocities committed by Hitler and some of his followers, Saddam Hussein, Stalin, and the progressive’s favorite, Mao know that only men whose hearts are rooted in God can mirror Him more nearly and leave the violence, greed, and other deadly sins behind. Men who tried to tell Saddam Hussein the truths he did not want to hear were blasted into kingdom come across the table. Don’t tell me that we can ALWAYS negotiate today. I know better. You cannot negotiate with evil tyrants. Socialism, Marxism, collectivism has failed because it does not see human nature as it is. In the early days of our American history, socialism was tried both secularly and religiously. Those who have read their history know why progressives downplay our Thanksgiving story. It’s not because we are thanking God, it’s because the entire story is rooted in the fact that the socialist agenda FAILED. When everyone was working and distributing their food to all according to need, William Bradford found that men did not work as long or as hard, and that women had this pain or that excuse not to work in the fields. When he ended the socialist decrees and allowed each family to farm a plot for their own needs, the scarcity became a thing of the past. Yes, the Indians helped them through hard times and that is a wonderful part of the story of God’s Providence, but the real story was the failure of the collectivist system in America. Egberto, you state that you agree with 95% of what we Tea Partiers believe. If that is the case you know that any time a particular group reaches ascendancy in a government and forcibly implements their agenda, they are acting as tyrants, because WE believe that every man has the God-given right to think and act for himself. Hate crimes are anathema because no MAN knows how another thinks; only what someone else FEELS that person thinks, so man must be judged solely on his actions. As for having so much in common, Tea Partiers know that more government means less freedom. When progressives declared abortion a right, they began forcing me to pay my tax money to a government that spends it on contraceptives and Planned Parenthood which makes obscene profits on the blood of our next generation—blacks at highest percentages of all. So about health care? It is not one of the enumerated powers of the federal government and must be returned to the States and the People along with many other encroaching non-elected agencies. Any government that decides how all people must think and act is a tyranny and the more it gets away with it the more it does until you have the Pete Starks in Washington telling We the People that there is nothing Congress or this President cannot do. Egberto, the Kingwood TEA Party likes open discussion more than most, but we believe that words have meaning. There is such a thing as Truth and we believe that history is important to every discussion for the insights into man’s enduring nature. You are welcome to post messages and discuss here, but please include footnotes (links or actual sources), (not from a Coffee Party member) and documentable historical facts, or don’t post. I really don’t believe we have much in common. The Kingwood Tea Party believes in Constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets, and we do not support our current government spending our nation into oblivion. Cordially, Robin Robin Lennon President, Kingwood TEA Party, Inc.

My response to Robin’s letter follows.

Response to President of Kingwood TEA Party, Inc. July 24, 2011 Robin, before I get into the meat of my response I want to address your introduction of race into the discourse. Specifically because of preconceived misconceptions based on who I am I purposely try to make race a non-issue. In that light I find it shocking that Daniel Ledoux’s wife would infer that I believed she should be a Democrat because she is non-white. I have told just about every Tea Party person I have conversed with that they should be a Democrat. In fact I told Mr Ledoux at Town Center that he should be a Democrat on several occasions in the back and forth we have had at more than one event. I have done that in the same context with my posting at your Facebook page stating most of the Tea Party members have more in common with Democrats than Republicans. Why did you feel the need to point out that blacks had the highest percentage of abortions? Do you feel the same about minorities convicted and/or executed at much higher rates given the same crime? It is disingenuous to make Obama garnering 90% of the black vote a racial issue when it is a fact that Al Gore got 90% and Kerry got 88% respectively (http://bit.ly/mOEN0u). The perception of most minorities is that the Republican Party is unconcerned about policies to positively address their issues. To be sure I would never refer to my government as tyrannical. After-all it was constitutionally elected. It is unpatriotic then to call that which was elected constitutionally by the people tyrannical. Any attempt then to overthrow said government except by the ballot box is tyranny. Our government is a reflection of the people that have elected it. Unfortunately our corporate controlled media have so misinformed a segment of our citizenry that it has enabled the election of a dysfunctional government. It is a government “of the people for the top 2%”. We have the “have some” fighting the “have nothing” for an ever shrinking pie (http://bit.ly/9id1wi). I reject that health care is not a right. My morality and the implicit morality of the founders in the preamble of the constitution where it states “promote the general welfare” categorically allows the people a health care policy to ensure general welfare. I won’t go into health care policy in my response here as it deserves to be addressed independently. I am a Progressive Liberal Democrat. Your conflation of Socialism, Marxism, and collectivism in the context of any Liberal or Democrat is provably false. It is a disservice to all Americans. Maybe we should arrange a cross visit between our groups. I would love to invite you and two other members to address my group and have a civil factual question and answer session and have you reciprocate where I can address your group with a couple of KAD members. Look, none of us are leaving the country so why not strive to understand and attain common ground. The Tea Party and many in the Democratic Party have a phrase that we both use, “We must take our country back”. I agree. Taking our country back however begins with removing misinformation from our political discourse. It requires a citizenry that does not think and speak in clichés and sound bites but a citizenry that is willing to research each candidate and vote in the country’s interest and their own interest. Sincerely Yours, Egberto Willies