I see the ridiculous charges leveled by ignorant bigots against the Tea Party. I hear the slander on MSNBC and CNN. I know that Ben Jealous and Nancy Pelosi live on lies about you and me the way vampires live on human blood.
I get it.
My immediate urge when I read or hear this nonsense is anger. I want to sit down and tap out an angry, hurtful response. And I did a lot of that for two years.
Here’s what those conversations might look like to the 59 percent of voters who didn’t vote in 2010:
“Tea Partiers are racists!”
“No we’re not!”
“Yes you are. and you’re divisive!”
“No we’re not. You are!”
“No we’re not. You are!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. And you’re stupid.”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
Or we could do something else.
We could push an agenda of life, liberty, and (especially) the pursuit of happiness.
We could point out that we don’t hate the U.S. Government. We just don’t trust the people who run it. It doesn’t really matter who those people are. Temptation knows no rank. We have given that government enough power and authority through legitimate means that sometimes people in government take even more power and authority through illegitimate means.
And we could go further. We could put forth positive ideas that improve people’s lives. For instance, we could replace the failed and corrupt Department of Education and the failed and corrupt school districts with small, community based schools that actually educate kids.
We could help struggling, unemployed people start their own businesses that will someday employ more people rather than borrowing money from China to pay our best people to sit idle.
Over the next year, we can develop specific policy proposals to make people freer, happier, and better off than they are now. We can show the world how freedom and thrift and industriousness can solve the problems that vex America’s cities and towns.
In the next year, we can commit to doing something else. Instead of screaming back at the idiots and liars, we can pursue happiness for ourselves and our communities. We can make federal programs obsolete.
To do this, though, we have to divert some of our energy and time away from arguing with the idiots. We have let the people see who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.
Christ said that they will know us by our love.