Red State Uprising: How to Take Back America

FOREWORD: REALITY CHECK

They’re all terrible. All of them. Democrats. Republicans. The so-called “leaders” of both parties do nothing but compromise away our freedoms. The good guys are few and far between and need reinforcements.

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Ask yourself a simple question: when is the last time the Democrats compromised in favor of the free market? Can’t think of one? That’s because it rarely happens. It’s always the Republicans who compromise in favor of big government.

George W. Bush gave us steel tariffs in Pennsylvania, No Child Left Behind, the prescription drug benefit, TARP, and the auto bailout. His father before him gave us his lips on which we read a lie. They, like so many other Republicans, paraded around in conservative’s clothing while having little in common with actual conservatives.

The Republicans gave us progressivism (read up on Robert LaFollette and Teddy Roosevelt). The Republicans gave us the Environmental Protection Agency. Heck, Republicans gave us Earl Warren, Nelson Rockefeller, Dede Scozzafava, Charlie Crist, and the list goes on and on and on.

The Democrats, by contrast, have given us over to European socialism, degenerated our moral society, destroyed the nuclear family, never met a race they didn’t bait, and mushroomed the GOP’s spending programs.

For too long the Republican Party has decided to be the Democratlite party, and the American voters in 2008 decided just to go with the real thing. Turns out, there is a difference between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party. While both may be terrible, the Democrats are worse.

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Therein lies the terrible conundrum for voters. We’re not choosing the lesser of two evils. We are choosing between the assorted evils of two lessers. The problem is compounded by a very simple fact: there are no betters than these two lessers. No third party is or will ever be viable. The deck is stacked against them.

Contrary to what we may say and the polemical frustration conservatives too often are forced to express about the Republican Party, there remain very real differences between the two parties—life and death differences that cannot be underestimated or ignored.

It is easy to say both parties are appalling. They are. It becomes very difficult to figure out what to do about it. There is, however, a starting point. As bad as you or I may think the Republican Party has been at times, at least it will not sell us down the river to our nation’s enemies. At least it will more often than not support businesses and individuals against the government. At least it will support you working for yourself over you working to give money to someone else.

Despite the real differences, too often Republican leaders prefer to find ever-shrinking common ground with the Left rather than make a stand on opposing ground fighting for free people and free markets against the leviathan of government. With the rise of the tea party movement, conservatives must unite to clean up the Republican Party. If they don’t, voters will keep rejecting Republican pseudo-socialists in favor of authentic socialists.

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With the starting point being to clean house within the GOP, the next question is how. To figure out how, we must examine the past as the path to the present. Both parties have used the tax code, spending, and power to reward their bases, enact their preferred social policies, and expand their own preferred government programs.

Politicians of both parties have gone to Washington not to reduce its size, but expand what it can do for preferred interest groups. Some conservatives have become devoid of ideas other than the acquisition of power. The GOP started making shortcut calculations like big business = good, instead of entrepreneurs = good. There is a difference; but too many have grown too complacent to see it.

Enough is enough.

With the rise of the tea party movement, America has a chance of turning back from its current path to poverty. But tea party activists need to realize something along the way. While we refer herein to “tea partiers,” the fact is the tea party movement’s branding could use a bit of work.

I don’t know about you, but when I hear tea partiers talk about the issues they care about, I think they are American issues, not tea party issues. Segregating them into something other than American issues is a dangerous game. With the way the media works, it becomes easier to paint tea partiers as fringe when in fact the issues they care about are very American. While we may refer to each other as tea partiers, we need to be very careful and understand that our issues are American issues. They are not subject to segregation from normal political discourse.

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The ideas we pursue to solve our issues are not subject to segregation into some sort of subset of conservatism. They are not paleo-conservative, neo-conservative, or any sort of hyphenated conservatism. The ideas are conservative. And they are ideas worth fighting for in a country where a majority leans right-of-center, and people understand intrinsically if government would just get out of the way, we could thrive.

That’s the reality of our situation. You can choose to get involved and fight for freedom, or you can sit on the sidelines. But let me tell you, while you decide to do nothing, the other side intends to change your way of life. They have chosen to do something and the change they want to bring is not change any free person should want.

So you have a choice: get involved or not.

Ronald Reagan said freedom is only one generation away from ending. Let us not allow it to end in this generation.

People remember Paul Revere. Few people remember Dr. Samuel Prescott. At 1:00 a.m. on April 19, 1775, Revere ran into Prescott, who was on his way home from a party. Prescott was willing to help. Without Prescott’s knowledge of the farms surrounding them, Revere’s task would have been all the more difficult that night. And when Revere rode out into the countryside, Prescott stayed behind on the farms and in his town rallying people, and got his brother to go to the next town to rally people. They were not Paul Revere, but they joined him and added to his voice. Revere could not have gotten the job done without them.

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We cannot get the job done without each other. It is time to unite. And it is time to fight. Together, Freedom will prevail. But to begin the fight, we must educate ourselves on why we fight. We must be sure of what we believe.

Editors Note: Get your copy of Erick’s book. You can buy it here!

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