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[Image] Photo of Santa Fe Tea Party.

Folks,

The following brief remarks were given by a young college-age woman at the Santa Fe New Mexico Tea Party on Saturday. My good friend Bob Wright sent me this transcript of her remarks, and I am very grateful that he did. I wish I knew her name.

Perhaps the website of the Sante Fe Tea Party will publish it tomorrow. The little speech is a classic. She says more in a short span than all of Dick Armey's gaggle of GOP windbags took hours to say in DC.

Mike
III


Many of you may remember better days, when nobody got something for nothing, and so if you worked hard and could achieve anything -- when the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was actualized in every day life. But that is not the world I grew up in. I grew up in a world that was constantly trying to take away my liberty. I went to a high school whose motto was “not to be served, but to serve”, and while the goal certainly is not to be served, surely it is not to serve. Shouldn't we rather strive to thrive?

As we all know management is far more efficient at a local level, when the man making decisions understands what he's making decisions about. State government is far more efficient at a local level than federal government, but the most effective level of local management is personal responsibility and individual liberty. So why should I be the steward of my brother's life, and he the steward of mine, rather than each taking responsibility for our own lives? Why should I be my brother's keeper when what that really means is be my brother's slave? I certainly don't want anyone to be my slave. I take responsibility for my own actions, and I wouldn't have it any other way, because if I am not allowed to take responsibility for my life, my failures may be meaningless, but so too will my successes be meaningless. I would rather be guaranteed nothing, and consequently receive all the fruit of my labor, than be guaranteed something, but have that something be all I can ever aspire to.

I wanted to be a surgeon for a long time, but not anymore. Not when a majority of my country thinks healthcare is a right, and therefore doctors must be slaves. Slavery is when someone else tells you what you will be compensated for your labor, regardless of its worth. And it is by virtue of doctors' ability – because they provide such a valuable service, that the true value of their work is being degraded. That doesn't sound very brotherly to me.

I don't want to live in a world where ability is regarded with the negation of its value, and I cannot imagine why anyone else would want to. Because what happens when more professions succumb to the idea of this slavery? What happens when everybody is afraid to aspire to any great heights, because any great achievement immediately makes a man prey to be cannibalized by his “brothers”? What happens when the producers stop producing? The least effective parasites are the ones that end up killing their host, because when all the blood has been sucked, and the host is dead, there is nothing left to sustain the parasites.

So I have to wonder, what are they counting on? The ones who would have me be their keeper so they need not keep themselves. What will they do when the blood runs out?
When no one is willing to create something just to watch it be destroyed?” Maybe we should make them find out. I won't provide healthcare to anyone who thinks I have to. Maybe we should show the parasites exactly what their coercion accomplishes, and remind them that in order for people to achieve they must be free to do so. I beseech my generation not to fall prey to the farce: cannibalism can never be in the name of brotherly love. Don't offer up your blood, it is far far too valuable.

LATER: Bob advises me this young lady's name is Carolyn Luppens.