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What Part of Infringe Don't They Understand?

6/10/2013

6 Comments

 
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The local Whatcom Tea Party got its start in 2009 as the "Bellingham Tea Party," then it grew and expanded county-wide.  It's just updated its website with a new look and format.  Their web address, if you want to check this out, is still whatcomteaparty.org.

This update is news?  Well, in a way, yes.  What's newsworthy is seeing that liberty continues to ring modern despite efforts to diminish and quash the movement.  Perhaps you missed the recent hearings in D.C. about the IRS asking "are you now of have you ever been" questions of patriotic groups.  That was followed by the irritating news that the NSA has been mining masses of domestic phone and bank metadata.  Closer to home, many have been chaffed by this county's being a testing ground for some of the most oppressive regulations in the state - often framed as "more than necessary" and voluntary.


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Despite the growing bureaucracy's heavy handed policies into ag and woody rural areas, the joyful rural body politic of self-reliance and individualism lives on. Four years since the campaign began, tens of thousands of "We The People" signs stand fresh, with more popping up every day.  Hope for justice and reason  springs eternal.

As for the website update, WE were pleased to see that the following  short feature remains on the tea party's home page:


What Part of “Infringe” Don’t They Understand?
Whatcom Tea Party (website)

Webster’s dictionary defines infringe: to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another. The US and Washington State constitutions frequently use the term “infringe” in regards to the actions of government on its citizens — saying it may not.

Infringement burdens and frustrates rights. You know it when you feel it. Making voters take a test or pay a fee would frustrate or burden their right (ability) to vote. Forcing us to pass what we write or say before a political correctness board would burden and frustrate our First Amendment right to free speech. Taxing and regulating legal things or activities to the point that nobody can afford them, such as building permits, French fries, soft drinks, tobacco, or limiting the Second Amendment right to bear arms burdens and frustrates those rights.

Rights are not something you need, they’re something you have. You have the right to speak truth to power. You have the right to self-preservation, self-defense. You have all the rights you were born with, whether or not someone else thinks you need them at this time, and whether or not you should choose to exercise them. They’re yours at birth: no government can grant them, therefore, no government can rightfully take them away.

The role of government is to protect our rights, using the specific powers that We the People grant to it. Infringement is the exact opposite of government’s rightful role: a major malfunction and gross malpractice.


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WE concur.  Rights are so fundamental to our being they can't be taken, but they're vulnerable to battery and denial. The big question that bureaucrats pursue is, "What rights can be bent to achieve the greater good?"  As it's an election year, ask candidates questions about crossing the line if you can.  They may just blink at you, but ask.  The tea party's site is a good place to bone up on the basics;  check it out.  It's relevant.

6 Comments
Riley Sweeney link
6/10/2013 07:31:55 am

I couldn't agree more with you comments on rights. I'm so glad to hear that you are supporting the natural born rights of Americans to marry the person of their choice, no matter their gender or the right for a woman to make her own medical decisions without meddling bureaucrats getting in the way.

Reply
Comrade X
6/14/2013 01:44:03 am

It's good that some on the left today can appreciate the God given natural rights of man;

“…every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.” He continues: “The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property....” John Locke

Too bad we rarely hear these voices (or words) from the lips of the left in our very own county council chambers.

Reply
Editors
6/10/2013 07:56:11 am

First out the gate, someone seems to be laying bait to paint the liberty-crowd as bigoted.

Rights are rights, true enough. But the Constitution doesn't define marriage as a right. So WE hope people don't get fished-in to a false - no, why not call it a moot - argument.

Reply
Karl Uppiano link
6/10/2013 08:18:50 am

I actually do take offense that the government thinks I need a license to get married. True, raising a family does introduce a social responsibility to care for them, and teach them to be self-supporting, productive members of society. That was the traditional reason for a legal marriage license. Gay couples really don't have a need for that formality unless they plan to adopt or whatever. Personally, I don't care one way or another, but some do. So be it.

I think the risk of bureaucrats meddling in women's health will increase, not decrease with the enactment of ObamaCare, although a woman's ability to get an abortion, funded by someone who conscientiously objects to the practice, is better now.

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HonestAbby
6/10/2013 12:18:41 pm

Sure, we own our own bodies and I want to decide what to do with mine. But the left isn't consistent about "choice" where it comes to what we smoke, where and how we live and work, or anything else. So here's to personal choice, free markets and fewer dictates from above that frustrate real rights. Libertarian thinking is way more constructive than the schizo junk philosophy that tight xssed progressives obsess about round the clock.

Reply
Karl Uppiano link
6/10/2013 03:27:56 pm

I read a good zinger the other day: "Government is taking our rights, and selling them back to us as permits." No kidding. How much does it cost to build or remodel a home on your own property these days?

I heard someone refer to Bellingham recently as "Banningham". No bags, no fireworks... What part of infringe don't they understand?

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