Tea Party speech: the Spirit of Liberty

Commentary

Speech to the Tri-County Tea Party Oct. 10, 2011 at the American Legion hall in Lady Lake, Florida, by Allan Erickson, development director, Liberty Counsel, www.lc.org

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Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to share a few thoughts with you tonight about Liberty Counsel and our work to restore our country, saving it from secularism, socialism and Shariah.

Liberty Counsel is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to defending liberty across the board. Our work is largely focused on confronting the ACLU in court where our attorneys prevail more than 90% of the time.

In addition to suing against ObamaCare, Liberty Counsel attorneys are constantly working to defend religious liberty and freedom of speech. We are also suing the state of New York over legalization of same-sex marriage, and, stepping up to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, since the President arbitrarily decided it is ‘unconstitutional.’

Thanks to this President we now have same-sex marriage ceremonies being conducted in the military.

Our mission at Liberty Counsel is to protect and defend the traditional family, traditional marriage, our Judeo-Christian traditions and our God-given rights as enumerated in the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.

We live in an age of deep anxiety. Let’s remember, back in 1775, there was a great deal of anxiety as well. A handful of colonists were about to face the greatest military force in the world, and they realized they could easily be annihilated. Writing to his wife on July 1, 1775, John Adams shared these words:

Your Description of the Distresses of the worthy Inhabitants of Boston, and the other Sea Port Towns, is enough to melt an Heart of Stone. Our Consolation must be this, my dear, that Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it…

And so we join you in refusing to surrender our right to hold government accountable, and to remove from office all those who would destroy our Constitution and its essential function of limiting government and holding it to the consent of the governed.

Back in the bad old 60s they posed a question: “What if they had a war and nobody came?”

Well friends, we are in the middle of a cultural and political war, declared by the anti-American crowd, a war that has been waged for 50 years mostly by the side that wants to destroy our Republic, replacing liberty with conformity. We see many of them in the streets today calling themselves Wall Street Occupiers.

In the face of radical cultural war being waged with the rise of Barack Obama, a lot of us in April of 2009 decided it was time for our side to show up, and so the Tea Party was born.

The anti-American crowd, personified by people like Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, has waged war without substantial opposition, for decades.

As a result, many traditionalists now realize America is in serious danger. History teaches that anarchy always leads to tyranny. We are seeing it in Egypt where Muslims attack Christians, the army murderers Christians, and the Muslim Brotherhood prepares to install an Islamic theocracy.

It goes without saying we live in extraordinary times: wars, rumors of wars, natural disasters, economic upheaval, political and social unrest globally. Evil is on the march. Everywhere you look there is crisis, and each crisis finds its root in moral decline.

Our economy is down, people are demoralized, the market is running wild, the Middle East is on fire, Europe is frozen, and too many people in the USA are immobile, mesmerized by a billion television screens and computer monitors.

Some leaders, through intimidation, urge us to exchange liberty for a sense of security, but as Ben Franklin warned, anyone willing to do so deserves neither liberty nor security.

The spirit of liberty has always been threatened and it must always be defended by patriots willing to sacrifice.

This is our history.

With a firm reliance on the Creator who blesses us with liberty, we have always met the challenge, at home, and aboard.

Always.

Those of us called by His name, understand in the depths of our souls the Scripture is altogether true when it says in Second Corinthians 3:17:

“. . . where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

Abraham Lincoln said something along this line in 1858, just before he became President:

“Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our hearts. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.”

One need not look far to see efforts to destory the spirit of liberty. The very Lord who established this country is being pushed out of the classroom and the public square by the combined forces of the ACLU, the elite, activist judges and political operatives.

Consequently the seeds of despotism are being sown around our doors every day. In the process, the Christian faith is being criminalized, the same faith that give life to liberty on this continent.

Thankfully, many organizations are fighting back, including the 40 plus members of the Freedom Foundation representing 40 million evangelicals across the United States. I represent one member of that federation, Liberty Counsel.

Here is one of the most glaring recent examples of the ACLU sowing seeds of despotism, right here in Florida.

Not long ago, employees at the Pace school district were brought up on criminal charges for allegedly violating court sanctioned rules set up for the district by the ACLU. One woman was prosecuted because her husband, who is not a school employee, said grace at a private event in the next county.

The ACLU also brought federal criminal charges against the principal of the school, and the athletic director. Their crime? Saying grace before lunch with 20 adult booster club members. The administrators were threatened with jail time, dismissal, and loss of retirement benefits.

Fortunately, Liberty Counsel attorneys successfully defended the free speech and religious liberty rights of these school employees. After three years in court, the case was settled when the school district and the ACLU had to tacitly acknowledge their extra-legislative rules were unconstitutional. The case was settled out of court last June.

Just recently, students and school employees in Pace met at the flag pole for prayer, an act that would have been prosecuted under the ACLU’s consent decree.

This kind of thing is going on all across the country. The ACLU has a $300 million dollar war chest, in addition to its $80 million annual budget. Their attorneys have been deployed to criminalize Christianity.

For more examples of efforts to silence or criminalize Christianity, watch what happens every time a Christian stands up to voice public opinion.

Observe what has happened for years to Christians like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin or Franklin Graham or Tony Perkins, or our founder at Liberty Counsel, Mat Staver.

Observe what is happening to Rick Perry, and Herman Cain today.

The secularization of society makes no room for people of faith.

The socialistic pluralism preached by the atheistic Left is not so diverse as to include people of faith. Communists have long declared religion the opiate of the people, the very religion our Founders claimed as the foundation of our republic.

The designs of Shariah do not include freedoms for people who embrace our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Unless we stand up to defend ourselves, standing as salt and light to promote righteousness in this country, our children and grandchildren face a bleak future.

The truth is Christians are in the crosshairs because we are the only ones standing between what the Founding Fathers envisioned and what the secularists war to install.

We are primary targets because we are the primary opposition.

We stand for the traditional family. They seek its destruction to make way for a sexual free for all---same-sex adoption, same-sex marriage, and the attempted normalization of other aberrations, including pedophilia believe it or not.

If you voice legitimate opposition to same sex marriage you are subject to prosecution under hate crimes laws now on the books.

We stand for the sanctity of life and respect for all life, including the rights of the unborn.

They seek the destruction of all so-called inconvenient or marginal life. ObamaCare is a vehicle forwarding that agenda, with the help of your tax dollars and the participation of Planned Parenthood.

We stand for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of opinion, and freedom from government interference in the free exercise of all religion.

They seek the restriction of these freedoms, including economic freedom, using the tool of central control allegedly required to save the planet.

We stand for individual liberty and individual responsibility.

They insist on equal outcomes engineered by a small group of powerful people working to transform Washington into Beijing.

We stand for true tolerance in the face of virulent intolerance now in control of media, education, entertainment, government and many corporations.

The time has come to take a stand, and more.

The time has come for a New Revolution.

Through press conferences, news releases, interviews, email and online communications Liberty Counsel communicates more than 54 million messages annually to inform and equip a growing army of like-minded Americans ready to take a stand and fight back in this New Revolution.

We join you in the fight for goodness.

Many people sense we are seeing the culmination of human history.

Think of it. We may be witnesses to the reconciliation of all things, though the process may still take decades.

If there was ever a time for goal line offense, it’s now!

Many of us have decided one of the best ways to take a stand is to be salt and light in the public arena, taking a stand for righteousness at every turn, the very best way to preserve traditional Americanism at the same time confronting secularism, socialism and Shariah.

Only the Light can dispel darkness . . .

We can be thankful for strong Christian leaders throughout the country, people working to restore righteousness, the only tried and true way to preserve the blessings of liberty for our children and grandchildren.

Mat and Anita Staver---founders of Liberty Counsel---are among that number of strong leaders today. They felt called to leave their successful, private law firm many years ago to start Liberty Counsel, a complete act of faith. Founded in 1989 and launched as a full-time ministry in 1999, Liberty Counsel has grown from a vision to a reality.

Our God-inspired Founders also had a vision, and through terrible suffering, they brought that vision forward, making it a reality.

From our earliest days, the Founders, even before declaring independence, asserted that human rights flow from the Creator.

This single principle, more than any other, promoted the idea of democratic republic while simultaneously repudiating the idea a king or mere human institution was, or ever could be, the purveyor of rights.

One does not need to be a Christian or a person of faith to understand the essential protection to Liberty provided by the Creator, that one's individual rights are unalienable thanks to that protection, that Liberty is thereby preserved, and government can never convince the people to forfeit, for as the Creator reigns, so reigns Liberty.

This reality is what prompted our founder Mat Staver to proclaim: “We can have no personal freedom without spiritual freedom,” agreeing with George Washington who said:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness . . .

What is happening today is a repeat of history, a repeat of inspired dissent, a rebirth of inspiration in American hearts in love with Liberty, realizing again the debt we owe so many who bought this precious freedom with their own blood.

2,200,000 patriots gave their lives to secure and protect our liberty. How do we best honor their sacrifice?

Finally, a quote from our 2nd President, John Adams, who said at the very end of his long life: