Restoring consent preserves the republic

Does California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger know what he's talking about when he says of the "tea party" movement, "It will twinkle and disappear"? When Thomas Jefferson said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," he might have had in mind what we now call "tea party activists" who are out to restore a government that "derives its just powers from the consent of the governed." Not all revolutions are bloody. The Revolutionary War was an armed revolt, but the 1994 Republican Revolution was not. For the tea party to become a revolution, it must have ideas fresh enough to transform itself from a protest into a constitution preserver. The Founding Fathers did just that. They transformed the Boston Tea Party protest into the opening act of a revolution that drafted the Declaration of Independence, liberated them from Britain's strangling yoke, and eventually crafted a Constitution for posterity. They understood that, because it is the nature of government to put its interest above principles, its powers must always be restrained. By creating this republic, they institutionalized those founding principles to ensure their longevity. The tea party is transformational on three fronts...read more