I was listening to NPR while driving to campus early this morning and, while many of the hosts featured on their station come with more of a left-liberal lean, their story highlighted a young, conservative girl who has become a booming voice for the tea party movement. Keli Carender, known as the famous blogger, Liberty Belle, was a tea party patriot even before this recent revival of the tea party movement. Her claim to fame came after she held up a $20 bill and challenged her Democratic Congressman at a health care town hall protest to come and take it from her. With these words, she’s inspired thousands of others:
The other side [of the constituency] is demanding that your vote culminate in legislation that actively seeks to plunder from some in order to satisfy arbitrary needs as determined by you and other bureuacrtas. So here is my question: if you are so keen to forcibly take from one person to give to another who you deem as needier than me, if you believe that it is absolutely moral to take my money and give it to someone else based on their supposed needs, then you come and take this twenty dollars from me and use it as a downpayment on this health care plan. (video provided below)
Reading her blog and having watched her videos on YouTube, I am blown away by the immense sincerity and thoughtfulness of this girl. Not only can she speak clearly and effectively, but she can relate the philosophical foundations of our republic to the current policy debates making headlines and directly affecting the lives of millions of Americans. Like the tea party movement, there are no politics of party preferences involved here, rather just debating the heart of the matter. Therefore, while politics makes an art out of evading the principle in question, little miss Liberty Belle eloquently throws it in their face and demands it be addressed.
I wrote an earlier post about how difficult it was trying to find ways to convince my younger sister that conservative can be cool; communicating monumental ideas of liberty, property, and economics in a way that she can understand and appreciate is no easy feat! It’s people like Keli Carender who make movements like this so much more than just a trend. What’s been holding our country together has been doing so since our independence: freedom isn’t a fad. To a rebellious 11-year-old like my sister, freedom has a profound meaning all on its own. The dissent Keli Carender is voicing and encouraging others to participate in is just the type of inspiration I want my sister to have.
Here is a quote from the NPR story I really liked. Carender speaking about the decentralized structure of the tea party movement:
If you have a machine, you know exactly how to attack it, exactly how to shut it down,” she says. “If you have 3 million machines coming at you, you don’t know where to turn.
I’m always blown away by the beauty of the coordination of the masses of anonymous millions.
- Elizabeth
No comments:
Post a Comment