In response to this column by “humorist”  Garrison Keillor, which was published in the San Antonio Express News recently, Kenneth Bennight, the new SATP President of the Board of Directors had the following response:

Garrison Keillor plays off the Tea Party name, saying most Americans prefer coffee to tea.  Though a board member of the San Antonio Tea Party, I too prefer coffee.  And though Mr. Keillor and I both understand the historical reference of the Tea Party name, he finds it rhetorically useful to ignore.

Mr. Keillor next invokes the almost incomprehensible human suffering from the Haitian earthquake, apparently trying to tar Tea Parties with responsibility for natural disasters.  Keillor’s prose is evocative.  But wrapping himself in the pathos is a polemical tool, an emotional appeal unrelated to the substance of his argument.

Keillor correctly notes that healthcare reform proposals are too murky to explain clearly, but he blames that on trying to attract Republican votes.  Obamacare did not rely on Republican votes, and the legislative contortions arose from attempts to draw in less ideologically committed among his own party, such a Ben “Sweepstakes” Nelson of Nebraska.

Keillor also correctly, albeit argumentatively, formulates the basic divide over Obamacare: whether health care should be a legally enforceable right.  He and the left wing say “yes.”  The San Antonio Tea Party believes rights remain as they were at our nation’s founding: not what the government might give you but protection from what the government might do to you.

In not one of the amendments comprising the Bill of Rights and nowhere else in the Constitution is there anything that the government must give you.  Everything is focused either on organizing and running the government or on liberties the government must respect.

The reason is simple.  Government creates nothing.  Whatever government possesses, it has taken from those subject to it.  To give a dollar to one person, government must first have taken the dollar from others.  For you to have a legally enforceable right to the dollar, you must have a legally enforceable claim on the fruit of others’ labor.  American history has a sordid episode when such claims existed: slavery.

Keillor tries to tie left-wing policy nostroms to Christian doctrine.  I am hardly a theologian, but I don’t recall anything about Christ having a economic policy or saying people have a right to look to the state for support.  If Christ demands a left-wing economic policy and left-wing economic policies are shown, as they have been, to impoverish people, where does that leave religion?  As to the implied relationship between Tea Parties and Pat Robertson, if Keillor won’t blame us for what comes out of Robertson’s mouth, we won’t blame him for what comes out of Jeneane Garofalo’s.

The headline on Keillor’s column says Tea Parties “should wake up and smell the coffee.”  After last Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts, perhaps Keillor himself has some smelling to do.  That a little-known Republican is replacing Ted Kennedy in the United States Senate testifies to overreaching by the left wing.  The people of Massachusetts did not like where they were being taken and screamed halt.  In Massachusetts.  The only state carried by George McGovern.  What does Keillor think will happen in states with more conservative leanings?  To quote another columnist, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post: “You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one.”

Back to the tea or coffee issue, Keillor may not be aware of the historical connection between the Boston Tea Party and the American preference for coffee.  Both stem from the British tax on tea.  Tea was initially preferred in America as it was in Britain, but Americans despised the British tax.  Switching to coffee became a way to express solidarity against unfair taxation.  No wonder so many Tea Partiers drink coffee.  If Mr. Keillor comes to town, I’ll buy him a cup.

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