Please join your fellow patriots this coming Sunday at Pedrotti’s for an educational and inspiring program!!

WHAT:  San Antonio Tea Party Quarterly Lunch and General Meeting

WHEN:  Sunday, January 20, 2013

Mexican Fajita Lunch:  12:30 – 2:00 PM (Reservations Required: CLICK HERE to Pay)

Meeting Program:  2:00 – 3:30 PM (No Reservations Needed to Attend!)

WHERE:  Pedrotti’s Northwind Ranch: 13715 FM 1560 N., Helotes (CLICK HERE for Map)

WHY:  To Inform and Inspire: “Winning Hispanic Hearts and Minds to the Conservative View of the American Dream”

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Lionel Sosa

Lionel Sosa is the founder of Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar & Associates, now Bromley Communications, that grew to become the largest Hispanic agency in the U.S. He has been Hispanic Media Consultant in seven Republican presidential campaigns beginning in 1980. He is a recognized expert in Hispanic consumer and voter behavior. Lionel, named one of the “25 most influential Hispanics in America” by Time Magazine is a member of the Texas Business Hall of Fame. He is the author of Think and Grow Rich: a Latino Choice published by Random House, The Americano Dream: How Latinos Can Achieve Success in Business and in Life published by Dutton, and Children of the Revolución: How the Mexican Revolution Changed America distributed by University of Texas Press. Lionel has served on the Board of Regents of The Texas A&M University System, the Board of Trustees for the University of the Incarnate Word, the Boards of Sesame Workshop, creators of Sesame Street, ACT (American College Testing), and the Public Broadcasting System. He chaired both the United Way of San Antonio and the San Antonio Symphony.

The focus of Lionel’s presentation is winning the Latino vote in 2016. He will trace the history since Reagan on what captured this rapidly increasing demographic and what lost it. He will discuss the messaging that will regain it.

MUSICAL ARTIST: Jacquelyn Raimondi

Jackie is an U.S. Air Force wife of almost 10 years, with two small boys ages 5 and 7. Her husband Ken Raimondi, an Afghanistan veteran from 09-10, has served active duty for 13 years as a broadcaster. Jackie stays with her children and runs a small business from her home called BinkiBear, a product she invented and took to market in 09. Jackie’s background includes a degree in psychology, with a minor in music and dance. She has been singing professionally for almost 20 years and worked in music ministry and worship leadership and as a choreographer. In 2004 Jackie worked as the field campaign manager for the Mike Jones (R) for U.S. Congress campaign in the 10th district of Massachusetts. She is southern girl, originally from Stone Mountain GA, although she has lived all over, including Boston MA, South Korea, and now San Antonio TX for almost 5 years.

Make plans NOW to attend the San Antonio Tea Party’s quarterly general meeting.

Sunday, October 21st, will be the last meeting before the general election and just hours before early voting begins in Bexar County. Invitations are out to all candidates to attend; and so far former TX Solicitor General Ted Cruz, GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, has accepted and will keynote the event. Ted will be joined by candidates for a wide range of offices—Congressional, state, and county positions.

The venue will be one familiar to most San Antonio Tea Partiers: Pedrotti’s North Wind Ranch in Helotes. We’ll begin at 12:00 PM with a catered luncheon, followed by the meeting beginning at 1:30 PM.

So please mark your calendars and make your lunch reservations NOW (CLICK HERE).  Reservations not required to attend the meeting starting at 1:30 PM.

The movie 2016: Obama’s America was such a success, we’ve booked another film to spread our message and help raise funds to achieve our goals between now and November 6th! This time it’s C.L. Bryant’s surprise-hit documentary Runaway Slave.

Santikos Palladium IMAX at The Rim will host another exclusive San Antonio premiere for the San Antonio Tea Party on Thursday, October 11th, at 5:30 pm. We have a 250-seat theater (not counting the miserable front rows) just for us. Will you help us pack it?

You may remember Reverend C. L. Bryant who inspired our supporters at our Tax Day rally event at the Alzafar Shrine. Runaway Slave is his personal story with an empowering message for the entitlement culture: you can achieve the American Dream by freeing yourself from the government “plantation” and refusing to stay “enslaved.”

As if that’s not enough to get you out for Thursday night at the movies, we’ve added a second hit: the Vice Presidential Debate immediately following the movie’s showing! The debate—featuring Vice President Jo “Foot in the Mouth” Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan—will cover foreign and domestic topics from the campus of Centre College in Danville, KY. Martha Raddatz, senior foreign affairs correspondent for ABC News, will moderate. The debate will be divided into nine time segments of approximately 10 minutes each. The moderator will ask an opening question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond. The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a discussion of the question.

Let us know you’re coming by registering at this link and buying your tickets ASAP. Seats sold out very quickly for 2016, so don’t miss out! Tickets are $15 per person, which includes the broadcast of the Vice Presidential debate we’ll watch together after the film! If we overflow theater capacity for the film, Santikos will consider bringing a second theater online. We will keep you informed as reservations come in. The VP debate, however, can only be broadcast in the 250-seat theater, so reserve early for the double feature! Again, we can offer the debate side of the double feature to the first 250 who buy a ticket.

Don’t miss this great double feature! Use the easy options below to reserve your seats NOW!

If you thought being one of the producers of one of the greatest anti-hate films in history, one that exposed hatred, bigotry and anti-semitism would make you immune from being labeled a hate monger, think again. “Schindlers List” left its mark on the world and did so by telling the truth about man’s inhumanity to men. Yet the slings and arrows came at me to impinge my credibility, the work of Dinesh D’Souza and to once again use hate as their passport to the dark side.

Is there anyone else out there who sometimes finds movie reviews lacking in substance and objectivity? How about a film “review” written by an online journal prior to them even viewing the film? Does that sound like the classic cart before the horse scenario? Anyone else smell something dishonest, partisan and maybe even cynical? That kind of effort can only be suspect in its mission and intent.

I speak of an online journal writing an attack piece on my latest film, ‘2016 – Obama’s America’. It labeled the film, “Feature Length Obama Hate.” Nice. And they hadn’t even seen the film.

That kind of action has to come from pure chutzpah, ideology or just plain stupidity, you can pick.

It seems the left in America can only define something they don’t understand, something that frightens them, something so truthful it hurts or something they have no real response to that leaves them grasping for any kind of answer that comes with the hope that maybe it will just go away…and if it doesn’t, do all possible to destroy it.

That won’t happen. The film is complete, it’s scheduled for release and it stands on its own as a well thought out visual documentary based on two books written by author Dinesh D’Souza, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage’ and the soon to be released “Obama’s America.”

A dear friend reminded me to not take the attack(s) personally and remember what a true hero of American liberalism, Nat Hentoff, wrote in his aptly titled book, “Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee: How The American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.” Mr. Hentoff reminds all of us that the “right” and the “left” have both made blunders in their zeal to shut down the other side. But this attempt at fairness in reviewing a new film goes the extra mile in incredulity when the review comes EVEN BEFORE the film’s release.

This effort to de-legitimize the film is nothing less than “high-tech censorship,” since the first attack was trying to impugn the motives of the filmmakers and questioning how the project was funded and by whom, all in an attempt to dissuade people from watching it.

I don’t remember anyone in the mainstream press questioning Michael Moore about his motives (he wore them on his sleeve) or where the funding came from (deep pockets of those sharing his ideology). No questions asked….

The American way has always been to present ideas and new opinions, then through reason, logic, debate and even personalities, continue to expose as many points of view as possible. It makes the country a better one and stronger one for all of us.

“2016 – Obama’s America” presents a picture of an America changed through the passion of one man and his determination to turn America into ‘just another country.’ The movie should be required viewing by all Americans. Then you can do your own homework and make up your own mind. But there are forces out there who don’t want you to view this movie and will try desperately to keep you away from the theater by impugning the character of people like me who created the work, hoping it’ll scare you away. That’s not the American way.

I hope you’ll ignore these voices of fear and enjoy the show. And to these true forces of hate, who would seek to bully people into not seeing a movie they themselves haven’t even seen yet, let me remind them: it’s just a movie. Right?

2016: OBAMA’S AMERICA

A Review by Michael Berry

The Hollywood Reporter notes that Dinesh D’Souza’s film had a strong – albeit limited to one theater – opening weekend. Well, I hosted the opening night, and I’ll tell you, first hand, what I saw.

As for turnout, literally every seat was filled for our opening. We turned away 100 people, even though the event was invitation only.

The film is not, and should not be reviewed as, some sort of conservative Michael Moore effort. Far from it. Instead, it tells a story with a remarkable balance, and in a restrained, delicate way. It left me not angry at Barack Obama, or – to use a trite and inaccurate term – “hating” him, but rather, pitying the man. Pitying him in the way a victim’s family pities the man who murdered their daughter. Pitying him as a confused, sad, somewhat angry, hopeless man, struggling to become a man while fighting demons of a childhood filled with desperation. The theme of abandonment coarses throughout Obama’s life in this narrative, told in the soft, polite voice of Dinesh D’Souza. While he’s wrought horror on America, the film tries to understand why.

D’Souza was born, graduated, and married in the same years as Obama. They are both Ivy League-educated, non-white, driven men. His first seventeen years in India provide him a unique perspective in understanding, almost sympathizing, with Obama. He looks at Obama in a way that few have, creating a new narrative on what drives Obama. It is an interesting, and frightening, narrative, but carried out subtly, without the heavy hammer of most documentaries driven by ideologues.

Obama’s early years are studied, without judgment. A young man emerges from the experience who is quite foreign to the viewer. He lives in Indonesia, raised by a step-father who grows distant from Obama’s mother as he grows closer to the American dream. Obama’s mother’s influence is underscored, particularly as the keeper of his father’s dreams. Obama is shipped back to Hawaii to be with his grandparents, who find a mentor for him in the communist agitator Frank Davis. He goes off to Columbia, where he seeks out mentors with radical anti-colonial, anti-Western, anti-Christian curriculum vitae. These men (other than his mother, they are always men) influence the introspective Obama as he grows into the quasi-intellectual he aspires to be.

All the while, he tries to reconcile the role of the father who abandoned him in his life. Powerful scenes of Obama returning to Kenya are simulated.

The narrative arc bends powerfully toward the obvious conclusion that Barack Obama shares different values, beliefs, and dreams than the typical American. Unlike Bill Clinton, among other Democrats, he seems to seek the downfall of America. That so much of the story is told literally in Obama’s words, with his own voice from the audio book of Dreams From My Father, gives it a haunting element.

Ed Klein’s The Amateur advances the theory that Obama is in over his head, an almost harmless bumbler who was hoisted into the White House on the dreams of his handlers. 2016 Obama’s America concedes that Obama’s success is largely due to the willingness of others – mostly guilt-ridden whites – to help him without questioning him. But the real thrust of D’Souza’s movie is that Obama harbors an anger toward Whites, Christians, and the West, and that his agenda is far more frightening when that is understood.

The film manages to stick to its core focus, without chasing rabbit trails, and offers a unique narrative style. D’Souza is almost an adult Carmen Sandiego, on an international journey of study to find out who this man is and how he came to be that man. His constant movement throughout, with phone calls to various sources (his call with Shelby Steele is the highlight of the film) makes a journey we all share with the narrator himself.

D’Souza is a gentleman scholar. Both of those elements define this film, which, if watched by every American, would change the direction of this nation. Even many Democrats will vote down Obama if they give this film a chance.

Friday 5: Dinesh D’Souza

Most avid fans of social policy are familiar with Dinesh D’Souza’s name. For the last 20 years, his byline has appeared on countless magazine articles and blog posts that deftly slice through the rhetoric to get to the heart of complex policy issues; for the last two years, he’s served as president of The King’s College in New York City. He is a New York Times best-selling author whose eleventh book, Godforsaken: Is There a God Who Cares? Yes. Here’s Proof, was published earlier this year — and on July 27, his documentary film “2016: Obama’s America” will open in approximately 150 theaters nationwide. D’Souza recently spoke with CitizenLink about the film, and his Christian faith.

CitizenLink: Your new movie is based on your book The Roots of Obama’s Rage. What are you trying to get across?

Dinesh D’Souza: Well the key to the movie is, “Who is Obama?” In other words, Obama is kind of a mysterious figure — and I’m not just referring to his personal mysteries. There are a lot of personal mysteries, such as what was his SAT score for getting into college? Unknown. What were his grades at Columbia University? Unknown. Who were his friends at Columbia? Unknown. What was his GPA? Unknown. What was his LSAT score to get into law school? Unknown. Who were his girlfriends that he dated? Unknown, except for one. So there’s lot of personal mysteries surrounding Obama, but what this film focuses on is the ideological mystery of Obama. What’s his inner compass? What’s he like? And it’s based on my earlier book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, but also a new book that I’m publishing next month called Obama’s America. The Roots book looks back, and the new book, Obama’s America, looks forward. That’s why the film is called “2016,” because it’s looking at what would America look like in 2016 if Obama were to be re-elected.

CL: After all your research and your interviews, what could that future America look like?

DD: Obama’s a very unique president. He is different than traditional Democrats, and I think he has different agenda than a Clinton or a Gore, Kerry, Dukakis or even Kennedy. Traditional Democrats kind of want to redistribute income in America. Obama wants to realign America in the world, and so what he’s been doing is shrinking American power abroad, and expanding the power of the state at home, and he’s doing both things simultaneously. It’s part of his sort of anti-colonial or third-world agenda — an agenda that was very powerfully held by his father, and one that Obama adopted at a young age.

CL: Did you see anything encouraging about this future America? Or is it just a different country?

DD: Well, America is a unique kind of country in the sense that we are now the world’s number one. We are a country not based on birth or blood, but a country based upon allegiance to certain ideas. America’s wealth has been generated by a kind of a free-market entrepreneurial culture. America also has tried to be a force for spreading freedom in the world, and sometimes we have used force to do that. We used force to impose democracy on Germany and Japan after World War II, and the results have been fabulous.

That America is hateful to Obama. He wants to transform America — in fact, his own phrase from his inaugural speech is ‘re-making America.’ But of course, to re-make a country you have to unmake it. You have to undo what’s there to make it differently, and Obama’s been busy doing that. So if you look over the past few years we have seen dramatic changes. Our allies in the Middle East are weaker, our enemies are stronger, America’s standard of living has markedly declined. According to Federal Reserve reports from 2007 to now, the wealth of Americans is down 40 percent. That’s a huge amount. And if we had another decline of similar magnitude, I think that America would cease to be a First World country.

CL: Was there anything that you uncovered in the course of making this film that surprised or shocked you?

DD: It’s one thing to say that Obama was the most unknown guy to walk into the White House. There was a very special set of circumstances in 2008 that caused people to say “no” to Hilary Clinton, “no” to John McCain — these sort of time-tested politicians — and turn to a new guy. So in 2008, it was not surprising that we didn’t know Obama. But four years later, at the end of his first term? The fact that he still is largely unknown, that you can still have radically different things said about him on the Left and on the Right — that’s odd. So part of what surprised me with the film is I’d be down in Africa, I’d be talking to people who knew him or knew his dad, who are related to him, and I’d say, “Who are the people who’ve interviewed you so far?” And they’d be like, “Absolutely nobody. No one’s been down here.” So I’m thinking, “How odd. There’s almost like a willful silence about Obama and his past.” And that left the field open to us while we were researching this film.

CL: Tell me a little about your personal story. How did you come to know the Lord?

DD: I was raised Catholic in India. My family is from Goa, which was a Portuguese colony many generations ago. I came to America — I was an exchange student, I went to Dartmouth. I sort of rediscovered Christianity in adult life. My wife and I began to attend a Calvary Chapel church in California, and I found my faith reviving and deepening. And I started noticing that these new atheists were out there; Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, attacking God and Christianity. And I sort of got the idea that, “Wow, I know a couple of these guys, and have been doing a bunch of debates on political topics with guys like Jesse Jackson and others.” So I wondered if I should jump into the arena, take on some of the atheists on their own turf — which is to say, to debate them not so much like on the Bible, but debate them in secular venues using reason alone. And so over the past five years, I’ve debated, wow, I don’t know, maybe 30 leading atheists at different venues around the country, and that’s inspired me also to write some books about Christianity. It’s great because it’s a way of me bringing my faith and my work closer together.

Greetings and thank you for your invitation to speak here tonight. I would like to thank the San Antonio Tea Party for providing this venue. I would also like to thank Allen for that wonderful introduction.

On Tuesday, Governor Rick Perry announced that he was not going to implement the exchanges needed to implement ObamaCare. When asked by a reporter “why?,” Perry replied that he could name 5 good reasons. After stammering through 3 reasons, namely “the constitution, the constitution and then there’s the … what’s those other two?… Tell you what, let me be candid: I did it because Debra Medina told me to.”

A poll taken after Mitt Romney’s speech to the NAACP found that he now has double-digit support among African-Americans. The bad news for Mitt: both digits are zeroes. In Mexico, the loser of their presidential election is now accusing the winner of election fraud. He says the winner bussed millions of illegal voters to the polls—and then back to Houston.

It was this week in 1996 that MSNBC made its debut. The 24-hour all-news network began with a small audience, and it’s been getting smaller ever since.

The title of tonight’s talk is “What Would The Young Founders Do With ObamaCare?” It is a sign of our times that the terms “Founding Fathers” have almost become synonymous with acts of virtue, prudence, and the highest moral character; and while that is mostly true, there were times when the men we call “founding fathers” tried the patience of their elders, acted immaturely, and even did radical things you may think only show-offs or wild men might do; in other words, those young men acted in some ways like Justin Beiber does today … ok, I take it back, Patrick Henry’s dad never had to say, “It’s 10:00 o’clock, Sara, do we know where your son is? “

Popular mythology has several examples of the Founders as young men, none of which have much truth to them such as George Washington chopping down cherry trees and swearing he could never tell a lie. Wouldn’t it be nice if the current President would take the same oath?

Our first young hero of the American Revolution was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, born Sept 19, 1737, a bastard, when the term was still used, and spent most of his youth trying to gain the favor of his father—Charles Carroll of Carrollton is one of those of the Founders’ generation who has been nearly entirely forgotten which is ironic since he was the oldest surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll was a Catholic trained classically by the Jesuit monks of France; he was also one of the wealthiest Americans at the time of the revolution and in 1832 died the wealthiest man in the United States. In the run-up to the Revolution in May 1773, Charles and other Maryland patriots held a council to decide whether to accept the Royal Governor Eden’s decree that they break up their “patriot assemblies” and support the candidates of the Royal governor’s choosing; they chose not to. Afterward the governor issued a proclamation decreeing that they must do so and then, figuring he had the upper hand, ordered an election to make his will official. The result of the election was that the freemen of Maryland won every seat in every county including the Governor’s home of Annapolis. To celebrate their victory and in an act of rebellion we can only dream of today, those Marylanders conducted the following ritual which was recorded by The Gazette of May 20th:

“First were carried two flags with the following labels, on one Liberty, on the other No Proclamation. Between the flags walked the two representatives: a clerk and sexton preceded the coffins; on the left, the grave-digger carrying a spade on his shoulder. The Proclamation was cut out of the Gazette’s first paper and deposited in the coffin, near which moved slowly on two drummers with muffled drums, and two fifers playing a dead march: after them were drawn six pieces of small cannon, followed by a great concourse of citizens and gentlemen from the country who attended this funeral. In this order they proceeded to the gallows, to which the coffin was for a time suspended, then cut down and buried under a discharge of minute guns. On the coffin was the following inscription: The Proclamation. The child of Folly and Oppression born the 26th of November 1770 departed this life 14th of May 1773 and Buried on the same day by The Freemen of Annapolis.

“It is wished, that all similar attempts against the rights of a free people may meet with equal abhorrence: and that the court party convinced by experience of the impotency of their interest, may never hereafter disturb the peace of the city by their vain and feeble exertions to bear down the free and independent citizens.”

I have no doubt that Charles and his fellow Patriots would form councils independent of the federal Congress, convene a meeting, and repeat the event we just heard by burying ObamaCare in a box after hanging it. I heard it remarked once that when the Founders acted like I am describing they had good reason to believe they would be victorious because they had seen tyranny snuffed out in their own lifetime. So if any of you want to lead by example, let’s find a copy of ObamaCare [and] give it a ceremony after tonight’s show.

At Burwell’s Ferry, Williamsburg VA, young James Monroe, was commanded in the first armed VA resistance to the Crown, by none of them than Col Patrick Henry himself. At the age of 18 Monroe joined the Continental Army and made his way all the way to New York from VA. Monroe was with Washington on the night of Christmas Eve 1776 crossing the Delaware River. Thomas Paine wrote of the misery experienced by Washington’s army at this time saying “these are the times that try men’s souls” and bemoaning “the sunshine patriot” while praising “the winter soldier.” James Monroe was indeed a winter soldier. He is pictured in Emmanuel Leutze’s immortal painting of “Washington’s Crossing.”

Monroe was one of the, if not THE, first Continental to cross into Jersey after Washington’s boats had landed (insert story of the other 2 parties that never made it across). Monroe was the only Continental listed as being wounded in the ensuing Battle of Trenton. Monroe was shot in his left shoulder with a musket ball that did not exit, and it is believed he was buried with it still in place when he died in 1832. Monroe did not stop his charge alongside Captain William Washington and put down the only armed Hessian resistance offered that evening. All before his nineteenth birthday.

Patrick Henry – On 29 May, 1736, Sarah and John Henry welcomed their second son into the world and named him Patrick. Young Patrick grew up in Hanover County VA and completed his homeschooling when he was but 15; from there he became an apprentice at a country store that was run by his elder brother. At 18, Patrick married Sarah Shelton and took up the management of his in-laws’ country store. Now you might be thinking that young Patrick Henry must be getting pretty good at minding the store; but if it was possible to be worse at a trade, it was not apparent to those who saw young Henry “feebly minding the store.”

At about the time Henry was deciding that shopkeeping wasn’t for him, a 16-year-old named Thomas Jefferson who was on his way to the college of William & Mary stopped at a neighbor’s house for the Christmas holiday. In his life Jefferson recalled young Patrick Henry:

“Mr. Henry had, a little before, broken up his store, or rather it had broken him up; but his misfortunes were not to be traced either in his countenance or conduct. During the festivity of the season I met him in society every day, and we became well acquainted, although I was much his junior…. His manners had something of coarseness in them. His passion was music, dancing, and pleasantry. He excelled in the last, and it attached every one to him.”

Soon after Jefferson’s visit, Henry would decide that shopkeeping wasn’t for him and would attempt to enter the College of William & Mary and “study law” as his new acquaintance Thomas Jefferson was. To get into the school Henry would have to convince the headmaster that he was smart enough to study law; this would be difficult seeing as how for most of his life Henry lived with the specter of being thought to be illiterate. Jefferson would go so far as to claim that Henry never owned a book and was baffled at how Henry could have such command of language seeing as how he could barely read. Thanks to the scholarship of Kevin Hayes, we know none of this was true as Hayes writes in his book The Mind of Patrick Henry and the World of Ideas.

So how could Henry possibly convince the great George Wythe, the Randolph brothers, and Edmund Pendleton that he was “lawyerin’”material, seeing as how his reputation preceded him? Well he did what comes natural to most smooth talkers: he talked his way into it. During his oral examination by John Randolph, an argument ensued with Henry arguing one point and Randolph the legal point as he knew the law. After hours of debate, Randolph asked the young man to follow him to his study. This is how Henry recalled what happened next:

“[Upon] opening the [law book in question], [Pendleton] said: Behold the force of natural reason! You have never seen these books, nor this principle of the law; yet you are right and I am wrong. And from the lesson which you have given me (you must excuse me for saying it) I will never trust to appearances again. Mr. Henry, if your industry be only half equal to your genius, I augur that you will do well, and become an ornament and an honor to your profession.”

And so young Patrick Henry becomes a lawyer and through his famous oratory skills he earns a seat in VA’s House of Burgesses. Just before his arrival for his first session, the Assembly had drafted and sent to the King a petition asking the King to rescind the soon-to-be-assessed Stamp Act, that it was “an alarming violation of their ancient constitutional rights.” The Burgesses, being the English gentlemen they were, had thus made their disapproval known; and when word returned in May 1765 that the King had rejected their appeal, little was said in the Assembly as the Burgesses thought they had done all they could. Then Patrick Henry rose and was about to help spark what we know today as the American Revolution. On 29 May, 1765, after formal debates of the day had ended, Henry rose, walked to the center of the House, and asked to be heard. After the shock, anger, and disgust of the elderly, white powdered-wigged gentlemen, a silence settled and Henry produced an old law book and began to read 7 Resolves in response to the King’s acts.

You have to now consider that Henry was the youngest member in attendance, was known to be illiterate, had no history of ever addressing the Assembly; and if that weren’t enough, MOST of the men in attendance didn’t even know his name! Yet Henry was not driven by formalities and obedience of old customs, not when his country’s liberties were being trampled upon from a ruler no one in the room had ever seen much less met. If only we had some Patrick Henry’s in the Congress or the NY Assembly today!

Thomas Jefferson wrote that the debates that ensued were “…most bloody. They were opposed by Randolph, Bland, Pendleton, Nicholas, Wythe, and all the old members, whose influence in the House had till then been unbroken.” Henry would recall the acrimonious proceedings himself saying that “Many threats were uttered, and much abuse cast on me.” For nearly two days Henry held the floor and debated Burgess after Burgess, many of whom insulted him, called him names, impugned his age and experience, and of course his alleged illiteracy. Jefferson said of the debates that “Torrents of sublime eloquence from Mr. Henry, backed by the solid reasoning of Johnston, prevailed.”

The debate carried on for two days into 30 May 1765; and though nearly every argument conceivable had been thrown at young Patrick Henry, he had held the floor, moved the question nearly in his favor, and had inspired many that he was indeed correct in his patriotic insistence. And then, the world would learn and follow the exploits of the young man from Louisa County named Patrick Henry. From the best biography ever written of Henry ‘American Statesman-Patrick Henry’ by Moses Coit Tyler, we can relive that moment.

“Reaching the climax of a passage of fearful invective, on the injustice and the impolicy of the Stamp Act, he said in tones of thrilling solemnity, ‘Caesar had his Brutus; Charles the First, his Cromwell; and George the Third…’

‘Treason,’ shouted the speaker. ‘Treason,’ ‘treason,’ rose from all sides of the room. The orator paused in stately defiance till these rude exclamations were ended, and then, rearing himself with a look and bearing of still prouder and fiercer determination, he so closed the sentence as to baffle his accusers, without in the least flinching from his own position, ‘and George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.’”

So what would young Mr. Henry say if the King of England ordered the colonists to purchase KingGeorgiaCare? Well we actually know the answer to that question, because Mr. Henry was on the losing end of the VA vote to ratify the Constitution. Henry had led the charge against ratification, spoke the most and longest in the convention, and even conjured up a severe thunderstorm to punctuate his final speech against ratification. After the vote, Henry, George Mason, James Monroe, and Colonel William Grayson all sulked down the street to the Swann Tavern. There the men began a discussion of rallying their countrymen; that would have meant Virginians in the days before Lincoln’s nationalism possessed every fertile mind to begin the process of withdrawing from the new Union.

There’s a modern word to describe that process; it comes from the Latin “secedere” meaning to withdraw; today we say “secede.” Well Mr. Henry would have none of this talk, telling his friends that they had lost in a fair and square vote and now had the duty to obey that majority decision. For the time being. You see Henry had foreseen the triumph of Madison & Co. in ratifying the Constitution, so much so that on 9 June, 1788, 19 days before the vote was taken, Henry wrote to General John Lamb of New York, a fellow Republican or as they are derisively called these days “anti-federalists”. Henry informed Lamb that he and Mason had already drafted a set of Amendments and that if Lamb would agree to assist in promoting them, he could be assured of Henry’s fidelity to the cause. Henry was having none of this and instead poured his energy into securing the Amendments he and his friends had begged for before VA should ratify.

Henry’s vow to secure the Bill of Rights could lend us some guidance for a similar vow against ObamaCare. “[T]hat he should oppose every measure tending to the organization of the government, unless accompanied with measures for the amendment of the Constitution.” When the VA Assembly met 5 months later, Henry would get his wish for an official demand by the government of VA that Congress take up the amendments we know as the “Bill of Rights” today. Recall now, ladies and gentlemen, that Mr. Henry was now operating UNDER the Constitution and therefore anything the Virginians proposed to address their concerns in 1788 is still available to us today. Henry’s words were submitted as a formal application to the United States Congress for a convention to be called to propose Amendments. Today we’d call this an Article V convention.

Here is what Henry wrote. “We do, therefore, in behalf of our constituents, in the most earnest and solemn manner, make this application to Congress. That a convention be immediately called, of deputies from the several states, with full power to take into their consideration the defects of this constitution, that have been suggested by the state conventions, and report such amendments thereto, as they shall find best suited to promote our common interests; and secure to ourselves and our latest posterity; the great and unalienable rights of mankind.”

One can almost hear Mr. Henry speaking to this gathering today were he alive to witness the monumental act of tyranny that is ObamaCare. “Are fleets of death panels and armies of IRS agents necessary to a work of love and conciliation? Where is the medical enemy in this quarter of the globe that requires this massive accumulation of armies and supplies. I have news for you Gentleman: we…are…that……. enemy!”

Exhortations like this are heard almost daily by people playing X-box or doing press for the Obama campaign. The only challenges made to government power being abused are made by people who are nearly powerless to do anything about it. Or are they? To answer that question, we must visit the Founding era and consult some of those oracles held in such high esteem these days. When the Adams administration grossly exceeded its constitutional authority by enforcing the treacherous Alien & Sedition Acts, the men of VA were asking the same questions of themselves we are asking today: what are we going to do about it?

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Taylor of Caroline had the answer: the States of VA & KY would draft resolutions in their legislatures affirming the right of their states—scratch that—the DUTY of their states to nullify or interpose against the Act. They had to meet in secret to do this because the Sedition part of the Act would apply to them if their intentions were known. Recall that at this time of August 1798, Mr. Jefferson was then Vice President of these United States. No matter. The men pressed on; and by December 1798 the VA Legislature had approved its resolution, written by Jefferson with an assist from Taylor. Here is the operative part that we need to pay attention to today.

“Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

Of course in Jefferson’s day some people at least pretended like the Constitution mattered instead of folding it up to play paper football at White House Super Bowl parties. There is also a key difference between the statesmen of Jefferson’s era and the members of today’s Congress who have to watch YouTube reruns of Schoolhouse Rock to figure out how to file a repeal ObamaCare bill. In Jefferson’s time men read great works and didn’t question whether or not they were great works that were in need of some new characters with tattoos, nose rings, and more extramarital affairs than Obama has had golf rounds.

Some of you may be thinking: that was then, this is now, and the best we have now are Nancy Pelosi and John McCain. Well I’m here to tell you, Thomas Jefferson knew John McCain and he didn’t like him either. Seriously, the generation that came after Jefferson’s produced men like President Franklin Pierce who famously kept Henry Clay from getting the subsidies for his railroad buddies that became his life’s work. Robert E. Lee, a Southern gentleman and patriot who needs no introduction. Sam Houston who began life as a Virginian but ended it as the most famous Texan of all. and Colonel William Barrett Travis who at the tender age of 26 stared down the hordes of Santa Anna and drew a line in the sand, asking his men to cross it and die for Texas or stay on the other side and die anyway.

The next generation gave us President Grover Cleveland and Senator George Frisbe Hoar, a grandson of the only founding father who signed ALL four of the founding documents; Roger Sherman Cleveland, a Democrat, in his second term set the world veto record and kept the Union on the gold standard. Hoar refused to surrender the Senate floor when his colleagues attempted to pass a declaration of war against the Philippines and do them what the North had done to the south after Appomattox. And now we arrive at this day and age’s generational moment. Let’s hop in the KingDude’s WAYBAC machine and jet forward 500 years and witness historian combing through the ruins of San Antonio looking for clues of what happened to the once great “American People.” This was a mighty civilization, an advanced people, they would declare, “what happened!?” And therein lies the challenge of our day: do we allow the Pelosi’s, Obama’s, Boehner’s, and McConnell’s to cash their short-term rewards in while causing irreversible long-term damage? Or do we walk in Colonel Travis’s boots, look each other in the eye, knowing the Leviathan debt monster is more than less likely to claim our fortunes but we still have a chance to preserve our lives and sacred honor, and cross the line in the sand to the other side?

Before you answer that question, let me share some news with you. Yesterday we learned that the Obama Administration has heaped a whopping $64,000 debt on the head of each and every soul in this room. $64,000! You should all now turn to one another and ask “what kind of corrupt, criminal enterprise does such a thing…and gets away with it? Well, let’s go one further: what kind of a government has the framework that makes this kind of plunder and theft even possible? Here’s the all-too-sad answer, ladies and gentleman: THIS government, operating under THIS Constitution is the government that metes out such terror. How many of you in this room tonight would ratify a government that would have the power to be so destructive?

Now don’t misunderstand, I am fully aware that this document is not responsible for this mess—not as it was ratified—but that’s the problem. The ratifiers’ intents have vanished and so have their warnings of what would transpire if those intents were abused. So honest people must conclude that this tyranny has occurred under this Constitution. Now the optimist may stand and now say, yes, but just think of how bad it might of been—and I would agree with him or her. But, let not the clouds of delusion cover your eyes. If Texas is to reclaim her sovereignty and every right and jurisdiction your people have reserved for themselves and kept from this government and the government of Texas, then she will have to rethink her relationship with an abusive agent.

Just how that rethinking occurs and what it produces is up to you, but let me give a few things to gnaw on while thinking about it. The men that died at Bunker Hill and Yorktown did not die for politics, they died for love. The men who defended the Alamo did not die for the politics of Texas, they died for love. The men of Texas who fought at Gettysburg did not die for Jefferson Davis’s government, they died for the love of family they left here. And so today, as we are bombarded with a never-ending roar of politics, bleating into our ears and searing so much confusion into our minds, take an inventory of who and what you love and when your chance comes to step on one side of a future line drawn in the sand, think of them before you decide.

Before I leave you tonight though, I would like to give you some serious political advice and hopefully in doing so I will have earned my fee for this engagement and the Rolls Royce from the airport. As Jefferson reflected on the young history of these United States…he recalled with great fondness what he called “The Spirit of ‘76” and the political practices that were necessary to its effectiveness and longevity, this is what we call [r]epublicanism with a lower case “r.” “Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I would say, purely and simply, it means a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican, in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens. Such a government is evidently restrained to very narrow limits of space and population. I doubt if it would be practicable beyond the extent of a New England township.”

So there’s a former President of these United States writing that he doesn’t believe that the nearest to perfection government men can attain can operate in a place larger than Luckenbach, Texas. Now I may not know what Willie, Waylon, and the boys would think about that; but I do know that Jefferson is talking about scale, and scale is something we are so totally and unimaginably out of that it may be THE problem that must be addressed for [r]epublicanism to go back into operation. And we honor and observe scale almost everywhere and in everything we touch in our lives except our politics. Let me explain: Texas currently has 25,674,681 [citizens]…scratch that, 682 since I started. Texas has 36 Congressional districts, meaning each member of your Congress represents 713,185 citizens. All the way up until the 1930 Census, members of Congress represented around 40,000 citizens or less; this is a problem of scale.

Since the Egyptians began building multi-roomed dwellings, we call them homes today, the average size of a bedroom has not changed from 200-225 square feet. A drinking glass has remained at between 8 and 20 ounces unless you’re in Mayor Bloomberg’s New York City and they are all 8 ounces. We can repeat this exercise from now until Debra Medina is elected governor, and I won’t run out of material. The point is, all the things I mentioned remain in scale EXCEPT for the first thing on our list: Congress.

Let’s look at Texas one more time: according to some freedom watch groups, the total count of countries on this planet is 223. Of these over half of them have populations of less than 5 million and 58% less than 7 million. If we look at countries when ranked by per capita GDP, 18 of the top 20 are under 5 million. And,yes, the US is in the top 20 coming in at number 10, but that misses the point of scale.

Texas could declare its Independence and then split into 5 countries and each of those countries would still be among the largest countries in the world. The point is that living under 1 government for 309 million people is proven to be a recipe for 900 Billion deficits as far as the eye can see. So when thinking about your upcoming elections and the issues that matter to you, think small. Think of winning your precinct, your county offices, your mayorship, your sheriff’s departments, and then your state house and senate. That is where you are most likely to enjoy political success; and my-oh-my what a coincidence, it just happens to be where you live.

Good night, and God Bless.