Is the question race or liberty?

Nobody in the United States, alive today, participated in the African slave trade. Nobody here has owned, bought, or sold people. Roughly 2/3 of the population in the country are younger than 50 years old and know little of what segregation was even like before 1965. Yet for some reason large groups in this country (Tea Party) are told that if they have any opinion they are racist.

For example...



Was slavery a bad thing?...Yes, of course. Was segregation and Jim Crow laws a bad thing?....Yes, of course. They were bad and now they are no longer. Just because you advocate for states rights does not mean you want to return to Jim Crow laws or slavery. Most of the country alive today had nothing to do with it. Wanting states rights today has nothing to do with Jim Crow laws of the past. It has to do with giving the individual states more power and the over reaching federal government less power. It is about securing more liberty for our citizens.

Maybe it is a terminology thing, instead of using a term like, states rights which conjures up images of Jim Crow, we should go with a term like individual liberty. Which is actually closer to what I believe the Tea Party stands for anyway. Governments were designed in this country to protect our rights and protect our liberty that includes the state governments. The founding fathers were plumb and square when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence....

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

To me the Tea Party stands for liberty. Liberty from government spending our money. Liberty from the government dictating our every move. We would like the government to learn that they work for us and we are not their subjects, we are citizens with a voice. It is not about what color you are or or where you came from. It's about liberty for the individual.

What I don't understand is; why there are not more black Americans in the Tea Party movement? The Tea Party is about liberty. The one group of Americans that can identify more than anyone, about being in bondage are the black Americans. So why, as a black American, would you not support a group who's whole message is to give more liberty to the individual? The difference between 1850 and today is that the people who put chains on on black Americans are different. They are no longer southern white plantation owners, they are an over-reaching government. A government that puts you in bondage by taking the money you earn and giving it to someone else. A government that forces you to rely on government for your support, instead of relying on yourself. The chains are no longer physical chains, but chains of dependence.

The argument should not be an argument of race. That is not what is in question. What is in question is; do you want individual liberty or do you want government control? That is the question that the Tea Party is asking. Removing the focus from the real question is only a distraction. A distraction which leads to dividing the American people. If we are arguing amongst ourselves over race, we are not standing up against our real oppressor a over powering federal government.