Trust isn’t going to fix the lives that were ruined by the government. Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger writes:
Here is Barack Obama commenting last Friday on the National Security Agency’s antiterrorist surveillance programs: “We’ve got congressional oversight and judicial oversight. And if people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”
Uh-huh.
Herewith a partial list of political groups that said they were subjected to over-the-top audits by the Internal Revenue Service:
Greenwich Tea Party Patriots, Greater Phoenix Tea PartyPatriots, Laurens County Tea Party, Northeast Tarrant Tea Party, Myrtle Beach Tea Party, Albuquerque Tea Party, San Antonio Tea Party, Richmond Tea Party, Manassas Tea Party, Honolulu Tea Party, Waco Tea Party, Chattanooga Tea Party and American Patriots Against Government Excess.
What that target list shows is there was never one “tea party.” It was collections of citizens spontaneously gathering all over the country under one easy-to-remember name. Their purpose was to do politics. For that, their government hit them hard.
In January the pollsters at the Pew Research Center reported that for the first time a majority of Americans—53%—now agree that “the federal government threatens your own personal rights and freedoms.”
