When the tea party activists rally to "take back America," they are trying to get this country back to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
They want limited government and accountability from those elected. They want fair taxation and an end to wasteful spending. Both parties have promised change but haven't delivered.
This isn't about a black president in a white-power country. President Obama got a large number of white votes. It is about the government remaining the same and getting worse. He ran on the platform of "Hope and Change," and people responded. He was not a career politician. He was idealistic and passionate about his messages and made many believe that government would be different under his administration.
It is about people tired of their money going to the government and having it wasted on projects that go nowhere.
We have to get by with less, why can't the government?
The tea party has actually been around since the last few years of President Bush's term. In the 1990s, there was a group called "Americans Against Tax Hikes." They were citizens who were upset by the broken promise of "no new taxes" by the first President Bush. His lips never quivered.
It is about the feeling of frustration the people feel when the government does what Congress believes to be right while ignoring the will of the people. This is a republic. Government should be "of the people, by the people, for the people."
This great country is a nation of immigrants. Foreigners from other counties come to the New World. They have visas and passports. A few weeks ago, many people took the oath of citizenship at Mount Rushmore. But in southern border states, an immigrant just walks across the border, and some people think that if a law enforcement agent asks for I.D. to prove citizenship, it is discrimination.
Why can one group of people come here without papers but another can't? Is it because of a land bridge that makes it easy so those people are all right?
Both of my sets of great-grandparents had documents to get into this country. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean. They had to talk to government operatives, tell the reason why they came here and why they wanted to live here. Then they had to take a test to become citizens. Yet though all this, anyone who wants others to do the same is called racist.
On top of this, the government is suing the state of Arizona for making a law to control the illegal immigrant problem. The law is a near exact copy of federal law. Then the federal officials say they can't enforce their law.
The first job of our government is to protect the citizenry. They are failing. Now it is up to the states to protect the people.
Let everyone come here. We are tolerant, but come here legally. Assimilate. Learn the language. Keep your customs, but also share in ours.
We have a dark past, but we have overcome. The early settlers took the land, exterminated a culture. No one is disputing that, but there were others who saw this as wrong. And as anyone who sees injustice, they did whatever it took to make it right.
Where one group saw the first American as savage, others saw them as humans, with the right to exist.
This is still a great country.
This article was written by Dana Burnell Tompkins of Rapid City, who works in an assisted living facility.
They want limited government and accountability from those elected. They want fair taxation and an end to wasteful spending. Both parties have promised change but haven't delivered.
This isn't about a black president in a white-power country. President Obama got a large number of white votes. It is about the government remaining the same and getting worse. He ran on the platform of "Hope and Change," and people responded. He was not a career politician. He was idealistic and passionate about his messages and made many believe that government would be different under his administration.
It is about people tired of their money going to the government and having it wasted on projects that go nowhere.
We have to get by with less, why can't the government?
The tea party has actually been around since the last few years of President Bush's term. In the 1990s, there was a group called "Americans Against Tax Hikes." They were citizens who were upset by the broken promise of "no new taxes" by the first President Bush. His lips never quivered.
It is about the feeling of frustration the people feel when the government does what Congress believes to be right while ignoring the will of the people. This is a republic. Government should be "of the people, by the people, for the people."
This great country is a nation of immigrants. Foreigners from other counties come to the New World. They have visas and passports. A few weeks ago, many people took the oath of citizenship at Mount Rushmore. But in southern border states, an immigrant just walks across the border, and some people think that if a law enforcement agent asks for I.D. to prove citizenship, it is discrimination.
Why can one group of people come here without papers but another can't? Is it because of a land bridge that makes it easy so those people are all right?
Both of my sets of great-grandparents had documents to get into this country. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean. They had to talk to government operatives, tell the reason why they came here and why they wanted to live here. Then they had to take a test to become citizens. Yet though all this, anyone who wants others to do the same is called racist.
On top of this, the government is suing the state of Arizona for making a law to control the illegal immigrant problem. The law is a near exact copy of federal law. Then the federal officials say they can't enforce their law.
The first job of our government is to protect the citizenry. They are failing. Now it is up to the states to protect the people.
Let everyone come here. We are tolerant, but come here legally. Assimilate. Learn the language. Keep your customs, but also share in ours.
We have a dark past, but we have overcome. The early settlers took the land, exterminated a culture. No one is disputing that, but there were others who saw this as wrong. And as anyone who sees injustice, they did whatever it took to make it right.
Where one group saw the first American as savage, others saw them as humans, with the right to exist.
This is still a great country.
This article was written by Dana Burnell Tompkins of Rapid City, who works in an assisted living facility.