A Manifesto for the "Tea" Party (and other Right-thinking people)

The government is not to be trusted. Government involvement in anything whatsoever is dangerous and should be prevented at all costs. Corporations, on the other hand, are trustworthy and should be left alone to do whatever they want without interference from the government, because free, unfettered capitalism is the American way. If a corporation does do something blatantly harmful to the public, then it is the government's fault.

The current US deficit is the greatest menace to the future of the United States ever seen. It is an unbearable burden that will bankrupt the nation and destroy its power forever. The only thing as bad as the deficit is taxes. So we should eliminate the deficit and cut taxes. Cutting taxes will help eliminate the deficit, because everyone knows that if companies and the rich have a few extra dollars, they aren't going to save it or pay it out in dividends, but are absolutely guaranteed to invest it or spend it in a way that will stimulate the economy, and stimulate it so much that government revenues will magically increase by the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to offset the tax cut. Spending by the government, on the other hand, never stimulates the economy. All money spent by the government goes into the Twilight Zone, not back into the economy.

The government should not be involved in health care, because it is untrustworthy and secretly wants to kill off all free-thinking Americans by putting them in front of death panels. Private health insurance companies, on the other hand, are perfectly trustworthy. They won't deny anyone coverage, unless they are a lost cause, or are too poor to pay for it. Likewise, America already has the world's best health system. You can ask all the wealthy foreigners who come here to take advantage of it. Their compatriots may have better life expectancies than the average American, but they have to stand in line for it. And who wants to live that long anyway if you have to live in a socialist country?

We believe in small government. The federal government should be shrunk down as small as possible and should be involved in as little as possible. The government shouldn't restrict businesses from making money any way they can, prevent oil companies from extracting oil from anywhere in US territory, tell coal companies they can't decapitate mountains and dump coal ash in rivers, or stop people from hunting or buying guns of any kind. It shouldn't be involved in education, funding art, or subsidizing unimportant energy industries like solar or wind (though it should keep giving huge tax breaks to oil companies so they'll drill more oil wells). We also believe in a strong defense, so we don't believe in cutting military spending, which in any case does not even make up quite half of total discretionary spending by the entire government. You can't have too many stealth bombers, nuclear weapons or missile defense systems. But other than maintaining a mighty military, the government should keep out of the people's lives, except to tap people's phones and check their library records in case they might be terrorists. And to make sure people don't smoke marijuana (regardless of whether their doctors recommend it), homosexuals don't marry, women don't get abortions, and scientists don't do stem cell research. And to search for, arrest, and deport illegal immigrants. And to spy on adherents of suspicious religions like Islam. Otherwise, we expect the government to leave everyone alone.

Global warming is a hoax, concocted by scientists, who are no more to be trusted than the government is. And anyway, the Earth is warming because of the sun, or volcanic activity, or some other natural cause. Or it would be, if it was warming, which it isn't. The only scientists that can be trusted are those who say that global warming is not being caused by humans (even though it's really a hoax). The word of these scientists should be accepted without question, at least as long as they are saying there is no anthropogenic global warming. If you learn of any such scientists (regardless of their actual field of expertise) beyond the few dozen we know about, be sure to send word.

Since global warming isn't real, there is no need to spend any money on less developed energy industries like solar power. Let other countries like China develop those industries; we don't want to have the government encouraging new ventures of that sort on the off chance it might generate jobs and make the US a leader in a growing field. It probably won't amount to anything anyway. Besides, we don't like or trust anything new. We'll just stick to good old fossil fuels. As mentioned above, we want oil companies to receive billion dollar tax breaks to drill for oil in our seas and wildlife preserves, and we don't want their hands tied by regulation. We're happy to take our chances with oil spills and exploding rigs as long as we can drill, baby, drill. Coal companies likewise should be allowed to extract coal any way they can. We aren't worried about any minor pollution from fossil fuel consumption; as long as our economy is strong, we don't mind living in a smoggy wasteland. And there are enough fossil fuels to last forever, or at least until most of us are dead, after which it'll be someone else's problem.

We believe that evolution is just a theory, and it should not be taught to children as if it were not questionable. The theory of intelligent design should be treated equally in biology classes, regardless of any shortage of so-called "evidence", which is the kind of thing those untrustworthy scientists are always going on and on about. By the way, if you can find any scientists (or anyone that can pretend to be scientists) who are willing to speak out for intelligent design, contact us immediately.

Illegal immigrants are a menace to our society, and should be treated like the criminal scum they are. Let's face it; sneaking into our country in search of a better life is a crime, just like murder, rape and assault. Anyway, illegal immigrants commit lots of those crimes too. Or at least so we hear, and since sounds like the sort of thing we'd expect of them, it must be true. But even if they are law-abiding, we don't want all these immigrants coming here; we were here first, and we don't want to share the country with any latecomers. In particular, the government should build a Great Wall of America from Texas to California to keep all the Mexican riffraff out of those states; after all, we robbed Mexico of that territory fair and square.

We believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution is a perfect, flawless document, because the Founding Fathers were perfect human beings and didn't make any mistakes. Look at that clever three-fifths rule for example. If you lived in a state with 100,000 free citizens and 500,000 slaves, the state would have as many representatives as a state with 400,000 free citizens. That means each of the free men would get have the equivalent of 4 votes in selecting members of the House of Representatives. Cool, huh? Not that we think slavery was good or anything. No, of course not. But a lot of the Founders had slaves, so it can't have been that bad either.... Anyway, the federal government should not do anything that was not spelled out in the Constitution, and we should interpret what is in there the way the Founders intended, which we can easily do because we can go back in history and read their minds. For example, when they wrote about a right to bear arms, they obviously meant that anyone who wanted to should be able to walk into a store and buy automatic weapons with armor-piercing bullets. When they said that a citizen's freedom of speech may not be abridged, they clearly meant that corporations are people and their right to spend millions of dollars on elections cannot be restricted. They also meant that anyone should have the right to call the President a communist Islamic fascist, if the President is a liberal. The Founders would have thought it was okay to compare our current President to Hitler, because we know they would have disliked him too. But they did not mean that people could say anything critical about our military involvement in a foreign country or the conservative government that took us into it to save us from the possibility of our tough guy image being damaged. The Founders clearly would have held such criticism to be unpatriotic and borderline treason.

We also believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. They did not mean to create a separation of church and state when they wrote the First Amendment, only intending that the government should not favor one Christian denomination over another. The Founders were all devout Christians who would never have thought of questioning Jesus' divinity and were suspicious of Muslims, Jews and atheists. We can prove that the Founders were fundamentalist Christians (and that they were pro-business, anti-regulation capitalists) through a number of quotes that we found somewhere and have attached their names to (The Right's Library of Fake Quotes By Steve Rendall: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4053).

As mentioned above, we believe in the right to bear arms. And we're not talking muskets here. Assault rifles, semi-automatic weapons, armor-piercing bullets, silencers and so forth are all obviously protected by the Second Amendment. Anyone who wants to should be able to get a gun, without any waiting period or licenses, even if they are foaming at the mouth and muttering about the people who are going to get it as they do so. What's more, they should be allowed to carry their guns, openly or concealed, anywhere they go. That way if someone starts shooting, everyone else can pull out their guns and start shooting too.

We firmly believe in judicial restraint. Judges should not legislate from the bench. They shouldn't try to protect people who might possibly be terrorists from torture. They shouldn't make any rulings unfavorable to business. They shouldn't try to protect the interests of minority groups if the majority decides to deny the latter their rights by democratic vote. If they want to declare corporations to be people, however, that's okay, since as explained above that's what the Founders intended.

Marriage is between a man and a woman, and any attempt to allow same-sex couples to marry will completely destroy the family unit. The mere existence of same-sex marriage will cause heterosexual unions to disintegrate. Normal families will disappear. And as stated above, the courts should not defy the will of the people and give gay couples the right to marry. If the people of a state vote specifically to deny homosexuals the right to marry, the courts cannot go against that. It's just like segregation and anti-miscegenation laws. Everyone knows the courts had nothing to do with ending those things; they ended because the people of those states were against them. You can ask any of the older Southern members of our movement; they'll tell you they were all anti-segregation, because like the rest of us, they all love black people and all other minorities (except gays and Muslims).

The current US president is a socialist, a communist, a Muslim, and a fascist, and he is bent on destroying America. He wasn't even born in the US, so he is not legitimate. Sure, liberal liars claim that all their so-called "evidence" proves that none of these things are true, but why should we believe any "facts" if they come from liberals. We don't need any "evidence" supporting what we say about him, since we have plenty of rumors and innuendo, and that's good enough for us. In fact, we're beginning to think he might be the Anti-Christ. The fact that he is part black has absolutely nothing to do with our hatred of him, since, as stated above, we love black people (at least as long as they stick to suitable activities like rap and sports).

If you, like us, are a patriotic American who wants to take our country back from the tax-happy, anti-business, tree-hugging, gay-loving, peacenik hippie communist terrorist sympathizers, come to join our movement. Together, we can turn back the clock to a time when America was strong, corporations were unrestrained by regulations, taxes were low, we prayed to God in school, we weren't being overrun by illegal immigrants, homosexuals were considered mentally ill, everyone was a good White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or was kept safely locked away in a ghetto, and we felt free to blow any foreign country that gave us trouble to hell. Together, we can restore American greatness!

[Edited 2010/10/02]

I wonder, should I have more confidence in the ability of most people to see the blindingly obvious, or (if this should somehow end up being read by a significant number of people) should I expect people to be quoting from it with a straight face? Just in case, for anyone uncertain of my real opinions, I'd suggest that you read a few of the other entries in my blog.