Coming Soon to Your Town: Tea Party Activists

The Lehigh Valley Tea Party Group has a message for local goverment: “We're still watching.”

It's one they believe in so much that nearly 80 active members of the group voted to make it the centerpiece of a new media campaign at their monthly meeting Jan. 7 at  Chrin Community Center in Palmer Township.

How extensive that campaign will depend on how much money the group -- which goes by the official name Lehigh Valley Project 9-12/Tea Party Group --  raises by Jan. 21.

The smallest ad campaign will include radio ads on WAEB during drive times, lawn signs and postcards, along with member-driven efforts such as pitching op-ed pieces to local newspapers, writing letters to the editor and pitching interviews with other broadcast and print media.

If the group raises $2,000 in the next two weeks,  it plans to replace the idea of lawn signs with a digital billboard on Route 22, and if it can raise $4,000 in that time,  it will reinstate  lawn signs and run an ad on Facebook.

“The reason the billboard is important is because it will get media attention, possibly national. Also, people look at a billboard and think that organization has money for a billboard...” said member Joe Hilliard of Allentown.

“Focused on the Refounding of America” according to its literature, the Lehigh Valley Project 9-12/Tea Party Group said the goal of the campaign will be to keep pressure on newly-elected officials at all levels and keep them accountable, educate the public about the group, and increase membership two-fold by year's end.

The group aims to have at least one activist in every municipality in Northampton and Lehigh counties.

“If you listen to the media, things have started to go away, but you can't listen to this,” chairman Mat Benol said.

The group says its goals are lower taxes, less regulation and less expansion of bureaucracy. To that end, organizers urged members to attend public meetings and pressure elected officials on those issues.

“We want lower taxes, no more holding the line. They're too high,” Hilliard said. “We're changing the dialogue. And if you don't change the words and the language, you don't change anything.”

The group has also created a new Web site and will be migrating from its current Meetup site by the end of March.

The new site will judge politicians based on whether they sign an agreement with the group promising to keep its conservative ideals and limit government. If a politician signs,  he or she will be listed as Tea Party supporters. If they refuse or don't reply within 30 days, they will be listed as against those ideals, organizers said.

“This is the year we go on the offense,” Hilliard said. “If you don't lower taxes, we are against you. If you don't eliminate deficit spending, we're against you. If you don't reduce debt, we are against you.”

He added the Tea Party doesn't care what letter is after an elected official's name, meaning Democrat or Republican.

“The problem with politicians of both parties is that they both want money,” Hilliard said, adding that the “exact same fiscal shenanigans” are going on from Washington D.C. to the Lehigh Valley's local boroughs and school boards.

He said elected officials cannot claim they are powerless to halt spending.

“If you're a helpless victim, then why are you in office?” he asked.

He said one local unnamed politician recently told him, “ I don't have to follow my district. If I lead, my district will follow me.”

Other organizers echoed the sentiments and urged members to get more involved.

Chris Miller, of Bushkill Township, encouraged members to run for office themselves.

“You can do it,” he said. “Pick up your papers by April 15 and get out there. You have to do it. You have to make the change.”

“Because you're here, you obviously know right from wrong,” Benol told the audience.

Guest speaker and member Paul Saunders accentuated some of the groups' ideals in his lecture.

“Tonight is going to be all about ideas, and ideas run the world,” he said.

Saunders said there is an ideological war between the ideas of rational egoism/ individualism/individual rights and altruism/collectivism/statism. The former are good ideas and the latter, evil, he said, adding that evil ideas predominate today.

He attributed the word altruism and the eventual development of Marxist Progressivism to 19^thcentury philosopher Auguste Comte.

“Comte actively fought against the founding fathers' ideals because they threatened his ideas of altruism,” Saunders said. 

The Marxist Progressives require the redistribution of wealth and labor without consent, he said.

“Economic rights are an immoral idea and they do not exist,” Saunders said.

Of statism, he said, “It is in conflict with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.”

Social pressure is one of the ways people are cowed into submission, he said.

“Almost no one today can stand the withering smear of being labeled 'heartless' if they stand up to big government,” he said.

“From 1867 onward, the Marxist Progressive movement worked to destroy American values,” Saunders continued. “During Wilson's presidency we got the Marxist-Communist Revolution...Most people today have been conned by Marxist Progressives,”

Rational egoism, individualism and capitalism are “antidote ideas,” Saunders said.

“Good philosophies create things like the Constitution...the pursuit of happiness,” but evil ones eventually lead to things like mass murder and concentration camps.

“Fortunately, you're sitting in a room with Tea Party people,” Saunders concluded, adding that people need to demand that universities hire people who are not Marxist Progressives to teach “the Founding Fathers” and U.S. History.

Also targeted by the group is the repeal of the recent national health-care act. During committee reports, Donna Rovito, of Allentown read H.R. Bill 2, the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Act” bill and voiced support for its immediate passage.

“Obviously this is not just going to happen. There is a four-prong attack on Obama-care,” she said. “We're coming at this four different ways right now.”

The group has nearly 1,300 people signed in on its Meetup site, and the group considers them all members. Benol said the Tea Party group has not collected dues yet, and active membership is dependent on a member attending two meetings, general or committee during an annual quarter.

Editor's Note: This article has been corrected on Jan. 10 to attribute comments to Mr. Saunders that erroneously were attributed to another person at the meeting.