About ten days ago my mother-in-law received a letter from the Republican Party’s national chairman, Michael Steele, alerting her that she had been selected as an official representative of the Party for the state of Vermont. All they were asking, in return for the honor, was a small donation to the GOP. I found that quite amusing because she is a registered Independent, quite liberal, and a passionate supporter of Barak Obama. Her reaction was pricelessly funny.

However, a couple of days ago I received a similar letter. We live at the same address in Vermont, but I am a registered Republican. My letter let me know I had been selected to be a special representative for the state of Maryland. Odd: I have never lived in Maryland, and the only time I recall spending any time in that state was about 30 years ago when my wife and I camped on the Maryland shore for a week while our car’s radiator was repaired.

I didn’t find the letters so amusing after the second arrived, because the pattern worried me. I work with modern technology on a regular basis. Frankly, it’s a “second language” for me – though my children are “native speakers” – and I need a lot of help. As a result I am quite manic about presenting myself correctly and using technology accurately. Of course I make mistakes, and I am not surprised that the GOP made an error in identifying my mother-in-law. Nor am I surprised they erred in identifying my state (though I cannot fathom how they got my name correct but my state wrong in the letter, yet mailed it to the correct Vermont address). Mistakes happen; especially when you are not fluent in a new language. But when both correspondences to our address were so blatantly erroneous, it stopped being a laughing, learning matter. It begins to look like a problem.

The State of the GOP

These letters make the GOP look like they are playing a “catch up” game with the Democrat Party, and it doesn’t look good. It’s rather like watching mainline Protestant churches trying to ape the sophisticated use by evangelical churches of the technology that has become second-nature to young adults and their forward-looking elders. As someone who writes a blog devoted to helping mainline Protestant churches recognize how behind the curve they have allowed themselves to become, and to find ways to address their growing irrelevance, what I see is the Republican Party attempting and failing to use today’s technology in an effort to look “modern” to the increasingly tech-savvy public. Unfortunately, in my household the GOP’s weak adaptation has made it look stodgy and past-oriented, as well as desperate. (Don’t they have any staff or volunteers under the age of 45?)

This point was also made recently on PJTV, by Bill Whittle in his piece, “The Power and Danger of Iconography.” He shows how effective the Democrats have become at employing updated images and distribution methods to “brand” their party and President; and how poor the Republicans have been at the same task. Indeed, he suggests that the GOP doesn’t even understand the issues involved. I agree: that is how it seems.

In general, the GOP seems to be out of step on two fronts, despite their recent electoral successes. Firstly, they seem out of step with the general public, which is rapidly moving toward sophisticated social networking means of sharing information, motivating others, and communicating. Sarah Palin appears to be an exception to this largely-true claim. She has been very successful at responding to the Obama Administration and Democrat-controlled Congress through her Facebook page and frequent tweets. In the process, she has been successfully by-passing her derogatory portrayal in the mainstream media and the wish of GOP hacks to manage her. Her cache has been growing because of her effective use of Internet technology, while the GOP can’t get even one out of two snail mail correspondences to my home right.

The GOP also seems to be out of step with the “conservative” movement in the United States. I put conservative in quote marks because the term is being misused in common speech as a synonym for “right wing” and, now, for “tea partiers.” But, the Tea Party movement is not really conservative – at least, not in the classical sense of the term. Originally, the conservatives were those who favored the statism of kings over the autonomy of individual citizens. And in that sense, the Tea Party movement is classically liberal. It celebrates the liberal, historically-revolutionary values the Republican Party used to represent: the right of each individual to pursue life, liberty and happiness without either the interference of the heavy hand of government or the overarching shadow of bureaucracy. (The modern Democrat Party, seeking to reestablish a governing authority at the expense of individual liberty, is actually the conservative, right-wing, counter-revolutionary movement. Their agenda seeks to turn back the clock on the revolutionary freedom vouchsafed in our Constitution.)

The Tea Party Movement and the American Revolution

The Tea Party movement is not inherently aligned with the Republican Party. The Republican Party may be preferred by most Tea Party sympathizers, but that’s only because Republicans are less inclined to grow the power and reach of government than are Democrats. However, that’s a relative thing, and Tea Party people are looking for an absolute change in direction.

Tea Party sympathizers are registered Republicans, Democrats and Independents, as well as non-registered concerned citizens. We will vote for candidates of any party if they are committed to smaller government, to reduced spending, to the repeal of most entitlements, to the enhancement of individual freedoms, to making significant reductions in the regulations that limit entrepreneurialism, and to restoring a deep and abiding respect for the radical nature of our founding documents.

We Tea Party sympathizers are the true radicals. We understand how radical the American Revolution was. Our Constitution recognizes that the fundamental choice in forms of government is between a form in which elites direct the lives and fortunes of the masses, and a form that liberates the masses as individuals, not as a class, to pursue whatever makes them individually happy. And it enshrines the second. As such, it embraces a fundamentally Christian form of government – not because it establishes Christianity, or outlaws other faiths, but because it is the only form of government that believes the Protestant Christian doctrine of the right and God-given authority of the individual to make decisions of conscience for him- or herself, guided only by a personal sense of moral accountability to God.

Christianity does not believe that individuals are perfected by living in a perfect community, but the opposite: that redeemed individuals influence their communities toward greater holiness. That is why Christianity is so distinctly individualistic: no human construct has the right, or the ability, to stand between an individual conscience and Jesus Christ. But each person has the right and the responsibility to work out his or her own relationship with God, and to live into that relationship by the conduct of daily life. In the process, community is formed and the society is improved.

The notion that some few persons – or even a plurality of citizens in agreement – can determine what is the “right” or “just” way for all citizens to live is distinctly unChristian. And as such, it is immoral and fraudulent. Collectivist and statist movements are both anti-Christian and un-American. They run against the commitments of individual discipleship to Jesus Christ and to the principles of the U.S. Constitution.

The American Constitution does not care whether the elitists call themselves kings, parliaments, dictators, religious leaders, or elected representatives; any time the government moves toward limiting individual freedom in order to make society “better,” according to some humanly-constructed theory of what is “good” for people, the community, or the world, the U.S. Constitution is contravened. People who pursue those statist or collectivist agendas, however well-meaning they may be as compassionate persons, are un-American. They fail the test of patriotism.

Tea Party sympathizers are not, of course, the only patriots. Not all patriots have joined the movement. However, the Tea Party movement is the home of those who want to restore the founding principles, commitments and perspectives; it is the home of true patriots. And therefore, it is the home of the new American Revolution. As Sarah Palin said in her speech to the Tennessee meeting, “the Tea Party movement is the future of politics in America.”

Radical Constitutionality

The Republican Party needs to understand that though I have been invited by mail and phone to contribute to the Party’s 2010 and 2012 agenda to “take back the Congress and the White House,” I will not support the Republican Party until I see evidence that the Party has come home to the principles of the U.S. Constitution.

I will support individual Republicans whom I believe have the same fundamental loyalty to the radical, classically liberal ideals of individual freedom and restricted government that I have and that the Tea Party espouses. But I will also support Democrats and Independents who exhibit those commitments. The days of me falling in line behind the Republican candidates because Republicans are the lesser evil are over. The party-approved candidacy of John McCain put an end to that. (Yes, I am one of those who only voted Republican because Palin was on the ticket. Without her, I would have sat out the election.) Now, I am looking for those individual candidates who will put the Constitution above their venal interests, and who will go to Washington to fight the long, drawn-out battle to restore the vision of the Founders, and the responsibility and opportunity of the individual.

The wise class – pundits and prognosticators (including Rush Limbaugh) – warn that my approach will lead to lost elections and a perpetuation of the Democrat/Socialist rule in Washington. I think that’s only half-right.

Yes, such a course might fracture the Republican Party. But the truth is that if McCain had been elected we would be traveling down the same road, for the most part – only more slowly. Obama turned up the heat so we noticed we were being cooked, and that allowed us to jump out of the pot. Simply returning Republicans to power does not guarantee a change in direction.

I do not yet see a serious commitment to reversing course by the GOP. I see a Democrat President and Congressional leadership that are committed to pursuing their anti-American agenda even if that means they will not be re-elected. They are willing to throw in their lives and their fortunes to achieve their vision for a statist America. But I do not see a Republican Presidential candidate prepared to throw in life and fortune to restore the Constitutional limits on government; nor do I see a similar level of commitment among existing Republican senators and congressional members. Mostly, I see opportunism – and I am sick of opportunists.

I know that sometimes mainline Protestant churches become so fossilized that they cannot be remade. In those cases, church change leaders are encouraged to start a new congregation in the same building. In time, the old congregation will fade away, but by then the new congregation will have grown large and vital enough to take over the structure. Perhaps the Tea Party movement is the new congregation, destined to take over the structure of the Republican Party. That’s certainly the model I am holding out. But if the old GOP remains too potent for too long, I’ll be just as happy to migrate with the movement to a new house and to compete directly with both the Republican and Democrat parties for members and leadership power.

I would rather go down standing on my two feet and fighting for the American Revolution than fade away on my knees, accepting a slow betrayal by Republican political hacks simply because they are willing to draw out the death of America that the current Democrats want to end in a quick coup de grace.

No more living a half-life in this grey twilight of the Founders’ vision. I am not interested in either the quick death offered by Democrat progressives or the slow death offered by Republican progressives.  I want the freedom, responsibility and opportunity anchored in the Christian vision of humanity and the Protestant notion of morality, and encoded in the U.S. Constitution. That’s worth fighting for; that’s worth my life and fortune. Anything less is not worth defending. Or voting for.