Posted by Dana Loesch Apr 1st 2010 at 10:53 am in Tea PartiesI’ve had a lot written about me in my area lately: the alterna-weekly ran a piece on me recently called “Patriot Dame,” the local daily ran a piece titled: “St. Louis activist Dana Loesch — Miss Tea Party USA?” Even more, positive and negative, after I went on “Hardball” with Chris Matthews. It was suggested to me that I take a moment to write a first-person account of who I am instead of allowing reporters define me for me. So here goes:
The first time I felt really and truly screwed over by a man was when Bill Clinton was forced to admit that he’d shacked up with Monica Lewinsky not long after he wagged his sausage-finger in the face of America and sternly intoned that he “Did. Not. Have. Sexual. Relations. With. That. Woman.” Everyone who previously entertained the possibility was made to feel ashamed for questioning the Commander-in-Chief, including me, a mere high school freshman at the time.
That was the beginning of the end of my liberally-indoctrinated upbringing, when I first began to see the Democratic party for what they really were: modern day National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage and neo-plantation owners. This is validated every time a self-described Democrat-fellating poseur feminist freaks out when I dare to point out that abortion is largely female genocide and true choice lies in which form of birth control to use before intercourse; I also see it when Democrats ignore and suppress the involvement of black conservatives in the tea party movement because it doesn’t jibe with the narrative of a party still populated by Dixiecrats who set filibuster records against the Civil Rights Act.
September 11th sealed the deal when the lack of a coherent foreign policy and the gutting of the military’s budget under Clinton became glaringly obvious. Couple this with my fury at Republican betrayal over TARP spending and the current administration spending taxpayer dollars as though it were Monopoly money (I was always partial to the pink fives myself), and there you have the story of why I became a Tea Partier.
I’m not doing anything different than what any activist across the aisle has done for the past eight years before Obama; the difference is that I and every other conservative of my acquaintance has had the grace and humility to give the other side a voice without beating them down in a parking lot, punching people in the face, biting off their fingers, or egging their buses. Suddenly when the right exhibits a mild form of protest people on the left get full-on PMS which may attribute to why they have forgotten their actions under the previous administration.
I’m not any more special than any other activist out there. I’m in this for hearts and minds. My dog in this fight are my two, home-educated children, my small business-owner husband, and the liberty and pursuit of happiness for myself and my loved ones. I had no plan to ever be behind a mic hosting a daily radio show, as I’ve now done for the past two years, or being in front of a television camera. I began as a writer and started blogging in 2001, first on politics, anonymously. I think that God has blessed each of us with innate gifts and if I’ve demonstrated any ability to not stick my foot in my mouth on air or in the written word, then I will take that and stand for liberty on the right side of God.
Lawmakers are saying that they’re dealing with threats; last summer I and other activists dealt with threats of our own. I had a staffer from Texas’s Magnoila Special School District email me, wishing tragedy upon my children, I’ve had open-minded liberal men saying that I need to be smacked, et al., for doing nothing more than voicing dissent. I stopped feeling like I was in a fight for political liberty a while ago; for the past year I’ve felt like I’ve been pushing against a segment of our culture that desperately wants to revisit the worst aspects of the 50s.
I don’t hate liberals, I don’t hate socialists, regardless how badly they hate me or how they think that I’m, as Salon’s Joan Walsh so professionally stated, “from crazytown.” (Now ain’t that just like a man.) I don’t hate them; I think the majority of them want a world infused with kittens and sunshine, a world where it rains gumdrops, the streets are made of peppermint pavers, and everyone is equal because it’s sad when people aren’t equal or go without.
Utopia is Latin for “not-place.” Imaginary. Unreal. Erewhon.
That ideology is perfect in fantasy but in reality it doesn’t work unless the entire population is unjustly controlled. Such a fantasy could not and will not ever work because humans are flawed creatures.
What I stand for, what the tea party stands for, is a bipartisan desire to empower the people, to really and truly empower the people – not fake empowerment where the government promises to remedy your problems (ignore their track record with busted systems like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), happiness in exchange for freedom. It’s neither real happiness or real freedom. True empowerment born of love, not government assistance manufactured as a control mechanism. The tea party wants to empower people with opportunity and the freedom for the individual to pursue success and keep the fruits of their success. Policies designed to pay for all penalize all; they stifle competition which is the trigger for progress for a sinful, vain people; they neuter motivation; they kill innovation.
That’s what I’m about, that’s who I am.
I’m a Christian, a wife, a mother, a homeschooler, a conservative, a citizen journalist, a talk radio host, an insatiable music nerd who plays a poor rhythm guitar, a blogger, a proud granddaughter of a sailor, and a proud tea partier in awe of the potential and the people in this movement.
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