To the Editor:
Last election, I supported (even financially) one of the ladies who is presently a county commissioner and is now running for re-election. At the same time, coincidentally, I served on the county planning board as a volunteer and attended my first local Tea Party (912 group) meeting in Rutherford County; we didn’t have a 912 group or other Tea Party group that I could find here in Polk County at that time.
After the meeting, I tried to encourage both the lady and her husband, a retired attorney who had diligently worked as a volunteer. I had high regard for both these individuals because of their seeming interest for the well being of the county’s rural character, and objectives of fairness to everyone. Nonetheless, later they both rejected my invitation to attend the next Tea Party group meeting and exclaimed, “You’ve got to be kidding!  It’s just another Republican group under a different name!”
I continued to learn everything I could from reading printed media and going online, and found that the “Tea Party” is the “real deal” for the most part, and it is totally in support of my Constitutional rights as an American and the way that this country is governed. These two seemingly well-intentioned people had no intention of attending or learning about another way. They had obviously been educated and unfortunately conditioned, in my opinion, to think, but to follow other objectives.
Michelle Beckman, a U.S. Senator or member of the House of Representatives, was running in the presidential primaries to help get our government’s “house in order.” Both she and the Tea Party organization obviously were against the president’s (any of our presidents’) abuse of “executive order privilege” still in use and ever increasingly being used in the last 3¾ years by our White House, without regard for our Constitution and its well-defined instructions for enactment of laws.
Originally, I believe that executive order “privilege” was intended to set rules for a president’s cabinet to follow while working under the office of the president and his administration, but never for the purpose of enacting “laws” without regard to our Constitution’s requirements. Today, even our Congress of the United States can assist with the creation of laws and write-in an exemption for the members of Congress.
I’ve since learned that people in the positions of even our local government (including volunteers and publicly elected officials) cannot make informed decisions without an open mind and being willing to learn about Tea Party or even United Nations initiatives that are going on behind the scenes – like Agenda 21, for example, under the guise of “sustainable living” or state and/or county so-called “Vision Plans” – usually recognized by the funding by grants and ultimately the federal government.
Many of these well-intentioned volunteers and elected individuals may have no clue nor the desire to find out about things like the Tea Party initiative or its patriotic principles. If only the few are willing to listen and participate in order to help correct the direction we are surely heading and the people who humbly value our moral standards sit by idly, then we’ve defeated our own great country.
In closing, I applaud the “few” who stood up and attended the meeting last week at the high school to tell their elected officials that “enough is enough” regarding “the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO)” constraints and in favor of the American way of life designed by our forefathers and guaranteed by our constitution. I did believe the UDO was well intentioned to a point and attended just a few of their meetings as an observer, but I fear it has grown in stature just the way it was intended to, and more than likely was federally funded (our taxes.)
I try to participate in sincere, well-intentioned, privately funded activities, but now I trust only in God.
– John Hansborough, Mill Spring