Soon after posting this, I will be driving several hours to participate in the Pittsburgh Tea Party. Obviously, this means that I won't be blogging (I'm not yet one of those people who can blog from like the Amazon using their watches or whatever), but if you think about it, I'm not expecting to have a readership today because you are all supposed to be at your respective tea parties.

If you're going to be at the Pittsburgh party, holler - I'll be the first good-looking, swarthy Middle Eastern guy you see. If you're at any other parties, please send your favorite pictures and/or stories when you get home to paul(at)paulibrahim(dot)com. I won't be back at my computer until night time, but I'd like to put up some pictures by Thursday morning.

And above all, be sure to remember what today is all about: God created free men. After thousands of years of experimenting with their societies throughout the world, they finally managed to get it right in a land called America: They overthrew a government that dominated their lives (they were helped greatly by the Boston Tea Party, a powerful protest against big government), and decided to form just enough of a government to enforce contracts, build roads, resist crime, and fight off foreign threats. They were free men who delegated just enough of their power to government in order to protect their freedom.

But somewhere along the way, the freest country in the world began to falter. Instead of enforcing contracts, the government started creating them. Instead of building roads, it began building giant social experiments that transferred wealth and created dependency. And instead of resisting crime, it created corruption among politicians who live off of the hard work of others.

In the process, the government has forcefully taken away more power, wealth, and freedom from Americans who are now seeing the America of 1776 slipping away in front of their eyes.

We do not approve of paying a third of our income to a government that is going to waste it. We do not approve of a government that takes wealth from the few and gives it to the numerous, in order to preserve popularity and domination. We do not approve of a government that tells us what we can eat, whether we can smoke, or whom we can contract with. And we do not approve of a government that is putting us trillions of dollars in debt simply because its politicians know they'll be gone by the time the problem peaks in a few years.

So this is why we are protesting. This is what we are trying to get the rest of America to understand. And this is what you have to explain to your indifferent friends. May God have mercy on us all.