Lois Lerner and other officials at the IRS should be grateful that they do not live in 18^th century America when tar and feathering were considered appropriate "remedies" against lawbreakers in government. Better yet for the IRS that this is not late 18^th century France.

The Tea Party Patriots have organized an Audit the IRS Rally set for noon, June 19 on the West Lawn of the Capitol in Washington. Yet it is doubtful that many people at the IRS are as familiar as Tea Partiers with Thomas Jefferson's line: "When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

In June 2010, Rasmussen reported that 48 percent of Americans "see the government today as a threat to individual rights rather than a protector of those rights." By December 2011, Gallup reported that 64 percent of Americans fear that big government is the biggest threat to the country.

Fortunately for the IRS, Tea Partiers are decent people fighting for the rule of law, not against it.

IRS abuse of constitutional conservatives and others fighting for liberty has precedent. Under Bill Clinton's IRS Commissioner Peggy Richardson, conservative organizations, all more established than the upstart Tea Party groups, were targeted. They did not organize rallies to audit the IRS then. American government had not yet reached the level of contempt for the law that we now see. Barack Obama's divisive leadership has created open season on government's abusing liberty and the American people.

True liberty in America may now be lost, but the Tea Party is still making its place in the history of fighting for freedom versus tyranny. That history is one of ebbs and flows. Not all movements for liberty succeed, and freedom is never won by the timid; it is won by the bold. The Tea Party is bold.

For its organizing, acting, writing, studying and speaking out, the Tea Party was targeted.

The IRS made a tactical and strategic mistake in employing its illegal bullying tactics on a movement consisting of small-business owners, home school moms, farmers and such. The IRS tactics had always worked in intimidating people into silence, or at least hedging. A skunk can't change its stripes

Recognizing the bigger picture, Tea Partiers had relatively little to lose when the IRS picked this fight with them. They did not represent big interests with lots to lose. America was already slipping away. But they have turned the tables on government. Government is now the hunted, not the hunter.

"Audit the IRS" is not merely a valid response of the People to a federal agency that breaks the very laws it claims to implement and enforce. It is a statement of contempt -- not of government itself -- but of government that has shown contempt for the rule of law.

Audit the IRS. Investigate the Justice Department. Expose, expose, expose.

"Audit the IRS" is a statement of mockery, ridicule and disdain not just for the IRS, but for lawbreaking government in general. Its mockery will surely be lost on bureaucrats and the institutions that protect them. They will dig in their heels instead of adjusting in the better direction.

And, institutions have indeed made their bed with big, bad government. The "press," which now feverishly seeks protection for itself under "shield laws because their clique is now the victim of government lawbreaking, provides more cover for, than exposure of, government corruption.

The bad press for the Tea Party since 2009 has only magnified that they were right, and the negative press was wrong, even corrupt. Bad press has been free press for the constitutional conservative cause.

Health insurance companies that supported ObamaCare were complicit in the rise of healthcare insurance premiums. Some state governments valiantly fought ObamaCare; some were complicit in its fraud. California was part of that fraud on its citizens. ObamaCare will increase individual-market premiums by percentages of at least two digits, yet California's top insurance official claimed that it would lower them.

These corrupt institutions and government officials also further magnify how the Tea Party was correct from the start. Their lies, crony practices, lawbreaking and contempt for the Constitution were the res ipsa loquitor, "the thing speaks for itself," in the Tea Party's case against government.

In Olmstead v. US, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."

People fear government not just because it has power; it's the lawlessness of government. The Tea Party and constitutional conservative movements are the People enforcing the law on government. American citizens are providing more leadership than most of our elected officials by turning fear of government into contempt and mockery of it.