As a Tea Party Patriot, I have been asked by the media to explain the differences between the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters and modern-day Tea Partiers.

The first answer I give is: the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been around for about 50 days, compared to about 1,000 days for the Tea Party Patriots—and so far 2,500 “Occupy” protesters have been arrested (compared to zero Tea Party arrests), there have been 4 rapes at Occupy Wall Street protests (and no rapes at Tea Parties) and the OWS folks have caused about $2.4 million in property damage, whereas the Tea Party Patriots have actually been a source of revenue for the cities in which we protest because we pay permit fees for our protests and we leave the city spaces cleaner than when we arrived.

Oh, and no Tea Partier has been arrested for sniffing the feet of another man’s girlfriend, as happened recently at an “Occupy” protest, and Tea Partiers don’t steal things from each other, like in Zuccotti Park where an OWS organizer admitted that “stealing is our biggest problem.” Stealing and rape. And defecating on a police car. And defecating everywhere else.

The other difference can be found in the different ways that media and power elites treat OWS rapists, criminals and thieves, compared to the way the media and power elites have treated non-raping, non-criminal, and non-thieving patriotic Americans in the modern-day Tea Party movement.

The media, the White House, the administration and many members of Congress have joined together to parrot the phrases and champion the causes of the violent, criminal, anti-American Occupy Wall Street protesters, whereas the same media, White House, administration and members of Congress refer to Tea Partiers as an “angry mob” of “terrorists” who should “go to hell.”

Aside from the different ways that these two protest movements are treated by those on the outside, it is what’s on the inside that counts. I’m referring to the different core beliefs of these two vastly different groups.

The Tea Party Patriots have three core principles: fiscal responsibility, free markets, and Constitutionally limited government. By contrast, the Occupy Wall Street protesters are demanding less fiscal responsibility (they want more government spending), an end to free markets, and the overwhelming majority of OWS demands—from guaranteed wages to free tuition to universal health care and more government control over markets—all call for a radical expansion of the size and scope and power of government to control us, and to take care of us, from cradle to college to grave.

Occupy Wall Street is calling for a declaration of dependence on government; a call for more government control over our lives. It is the direct opposite of the Declaration of independence that sparked this nation into existence, and it is the direct opposite of the core principles of the modern-day Tea Party movement.

As James Madison wrote in 1817, “The people of the U.S. owe their independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching agst every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings.”

Today, instead of exerting wisdom and eternal vigilance over threats to our independence, the heirs to Madison who now occupy the White House, and the media whose freedom was secured by our Founding Fathers, have joined together to champion the cause of those who loudly and proudly declare their dependence on government.

That is the main difference between the Tea Party movement and “Occupy” protesters. We, like America’s Founders, declare our independence from government. The Occupy Wall Street protesters declare their dependence on government.