Three years ago today, I stood on the pier in Santa Monica, CA, wondering if anyone else would show up for the first ever Tea Party in California. It was just a week since CNBC’s Rick Santelli gave his now famous rant, and inspired Americans from across the nation to stand up to big government spending. For some of us, we had been opposed to big government for days, weeks, months and years before, but Santelli’s words got us off the couch and on to the streets.

Three years later, the Tea Party has changed, grown, learned and thrived. Almost two years removed from the epic mid-term victories of 2010, we have remained the key political force in America; thoroughly dominating the political and cultural debate in the US. Candidates search for our approval, enemies try to vilify us, the establishment (once thrilled to have us around) is trying to ignore us. Yet our numbers grow. Not in any one organization or database or under some catchy banner, website or slogan, but in the numbers of people who are fully engaged in their civic responsibility and, truly, their civic opportunity, never to be separated from their job in being “We, The People!”

Coming into this presidential election cycle, the Tea Party (not having a candidate to call their own) has engaged on other levels. Instead of gathering on street corners, they are vetting local candidates, they are precinct walking and phone banking. The activism has taken shape not in the halls of Congress, but in the halls of the local town hall, the mayor’s office, the state house. It has led to trainings, workshops and education – citizens educating citizens on how to be better citizens.

Going forward, the Tea Party remains as strong and as relevant as it was in those first days. But, like all movements, it will have starts and fits; we will not be immune from growing pains, from those who seek to use the Tea Party as a way towards a fast buck, or others who will utilize it only for their personal or professional gain. We can, we must and we will survive those people, and those growing pains. What lies ahead of all of us in the Tea Party, millions of Americans strong, is a nation of possibilities if “We, The People!” continue to do our part. We remain the greatest nation on Earth if we continue to choose to accept the responsibility of discussing the big issues of what are called The Four Basics – the Constitution, Capitalism and Open Markets, Fiscal Responsibility and Smaller Government – and waver not on their importance in creating a free, prosperous America.

America is young in the timeline of nations, and the Tea Party is young in the timeline of America. Yet, in our three years we have done more to benefit this nation than others could dream of doing in a lifetime. The difference, perhaps, between talking and doing. What the next three years bring is up to us, but it will involve hard work. It will involve education, and action. It will involve – from those opposed to a free, prosperous society – absorbing attacks, anger and vitriol. It will involve standing up for what is right by standing tall against those who are wrong. It will involve an open, honest conversation about what makes a nation great, and how to achieve it, no matter what names you are called to shut you down in an attempt to silence honest conversation. Those attempts must be rendered futile.

To you, the members of the Tea Party, I wish you a Happy Birthday. To those who still want to join, Welcome! The party is just getting started. And, to those who wish to stand in our way – prepare to be defeated.

Happy Birthday, Tea Party! And many more!

- Tony Katz