An opening salvo was fired on Wednesday. Was Washington D.C. listening?
In several hundred places around the country people skipped work to engage in the exercise of free speech and redress their grievances. These protests were called Tea Parties, named after a rather infamous gathering of the same title in 1773. That ‘party’ too was an opening salvo of discontent that three years later led to the dismissal of the reigning government.
Sadly it took copious amounts of spilled blood to complete the process.
Today’s firestorm erupted over the violation of a social compact – not as a negative reaction to Barack Obama’s policies, as some partisans portray it. Anyone with memory or Google can confirm the growing anger with government began under the previous administration. George Bush and Congress conspired to bypass the limited set of powers granted them in the Constitution and to give taxpayer money to failed corporations, granting unelected power brokers the role of public arbitrators.
People at modern era Tea Parties were blustering last October. Obama’s spending agenda has simply poured jet fuel onto an already smoldering fire.
Oink if you are spending my tax money
Signs are rally requisites, used to express one’s rage long after vocal chords tire. Taxes were this week’s secondary theme. The prominent note of discord was on the subject of liberty and the shrinking supply thereof. People primarily spoke of their revulsion to the forced deflowering of the Constitution, though truth be told, Lady Liberty has been often soiled by Congress, Presidents and Supreme Court Justices alike. Protester shoulders were thusly squared in the defense of the express written will of the American people.
Better to be an imperfect capitalist than a perfect socialist
Obama – despite his press secretary’s canard claiming the White House was unaware or unimpressed with the protests – used the faux theme of taxes in clumsy parry. “My administration has taken far-reaching action to give tax cuts to the Americans who need them,” was his public statement. It is interesting that he presumes the wisdom to know who needs tax relief and who does not. Unspoken was that his generosity affords relief of a measly $400, which might afford a cup of coffee after Obama inspired inflation ravages the dollar. Unsaid was that taxes on some Americans will rise nearly 25% this year or that taxes must rise in the future to pay for a spending plan so large that even Congress blinked at the proposal.
Unsaid was that the next generation of college graduates will have minimum wage take home pay after taxes. Glad you put in an extra four years, eh kids?
236 years to build a republic and one month to destroy it
Tea Party participants were rightly riled over taxes given that they clearly see how their taxes are misappropriated – grants to failed enterprises, failed government entities like Fannie and Freddie Mac, failed government programs, failed humans leeching American life blood from the economy through Federal programs. Nowhere in The People’s Constitution are any of these schemes permitted. Little wonder then that protests were from shore to shore and that the Obama administration treated them dismissively.
That’s what monarchs do when the opening salvo is fired.
Time to reload the revolution
That last sign troubled me. Along with the slogan was a drawing of a Kentucky long rifle, circa 1776. The prelude was pure, the prediction precise. Common among realist is an old adage that there are three boxes The People use to defend freedom – the ballot box, the jury box and the bullet box. Historians know what inevitably arises when The People are suddenly dictated to by their employees in government and when the government does not obey the express written will of The People. It happened in 1773 and again in 2009. Unless the Lords of Government have changed their behavior in the last 236 years, the outcome could be regrettably similar.
An opening salvo was fired this week. Was Washington D.C. listening?
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