Cowboy Confessional

The young black gent in the wheelchair raised a fist and shouted “Amen.”  The middle aged Hispanic woman, homemade sign overhead, applauded and said “Get rid of them all!”  The lady with the butch-cut hair, and her girl friend waving a rainbow flag, said “We’ve had enough.”  The teenage girl, bouncing on her toes held a single tea bag aloft.

What a bunch of racist homophobes.

I decided to inspect a Tea Party today.  Not being a member of any movement, I have watched this one since it was inspired in the latter days of the Bush Botch-up.  I wanted to see if the Tea Partiers had changed much in the subsequent year.  When they initially erupted, it was obvious from the event I attended that members of the nascent mobilization were from every corner of the American political map minus socialists, communists and other lower life forms.  Reacting to taxpayer bail-outs of failed and possibly criminal corporations, conservatives, independents, libertarians and even some classical liberals came out to protest a government that had zero regard for the express written will of the American people (a.k.a. the constitution).

The movement is even more so today.

I chatted with a candidate named Adnan Shahab, which is about as un-Anglo Saxon as one can get without immigrating from another planet.  I overheard a woman who carried a sign reading “I’m an angry Democrat” speak of betrayal by her representative.  One young lady wore tea bags on her hoop earrings while signing-up at an NRA recruiting table (which, I’ll note was doing a brisk business).  All ages, all races, all income levels, and all sexual orientations.  A more mixed demographic cross-section cannot be found outside of … well, it just can’t be found.

Being color blind, egalitarian and “a friend of the family” according to a gay acquaintance, I found none of this unusual from a human perspective, and in some ways from a political one.  But it did raise to the top of my alleged consciousness a question:  What is the common denominator?  Why have such different people banded together and taken to the streets?

Freedom.

Nobody with honest intent can examine bank bailouts or insane and equally unpopular insurance legislation without concluding that our federal government has jumped the rails.  No misreading of the Constitution can cause one to conscientiously conclude that either is permitted by The People.  Even those originally enamored by the current and temporary president are fearful of what may come next.  When theft and conscripted commerce occur, there is in theory no limit on what the federal government could do to individuals.

Freedom is an individual thing.

It is not surprising that the young black fellow in the wheelchair attended the Tea Party, for the concept of slavery is doubly real for him.  The Hispanic woman who struggled to escape from under a dictator’s thumb and come to America now fears the freedoms she longed for will be taken.  The lesbian couple protested because any government that forces them to buy health insurance could force them into re-education camps (for their own good and the good of society of course).

The teenagers see tens of thousands of dollars in federal debt, for which they already are liable, and prefer the freedom of a future.

The People forgive a fair amount of federal skullduggery and ineptitude.  Even the occasional lapse of constitutional commitment from elected servants is considered tolerable if the courts correct it.  But in under two years the wholesale assassination of constitutional government has caused people of every attitude to recognize that Washington no longer considers liberty an imperative.  The social pact between the state and those who created it has been broken.  The government is declining to heel, and its masters are about to jerk government’s dog collar.

It is a people thing.  It is a freedom imperative.  It is an American movement.

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This entry was posted by Guy Smith on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Constitution, Culture, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.