One Lump, or Two?

Americans began as a revolutionary people. Not in the sense that Communists use the term. The Marxist-Leninist philosophy that appropriated that term didn't want a revolution; they wanted to take over. We were founded on a calculated risk, one that the odds never favored. We didn't want to be taken over; we wanted to be left alone.

We are seeing events unfold, which in the mind of many, foretell the giving up of our essential freedoms. We want someone to take care of us; to feed us, clothe us, shelter us, tuck us into bed at night. To those ends, we have been willing to give up being left alone. Anyone who believes this only began with one political party or administration is kidding themselves. It has been building up over nearly a century. Someone asked Ben Franklin upon his leaving a lawmaking session what he and his cohorts had created: "A republic, if we can keep it." He knew the nature of human weakness, and what history had and would teach us.

Today, in cities all over the nation, on a day when Federal income taxes and statements are due, there will be "tea party" protests. They are organized by the angry, honest citizens who believe they've been taxed enough, and are set to be taxed entirely too much. But a real change begins in their hometowns, in city councils, at voting booths, at state legislatures, and impromptu "town meetings" set up by national Senators and Congressmen. To the degree that being an incumbent is a shoe-in for re-election, we the people share the responsibility for where things are today. It can start with a protest in front of the White House. But if it ends there, the people who spent their day complaining, will have no one but themselves to blame. Remember what this writer quoted last November:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence; from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage."

Read every word of that quotation. Every. Word. Carefully. Then ask yourselves...

If you want fewer taxes, if you want less interference by a central government, what are you willing to give up? That federal job contract in your hometown that your congressman would secure for his constituents? That new interstate highway that will make it easier for you to get to Wal-Mart? The assurance that your Social Security check will still arrive on time, even when the government "shuts down" without a budget?

Don't say you were never warned.

[UPDATE: Someone finally explained to me the joke being told on the air by the talking heads about "teabagging."(Naturally, it was Greg Gutfeld. Thanks, Greg.) Leave it to me not to get the memo. Leave it to the mainstream media -- and you know who you are, Rachel Maddow -- to resort to sexual innuendo in describing people with whom they disagree. Now watch them whine about anyone questioning their journalistic integrity. Duh!]
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