If Alfred E. Newman with his “What me worry?” grin was President of the United States he couldn’t do a more pathetic imitation of leadership than we are currently witnessing in Chicago on the Potomac.
Dismissing the easy visuals of an out-of-touch Imperial President such as:
• Playing golf more in two years than Bush did in eight. With over seventy rounds of eighteen holes in 2.5 years and more that eleven weekends in a row this year it makes one wonder if he’s practicing up for a second career perhaps taking Tiger Woods place once he leaves the White House.
• The 2010 decision to skip the wreath laying ceremony at Arlington to make a pilgrimage to his political Mecca by the Lake,
• Joking about the failure of the 800+ billion dollar stimulus with his cronies at the ironically named Jobs Council when he quipped with his usual uh … uh … off-script eloquence and profundity, “Shovel-ready was not as … uh .. shovel-ready as we expected.”
These types of politically tone-deaf blunders are merely the insensitive actions of a self-indulgent prima donna on his way to a Jimmy Carter style one-term ejection and should surprise no one. When you hire a novice to do a master-craftsman’s job don’t be surprised when the paint peels or the wood warps.
However, President Obama, even with the debt exploding, the economy imploding and his poll numbers in free fall has a glimmer of hope for a surprise re-election commonly known as the Republican Party.
The re-treaded leadership in the House, which the new Tea Party majority-makers allowed to continue even after they handed the momentum back to the Progressives with the Lame-Duck Deal, seem determined to hand Mr. Obama a second term. How can this be? One continuing resolution after another, a budget deal trading a real 1.6 trillion dollar deficit for phantom cuts, re-affirmation of the liberty-smothering Patriot Act, the soon-to-be vote to raise the debt limit, and the political hacks that pass for conservative leaders will prove it’s business as usual for the two-headed bird of prey that is America’s party of power.
The GOP needs the energy and votes of the Tea Party to win. With a record of caving to the Progressives who will rally round the Republican flag? Then there is the coming nominee. Who will it be? Will it be someone who could fire up the rank-and-file or will it be another in the long line of “It’s My Turn” RHINOs that the Party sets up to get knocked down? Will Romney be the next McCain, the next Dole, or the next George H. W. Bush? Will a Huntsman or a Pawlenty garner enough votes of Democrats voting in Republican primaries and thus win a plurality of the votes as McCain did?
Does the party of Reagan have the courage to nominate someone like Ron Paul who has the record to prove he stands by his limited-government positions? Do the people who want their constitutionally limited government back have the sense to ignore the drone of the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media and refuse to allow them to succeed in their efforts to make Sarah Palin over into anything but the winner she is? Do they have the foresight to draft Chris Christie and demand that he run? In other words do the Republicans have the political integrity to actually run a conservative or will they stick with the same old lackluster Progressive Lite that has spelled doom in the past?
President Obama is eminently beatable. His successes: healthcare and financial reform were shoved through over the determined resistance of the American public. His expansion of the wars and his support for the Arab Spring which is code for Islamist take-over has eroded our security. His religious adherence to the Cloward-Piven Plan to collapse the economy as a means to fundamentally transform America has brought us to the brink of financial disaster. And his in-your-face golf-while-Washington-burns party at the end of the age lifestyle has made him vulnerable to any candidate who will actually stand for everything the President is against.
The President may say he isn’t on the campaign trail but it would be more accurate to say he has never left the campaign trail except for weekends of golf, luxury vacations, and celebrity parties. While he was far too busy running for the presidency and miss-managing the country for two years to release a reasonable facsimile of a birth certificate he always has time for important things like the Oprah Show or jetting across the country to glad hand donors.
We all know the President is an excellent campaigner, which according to himself was one of his chief qualifications for becoming President. With his 2012 campaign headquartered in his adopted home of Chicago, the home of vote procurement procedures, and his goal to raise and spend one billion dollars there should be no doubt that his will be an energetic and effective campaign.
He may have the organization and he may have the money; however, what is the President’s strategy to overcome his record as the first President since Jimmy Carter determined to manage the decline of America instead of working to ensure its continued success? How is he to convince the great majority of Americans that his program of reckless spending, apology tours, abandoning friends and embracing enemies is deserving of another four years? The short answer is he can’t, and so he won’t.
President Obama, aided and abetted by the Progressive Media will pretend the economy is recovering or that prosperity is just around the corner. They will tell the voters we can’t change horses in the middle of the stream. The storyline will be, “You may be out of a job and waiting to be foreclosed on but it could be worse and it’s getting better.” I predict this has about as much chance of working as convincing a Steve Jobs worshipping Apple Devotee that a PC really is better. So what’s the President going to do?
I believe his only chance for a second term is to either use the media and primary cross-voters to help the Republicans nominate the next “It’s my turn” loser or to split the conservative vote. The Progressive Media will do all they can to promote a like-minded left-wing RHINO ala-McCain, but if the Tea Party wing has enough juice to nominate Ron Paul or Michelle Bachmann or enough power to draft Palin or Christie I predict there will be a pseudo conservative third party candidate even if the DNC has to finance it.
Four more years of managed decline without a re-election to restrain him and President Obama’s transformational vision of America as just another country may become more than just the content of his latest apology or the lesson taught to our children in public schools. It may become the shabby reality we will have to endure and the shameful remnant we leave to our grandchildren. We must stay united, stay focused, and work together for the restoration of America. We can’t let divisions divide us anymore. We can do this unless we don’t.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
America A Greek Tragedy
After years of policies expanding the national government until it employed 1/3 of the workforce and expanding their social welfare net into a hammock for those who chose not to work the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded that Greece impose a budget that the unions saw as austere. For weeks riots raged, buildings burned and people died. Greece having cast their freedom into the wind is reaping the whirlwind. By seeking to make everyone equal and to ensure that no one failed they have placed their entire nation in risk of failing.
After massive bailouts from their EU partners and the United States the Greek problem seemed to go away. Now it’s back and our generous President has offered to borrow money from China to bail-out Greece once again. As all the Progressive Internationalists scurry to keep Greece from swirling down the drain we shouldn’t fall for the illusion. Systems like this don’t work no matter how hard people try to keep the house of cards from collapsing.
Our turn is coming soon.
Even though we are the largest single contributor to the IMF they have recently issued a stern rebuke to The United States. This rebuke stated that in order to meet goals previously promised we would have to implement austerity measures that would be tougher than any since records began in 1960. Yet instead of austerity or even fiscal sanity our leaders, the same ones who have led us into not only mortgaging the farm but mortgaging the kids and the grandkids are acting as the cheerleaders and hand-wringers for the ritualistic rise in the debt limit.
In the last round of the serial continuing resolutions, the one that ended in the Republican House surrendering to the White House and passing the bloated 2011 budget we were told there would be massive cuts. This would be truly historic, 38 billion dollars in cuts. This was so substantial it would only leave a record yearly deficit of 1.6 trillion. There was joy in the House as they took a victory lap beating their chests for holding out for the BIG money.
Then we learn the president and his staff of Chicago trained slight-of-hand bean counters had cooked the books, took credit for laying off people who were already laid off and presto-change-o the massive 38 billion was actually 352 million. This is still a massive amount of money but in the rarified air our high flying government budget it doesn’t quite qualify as chump change. This isn’t the change anyone was hoping for when we changed the chumps back in November of 2010.
This breath-taking cut still left the spending for 2011 more than 773 Billion above 2008 levels and thus President Obama was forced to agree to stealth stimulus almost as big as the one in 2009 that put America back to work, at least in Democrat campaign commercials. And while every one of the serial continuing resolutions was reported with great fanfare as cutting the budget according to the Treasury the 2011 budget deficit actually increased by 15.7% in the first six months of fiscal 2011. In other words the more these leaders who are so concerned about cutting the deficit cut the bigger the deficit grows.
All of this looting of the American economy has a tremendously high price. While no one will ever know what didn’t happen because of the government crowding private capital out and soaking up all the time and energy required to make it through their red-tape bureaucratic maze we see the crippling effects every day.
Although the officials in charge of the silly statistics department tell us there is no inflation even though they are printing money 24/7 as fast as the presses can go inflation is actually nearing 10%, which anyone who lives in the real world and has to buy food or gas knows. And our once free economy is now in the hands of a Federal Government that has no limits and a gaggle of mega-banks that for all intents and purposes should be re-classified as government-backed.
Now the drums are beating for the Progressive Federal Government to bail out the Progressives who have destroyed our once great cities. As Detroit begins to revitalize by surrendering entire communities to the gangs and bull-doze abandoned buildings the same thinking that picked America’s pocket to bail-out the crony capitalists is gearing up to prop up the culture of decline on the local level so the local level will deliver the votes in 2012. This is nothing more than vote buying and money laundering on a grand scale.
This gamesmanship has done nothing to reign in the uncontrolled spending of our unlimited Federal Behemoth. Even the politically blind are beginning to see that this profligate spending is unsustainable. Unless we embrace the austerity needed to right our ship of state we will flounder on the shoals of self-indulgence which have been the death-bed of empires since Nimord tried to build a tower. And if we continue to mortgage the lives of those who have not yet been born we will end up losing the deeds to the lives we think we own.
So, no matter what the teleprompter readers tell us at the end of the day the Republican majority in the House will go along with their Progressive pals and raise the debt limit. And no matter what they say about trillions of dollars of cuts, off in the future and over the rainbow, the deficits will continue and the debt will grow.
Come on Charlie Brown kick the football Lucy promised she won’t move it this time.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.
After massive bailouts from their EU partners and the United States the Greek problem seemed to go away. Now it’s back and our generous President has offered to borrow money from China to bail-out Greece once again. As all the Progressive Internationalists scurry to keep Greece from swirling down the drain we shouldn’t fall for the illusion. Systems like this don’t work no matter how hard people try to keep the house of cards from collapsing.
Our turn is coming soon.
Even though we are the largest single contributor to the IMF they have recently issued a stern rebuke to The United States. This rebuke stated that in order to meet goals previously promised we would have to implement austerity measures that would be tougher than any since records began in 1960. Yet instead of austerity or even fiscal sanity our leaders, the same ones who have led us into not only mortgaging the farm but mortgaging the kids and the grandkids are acting as the cheerleaders and hand-wringers for the ritualistic rise in the debt limit.
In the last round of the serial continuing resolutions, the one that ended in the Republican House surrendering to the White House and passing the bloated 2011 budget we were told there would be massive cuts. This would be truly historic, 38 billion dollars in cuts. This was so substantial it would only leave a record yearly deficit of 1.6 trillion. There was joy in the House as they took a victory lap beating their chests for holding out for the BIG money.
Then we learn the president and his staff of Chicago trained slight-of-hand bean counters had cooked the books, took credit for laying off people who were already laid off and presto-change-o the massive 38 billion was actually 352 million. This is still a massive amount of money but in the rarified air our high flying government budget it doesn’t quite qualify as chump change. This isn’t the change anyone was hoping for when we changed the chumps back in November of 2010.
This breath-taking cut still left the spending for 2011 more than 773 Billion above 2008 levels and thus President Obama was forced to agree to stealth stimulus almost as big as the one in 2009 that put America back to work, at least in Democrat campaign commercials. And while every one of the serial continuing resolutions was reported with great fanfare as cutting the budget according to the Treasury the 2011 budget deficit actually increased by 15.7% in the first six months of fiscal 2011. In other words the more these leaders who are so concerned about cutting the deficit cut the bigger the deficit grows.
All of this looting of the American economy has a tremendously high price. While no one will ever know what didn’t happen because of the government crowding private capital out and soaking up all the time and energy required to make it through their red-tape bureaucratic maze we see the crippling effects every day.
Although the officials in charge of the silly statistics department tell us there is no inflation even though they are printing money 24/7 as fast as the presses can go inflation is actually nearing 10%, which anyone who lives in the real world and has to buy food or gas knows. And our once free economy is now in the hands of a Federal Government that has no limits and a gaggle of mega-banks that for all intents and purposes should be re-classified as government-backed.
Now the drums are beating for the Progressive Federal Government to bail out the Progressives who have destroyed our once great cities. As Detroit begins to revitalize by surrendering entire communities to the gangs and bull-doze abandoned buildings the same thinking that picked America’s pocket to bail-out the crony capitalists is gearing up to prop up the culture of decline on the local level so the local level will deliver the votes in 2012. This is nothing more than vote buying and money laundering on a grand scale.
This gamesmanship has done nothing to reign in the uncontrolled spending of our unlimited Federal Behemoth. Even the politically blind are beginning to see that this profligate spending is unsustainable. Unless we embrace the austerity needed to right our ship of state we will flounder on the shoals of self-indulgence which have been the death-bed of empires since Nimord tried to build a tower. And if we continue to mortgage the lives of those who have not yet been born we will end up losing the deeds to the lives we think we own.
So, no matter what the teleprompter readers tell us at the end of the day the Republican majority in the House will go along with their Progressive pals and raise the debt limit. And no matter what they say about trillions of dollars of cuts, off in the future and over the rainbow, the deficits will continue and the debt will grow.
Come on Charlie Brown kick the football Lucy promised she won’t move it this time.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Positively Negative
The Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media constantly trumpets the claim that President Obama was a Professor of Constitutional Law. And when he was campaigning he charged that President Bush was not respecting the Constitution when he fired eight prosecutors saying, “I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution.”
In this long over looked quote from a radio interview a Pre-President Obama laments the negative liberties he sees as a flaw in the Constitution and waxes eloquent in defense of the redistribution of wealth and the positive power of an intrusive welfare state.
“If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.”
Unfortunately for this radical interpretation, liberty is a negative. Personal liberty is always and only possible when and where external control stops. We have the liberty to think as we wish because no one can control or even know our true inner thoughts. We do not have the liberty to steal; society has placed limits on that action which are enforced by external control. The Framers of our Constitution knew this which explains why our foundational document includes restrictions on the power of government not restrictions on individuals. Unless governmental control over the individual was limited there would be no liberty.
This has been common knowledge in our Republic since John Hancock signed his John Hancock and we declared to the world that the United States of America was going to be something different. We were determined to break free of the entangling state control stifling the monarchies of Europe. We would be a new type of nation where individual liberty, opportunity, and free enterprise would unleash the pent-up creativity and ingenuity would make real the genius of a free people. However, over the years many have fallen asleep, lulled into a trance by the prosperity and security this freedom from state control has fostered.
Slowly the knowledge of what gave vent to this prosperity and security has been lost and generations of Americans have been taught by state schools that free enterprise is evil and state paternalism is good. Generations have been bred to see governmental support, direction, and control as necessary and proper. They have ingested the poison of dependence metastasizing the debilitating life on the dole to the point where they see their continued receipt of stolen goods as an entitlement. So many have fallen for the licentious materialistic hedonism masquerading as life in a post-modern America that when asked, “What is the American Dream?” many will reply “To own your own home.” A response and a belief which made the congressionally mandated Fannie/Freddie induced housing bubble possible if not inevitable.
This shows the negative results of the positive reinforcement of materialism over intellectualism. The correct response to the question, “What is the American Dream?” is Individual liberty and opportunity. Once this was common knowledge among an engaged American public who realized that no one fought and died to own a home, people owned homes in America before the revolution. It was freedom that was the object of the Revolution and it is the individual liberty and opportunity that freedom enables that is the American dream. And today in America this individual liberty and opportunity has now become the object of ridicule in schools pushing a green agenda and a socialist future. The demand for a return to individual liberty and opportunity has become the disparaged slogan on signs at Tea Parties.
Our leaders have embraced instead the idea of “Positive Liberty” which is an oxymoron. By this they mean that the state should actively intervene in the lives of people to provide them with all that is necessary for lives lived as the leaders think they should be. What they are really New Speaking of is Socialism disguised as democracy. However, the increase of governmental power over people does not equate to liberty it equates to serfdom and only the progressive newspeak of a post-modern America could call this decrease of freedom an increase of liberty or democracy.
Alexis de Tocqueville said, “Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
This positive liberty is the handmaiden of the other new positive that our progressive leaders wish to foist upon us: positive equality. The real equality, the one our ancestors fought and died for is equality of opportunity which is a negative, forcing the government stays out of the way and the people go as far as their investment of time, talent and treasure can take them. In our new progressive world government is supposed to act to create an equality of outcome so that all are equal all the time. This type of collective equality is to be advanced and protected by the all powerful state pushing down some, lifting others until all are equal at all times. This equality of outcome becomes an unlimited reality that is conceived of as the goal of society. Unfettered democracy defined as the participation of all in the political process either as rulers, dispensers or consumers becomes not only the goal but the means and the end in and of itself.
Thus our Constitutional Scholar-in-Chief is leading us step by step away from the individual liberty and opportunity that are the guardians of the American Dream and into a negative representation of our positive values. With another four years this administration will succeed in fundamentally transforming America.
One last quote from Alexis de Tocqueville "The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
PS: Don’t take the bribe.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.
In this long over looked quote from a radio interview a Pre-President Obama laments the negative liberties he sees as a flaw in the Constitution and waxes eloquent in defense of the redistribution of wealth and the positive power of an intrusive welfare state.
“If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.”
Unfortunately for this radical interpretation, liberty is a negative. Personal liberty is always and only possible when and where external control stops. We have the liberty to think as we wish because no one can control or even know our true inner thoughts. We do not have the liberty to steal; society has placed limits on that action which are enforced by external control. The Framers of our Constitution knew this which explains why our foundational document includes restrictions on the power of government not restrictions on individuals. Unless governmental control over the individual was limited there would be no liberty.
This has been common knowledge in our Republic since John Hancock signed his John Hancock and we declared to the world that the United States of America was going to be something different. We were determined to break free of the entangling state control stifling the monarchies of Europe. We would be a new type of nation where individual liberty, opportunity, and free enterprise would unleash the pent-up creativity and ingenuity would make real the genius of a free people. However, over the years many have fallen asleep, lulled into a trance by the prosperity and security this freedom from state control has fostered.
Slowly the knowledge of what gave vent to this prosperity and security has been lost and generations of Americans have been taught by state schools that free enterprise is evil and state paternalism is good. Generations have been bred to see governmental support, direction, and control as necessary and proper. They have ingested the poison of dependence metastasizing the debilitating life on the dole to the point where they see their continued receipt of stolen goods as an entitlement. So many have fallen for the licentious materialistic hedonism masquerading as life in a post-modern America that when asked, “What is the American Dream?” many will reply “To own your own home.” A response and a belief which made the congressionally mandated Fannie/Freddie induced housing bubble possible if not inevitable.
This shows the negative results of the positive reinforcement of materialism over intellectualism. The correct response to the question, “What is the American Dream?” is Individual liberty and opportunity. Once this was common knowledge among an engaged American public who realized that no one fought and died to own a home, people owned homes in America before the revolution. It was freedom that was the object of the Revolution and it is the individual liberty and opportunity that freedom enables that is the American dream. And today in America this individual liberty and opportunity has now become the object of ridicule in schools pushing a green agenda and a socialist future. The demand for a return to individual liberty and opportunity has become the disparaged slogan on signs at Tea Parties.
Our leaders have embraced instead the idea of “Positive Liberty” which is an oxymoron. By this they mean that the state should actively intervene in the lives of people to provide them with all that is necessary for lives lived as the leaders think they should be. What they are really New Speaking of is Socialism disguised as democracy. However, the increase of governmental power over people does not equate to liberty it equates to serfdom and only the progressive newspeak of a post-modern America could call this decrease of freedom an increase of liberty or democracy.
Alexis de Tocqueville said, “Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
This positive liberty is the handmaiden of the other new positive that our progressive leaders wish to foist upon us: positive equality. The real equality, the one our ancestors fought and died for is equality of opportunity which is a negative, forcing the government stays out of the way and the people go as far as their investment of time, talent and treasure can take them. In our new progressive world government is supposed to act to create an equality of outcome so that all are equal all the time. This type of collective equality is to be advanced and protected by the all powerful state pushing down some, lifting others until all are equal at all times. This equality of outcome becomes an unlimited reality that is conceived of as the goal of society. Unfettered democracy defined as the participation of all in the political process either as rulers, dispensers or consumers becomes not only the goal but the means and the end in and of itself.
Thus our Constitutional Scholar-in-Chief is leading us step by step away from the individual liberty and opportunity that are the guardians of the American Dream and into a negative representation of our positive values. With another four years this administration will succeed in fundamentally transforming America.
One last quote from Alexis de Tocqueville "The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
PS: Don’t take the bribe.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.
Friday, June 3, 2011
History Doesn't Repeat It Rhymes
A series of imperial wars fought by the Kings of England culminating in the French and Indian War almost bankrupted England. At the end of the war England was paying to maintain 10,000 troops in the North American colonies as well as fleets to protect America’s maritime trade.
Americans had fought in the war including the first shots fired, under George Washington at Fort Necessity in Ohio. With the people of England already restive under crushing taxes, the English politicians decided they would tax the American colonists to help pay off the massive war debt and to bear the cost of the colonies future defense.
First they tried the Stamp Act requiring the use of approved or stamped government-issued paper for all legal documents such as will, deeds and diplomas. This brought our ancestors out into the streets. They marched in protest. The Governor of New York, where the first shipment of officially stamped paper was to arrive, was burned in effigy. They attacked the home of a British officer who had boasted he would collect the stamp tax by force of arms if necessary. The Americans organized the states to act in unison calling the Stamp Act Congress to coordinate a boycott and to decide upon other measures of resistance to “Taxation without representation.” In the face of this heroic opposition the British Government repealed the Stamp Act.
By this time the level of taxation in England produced riots and political turmoil, so the government once again tried to balance the budget on the backs of the Americans with the Townsend Acts. These Acts included reprisals for the recent resistance to the Stamp Act such as: restraints upon the colonial assemblies, new courts to enforce the laws, troops quartered in private homes, and once again taxes, custom fees, and import duties enforced by the British military.
Once again our ancestors stood against the tyranny of taxation without representation and eventually forced the British to also repeal these offensive measures. Not giving up on the idea of raising the money they needed from the colonies these disconnected leaders, far removed from the people, next passed the Tea Act. This Act was designed to help the English East India Company avoid bankruptcy by giving them a monopoly on the importation of tea into the colonies.
The Company was able to sell at a lower price including the required tax than any tea smuggled in without the tax. The British reasoned the Americans would willingly pay the tax if they were able to pay it and still get tea for a lower price than without it. But they reckoned without the strength of our principles. This was still taxation without representation and our ancestors would have none of it.
When two ships arrived in Boston Harbor filled with the Company’s tea Samuel Adams vowed it would never be unloaded. Adams held a series of public meetings in the Old South Meeting House. Not able to fit in the building, crowds as large as 5,000 filled the surrounding streets. They demanded that the ships leave. When the agents of the Company refused Adams led a group of men, disguised as Mohawk Indians, to Griffin’s Wharf. The vessels were boarded; the Patriots took the cargo of 342 chests, and threw them into the harbor to the encouragement of a cheering crowd on the dock. This “Tea Party” was repeated in other ports throughout America.
Taxation without representation was the burden too evil to bear for our ancestors. They faced tax burdens that never neared 1 or 2 % and we, their descendants, meekly line up to pay many times that to a government which no longer hears us as we petition them in every way we know to stop the over-the-top spending and return to financial reality.
Today many have forgotten that the “TEA” in the modern Tea Party stands for “Taxed Enough Already!” Millions express frustration and the belief that our elected representatives no longer pay any attention to us once they get to Washington. Our newly elected conservative majority joins the insider parade reaffirming the Patriot Act and passing continuing resolution after continuing resolution. Are we about to learn that if History doesn’t exactly repeat itself it sure does rhyme?
To a generation who have watched our beloved nation fall from the greatest creditor to the greatest debtor, from the greatest manufacturer to an open market for Chinese expansion “Taxed Enough Already” and “No Taxation Without Representation” are starting to sound close enough for blank verse.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.
Americans had fought in the war including the first shots fired, under George Washington at Fort Necessity in Ohio. With the people of England already restive under crushing taxes, the English politicians decided they would tax the American colonists to help pay off the massive war debt and to bear the cost of the colonies future defense.
First they tried the Stamp Act requiring the use of approved or stamped government-issued paper for all legal documents such as will, deeds and diplomas. This brought our ancestors out into the streets. They marched in protest. The Governor of New York, where the first shipment of officially stamped paper was to arrive, was burned in effigy. They attacked the home of a British officer who had boasted he would collect the stamp tax by force of arms if necessary. The Americans organized the states to act in unison calling the Stamp Act Congress to coordinate a boycott and to decide upon other measures of resistance to “Taxation without representation.” In the face of this heroic opposition the British Government repealed the Stamp Act.
By this time the level of taxation in England produced riots and political turmoil, so the government once again tried to balance the budget on the backs of the Americans with the Townsend Acts. These Acts included reprisals for the recent resistance to the Stamp Act such as: restraints upon the colonial assemblies, new courts to enforce the laws, troops quartered in private homes, and once again taxes, custom fees, and import duties enforced by the British military.
Once again our ancestors stood against the tyranny of taxation without representation and eventually forced the British to also repeal these offensive measures. Not giving up on the idea of raising the money they needed from the colonies these disconnected leaders, far removed from the people, next passed the Tea Act. This Act was designed to help the English East India Company avoid bankruptcy by giving them a monopoly on the importation of tea into the colonies.
The Company was able to sell at a lower price including the required tax than any tea smuggled in without the tax. The British reasoned the Americans would willingly pay the tax if they were able to pay it and still get tea for a lower price than without it. But they reckoned without the strength of our principles. This was still taxation without representation and our ancestors would have none of it.
When two ships arrived in Boston Harbor filled with the Company’s tea Samuel Adams vowed it would never be unloaded. Adams held a series of public meetings in the Old South Meeting House. Not able to fit in the building, crowds as large as 5,000 filled the surrounding streets. They demanded that the ships leave. When the agents of the Company refused Adams led a group of men, disguised as Mohawk Indians, to Griffin’s Wharf. The vessels were boarded; the Patriots took the cargo of 342 chests, and threw them into the harbor to the encouragement of a cheering crowd on the dock. This “Tea Party” was repeated in other ports throughout America.
Taxation without representation was the burden too evil to bear for our ancestors. They faced tax burdens that never neared 1 or 2 % and we, their descendants, meekly line up to pay many times that to a government which no longer hears us as we petition them in every way we know to stop the over-the-top spending and return to financial reality.
Today many have forgotten that the “TEA” in the modern Tea Party stands for “Taxed Enough Already!” Millions express frustration and the belief that our elected representatives no longer pay any attention to us once they get to Washington. Our newly elected conservative majority joins the insider parade reaffirming the Patriot Act and passing continuing resolution after continuing resolution. Are we about to learn that if History doesn’t exactly repeat itself it sure does rhyme?
To a generation who have watched our beloved nation fall from the greatest creditor to the greatest debtor, from the greatest manufacturer to an open market for Chinese expansion “Taxed Enough Already” and “No Taxation Without Representation” are starting to sound close enough for blank verse.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens’ latest book @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ypkoS0gGn8 © 2011 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
