Don’t tread on me!
“Don’t tread on me” is a slogan that came out of pre revolutionary war America and is best known by the yellow flag of a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike.
There were many themes that came out before and during the revolutionary war that led the thirteen individual colonies to end up declaring their independence from Great Britain and the current “Don’t tread on me” crowd have picked up on some of the simplest and best known of all of them. “No taxation without representation” is probably the best known of them and the current crop of neoconservatives that have superseded the older more traditional conservatism of a half century ago have used that theme to promote everything that they would like to have the nation follow, all rolled up into this simple idea of--in reality--no taxation at all.
Probably the only thing that this new crop of so called Americans would like to have taxes pay for would be a very robust national defense and to pay the salaries of their own representatives in Congress and the various state legislatures scattered around the nation.
These people want absolutely no form of regulation at all. If one does not believe that just look at the bill introduced this week in Congress by Republicans to eliminate virtually all of the statistical functions of the federal census bureau except to conduct a ten year count that is required by the constitution that they all trumpet from the hills. The unemployment numbers that came out Friday would be eliminated by this bill!
It is interesting to note that that same constitution requires the federal government to deliver the mail but these same neoconservatives are doing everything in their power to destroy the postal service and deprive so many underserved Americans of one of the only contacts that they have with their government and other people. It is very interesting to note that out in the hinterlands where so many red state Americans live, this postal service serves a vital function for those not all that physically close to others whom they might need to keep in contact with. And it is also interesting to observe that so many of the vitriolic correspondence that these groups put out are sent through that same postal service.
In one of Thom Hartman’s recent blogs he points out that nearly half of the current Republican party affiliated members have responded in the affirmative to a poll that asks them to say if they feel that an armed insurrection might be necessary to restore the government to a form that they could live with. Now, it should be pointed out that only a little over thirty percent of the nation still call themselves Republicans but it should also be pointed out that during the American revolution it was probably a minority that brought about the downfall of the English rule in North America. The average colonist simply went about their daily business and ignored it all.
So many observers have noted just lately that if a passionate minority wish to evoke change against a majority that is not as passionate, they can probably do so. No one can deny the fact that there is great passion among those who are considering overthrowing this government in its current form. All one has to do is look at the gun debate that has been going on since the massacre at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut to see the power of a committed minority to the one issue that drives their life and their civic existence. The National Rifle Association has bragged in the last two days that it has won the battle for its rights in the legislatures of the nation and is now going into the court system to overturn what some individual states have done to crack down on the sale of semi automatic weaponry. Even though the recently defeated bill on background checks included a provision that made it a felony to set up a gun registry from any data collected from background checks that featured fifteen years in prison for doing so, enough senators decided that background checks would infringe on individual freedoms under the second amendment to oppose the bill and bring it down to defeat. If there is any source of hope coming from this fiasco it is the fact that several senators are now facing majorities in their states who disapprove of them for what they have done with their votes. It remains to be seen if those figures will hold through the 2014 midterm elections or not. Most of those facing reelection are banking on the power of the NRA to carry them to victory against a majority that may be swayed by a multitude of other issues. There is some talk that after the primary season next year that a new bill might be approved when the threat of being defeated before the general election has passed away.
There is no doubt that there is a committed minority in this nation that not only wants no restrictions on their weaponry but might also be planning to use that weaponry to cast aside this government that has served and protected all of their Bill of Rights privileges along with everyone else’s over the last two hundred and twenty five or so years. These people call upon the documents of our founding when it suits their purposes and then call upon the words of the radicals of the revolution when it suits them just as well. It matters not to them that there is no relation to that time and this time at all. And it also matters not to them that the form of government that might come about after the overthrow of this government might be completely counter what they are trying to accomplish. As it has been said over in post revolutionary Egypt: We still know the way to the square where the revolution first began.
We are currently quietly commemorating the one hundred and fiftieth year anniversary of the American Civil War and there is probably a reason that the commemoration is being so quietly done. No one wants to bring up the past to these historically illiterate people who might use it as an example to start another war or attempt to over throw the government that has really served them so well. There is one undisputable fact and that is that there are people who want this government gone who have never had to fight or pay any sort of sacrifice for what has been given to them. And there is one fact that they should know. If this government is over thrown the first thing that will happen is that the eventual new powers that be will disarm or kill every one of them without impunity and will laugh in their faces or over their dead corpse when they step on their bumper stickers that say “Don’t tread on me!”
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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