I went down to our State Capital, Jefferson City, Saturday afternoon, with a sizable number of Tea Party minded supporters, and had some encounters with the opposite minded, which were rather puzzling, and enlightening. As I walked up, Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit was launching into speech that pulled no punches about naming the problems we faced and the nature of those we faced. | Jim Hoft |
Followed by Stephanie Rhubach of Move-on-up.org, ("Reboot Congress" has some much higher quality picturess posted) | Stephanie Rhubach |
Special thanks and appreciation for my congressman, Rep. Todd Akin, for dashing across the state from an important Missouri political function, to support our rally, giving a very good speech on the importance of facing issues head on, no matter how difficult, and the consequences of not doing so - as happened with the issue of slavery and the Civil War - and stay around for quite awhile afterwards talking with people and listening to their concerns, | Rep. Todd Akin |
and a rousing call to arms by St. Louis Tea Party co-founder, Bill Hennessy, who highlighted the importance of Liberty Evangelism, of the need to talk about liberty and the Constitution to our fellows (check out his son's efforts... Bill just kicked it up a step to Big Government.com), and that our Tea Party have distributed thousands of free Constitutions throughout the St. Louis area, free, with no questions asked about party affiliation or for anything in return. | Bill Hennessy |
The material IS the message and reading it is all the response we ask for. With that in mind, Jim Hoft, Adam Sharp of SharpElbows, Stephanie & I took a walk around to the back of the Capital building to the counter cultures rally to pass out some free constituitons, and see how the other half lived. | Stephanie, Sharp, Hoft & I going to spread the word for Liberty |
Apparently they don't think we live too well. Stephanie's "Liberty or Slavery" sign lays out the choice, and the other sides choices were all for intimidation, power, and fists calling for 'Solidarity' and 'Koch Sucker' and "American Dream Stolen" (Hey, 'stolen'? Ya think that means they care about property rights? Nyah, dream on). I came with my pockets jammed with Constitutions, but only a few people would accept them. I got several sneer's, a few "Koch Plantation worker!" (apparently Koch is the new 'Bush'), and some who wanted to take them all and do... you can imagine what, with them. Someday I'm going to upgrade my phone so my pictures and video are worth looking at, but you can see how some of these encounters went at Bill Hennessy's, or at Jim Hoft's Gateway Pundit, Adam Sharp's Sharp Elbows & Patch Adam's Po'ed Patriot | Words collide |
A co-worker of mine in the background, and most definitely on the other side | |
The sign says "Egypt JeffCity - what do you suppose that means | "Egypt JeffCity? |
Would you accept a constitution from these guys? |
Free speech? It doesn't mean to them freedom for all, but only freedom for them to speak ... and for us to be silent so they can speak.
"You've got no right to be here! You should stay on your side of the capital!" I pointed out that we were just listening, passing out free constitutions, not disrupting anything, but one of their people came over to our side and loudly tried to interrupt and stop Bill from making his speech... "Well working people must be heard!"
What do you do with that? What do they do with that?
Moments later an older unkept fellow stood there accussing Sharp of intimidating him with his camera (at least four or five feet away), using it like a gun... when I asked him how he'd characterize the lady he just watched physically accosting Sharp with her sign, blocking his sight, attempting to keep him from seeing or filming, whereas he was simply talking and running a camera without invading anyone's physical space, he began to get very agitated and attempted to make some incoherent point.
Whatever his point was, he never managed to make it. Another witty lady attempted humor by demanding that Stephanie go back to her side and fetch her some Tea. And another told her "You’re on Koch’s plantation!" Not a real wise thing to say to Stephanie. I've really got to get myself a decent camera, fortunately Jim Hoft caught most of it.
I saw one of my co-workers at the union side rally, enthusiastically joining in on denouncing greedy businessmen (I suppose that includes the people who employ both of us?)... very strange, very strange indeed.
In between the surging wacko's, there were a couple who seemed able to speak, and who actually felt (somehow) that they were there in support of liberty and freedom. When I tried to ask them to explain how forcing businesses or even the government to accept a union into their place of business, and forcing workers to join and pay dues, like it or not, against their will, and even to the point of not being able to afford them - how was that supporting liberty and free choice?... they couldn't.
They were puzzled, then annoyed by the question, and shrugged it off with "Businesses shouldn't be allowed to have power over workers".
But isn't it their property? Just like their clothing, car or home was theirs? Would they be open to having a community organizer tell them how to dress? Tell them who would cut their lawn, how low and how much they'll pay for it?
That was the end of their reasonablness, and they walked away. Bill Hennessy related a similar experience, from last fall as we were promoting Prop C (Missouri rejecting Obamaocare),
"I was waving a Prop C sign at a busy intersection and a fellow in a red mercedes convertible pulled up, "What's Prop C?" he asked and I told him it meant that people should be free to choose their own insurance, if they want it, and not be forced by the govt to buy insurance they approved of", and he said "Oh, I'm against that.", "Why? " I asked, "Because everyone should have the same things."There's the puzzler. The disconnect between language and sentiment, between what words are used, the feelings they arouse - and the notion that you can somehow skim those feelgood feelings off the top of what they actually mean, without having to acknowledge the meaning your feelings are floating upon. So many people so rarely seem to examine their words they use and hear beyond those feelings - rarely looking at what those words actually mean, and even less often noting what other words they are using which directly contradict and render their 'happy words' meaning, meaningless.
"Well give me your car then!"
Suddenly socialism didn't seem like such a great idea to him."
For instance, you can't claim to be 'for freedom!' while advocating that people be forced to accept what you'd like to be free to receive.
How is that not seen and understood?
I got into a bit of a spat recently while trying to quickly hit the problems with the union organized strikes in Wisconsin and unions in general, and the point of disagreement was whether or not the unions represented socialist (or communist) aims (for those who don't think so, I'd direct them to several revealing posts Patch has provided).
The person I was talking with didn't think unions had any interest or concern for socialism or communism ("They don't care about spreading the wealth around, they just want power and control"), and with that dismissal, wouldn't hear another word about it. Another person couldn't see the Teachers in Wisconsin as being in any way socialist, "They just want all the goodies they can get."
Neither person saw either the Teamsters or any of the other unions in Wisconsin as being avowedly socialist, they also wouldn't see them as being either anti-capitalist (which I find mind boggling) or as posingany real threat to constitutional law.
There's an issue here, often missed and a big problem which happens all the time, and I think it's probably because of the term which Marx and his ilk succeeded in labeling their opposition as: Capitalist, instead of Free Market.
It really was a master stroke of spin, naming a 'system' whose fundamental principle is the freedom and liberty of people being able to choose to offer, produce, sell and/or buy, what they themselves think would be the best decision for their circumstances, renaming that which is the very essence of freedom, as something which many people have negative feelings about - money, capital.
With that trick of wordplay, the Marxists succeeded in making freedom seem repulsive.
Butl the fact remains that they are 'anti-capitalist', because they are anti-free market, and because they are that, they are anti-constitional, because they are opposed to the one thing which both freedom, law and the constitution entirely rest upon - Property Rights.
You don't need to be a socialist, or a communist or a 'Christian Democrat', or even have favorable feelings towards them, in order to find yourself falling fully in line with all of the goals and aims of Marx, Lenin, or any of his other buds like Mao, Pol Pot or even Hitler and Musillini, all you need to do to align yourself with the bloodiest tyrants in all of history, is to oppose the principle of Private Property, which means Property Rights.
That's it.
Marx himself saw this issue fairly clearly, and said as much himself, which I noted in a previous post here:
"The fact is that they are a direct result of what Marx summarized all of his ideas as being (ideas which fully followed from Rousseau’s ideas, btw), Chapter Two of his Communist Manifesto:
"In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. "
Those who've followed more than a few of my posts, know the annoying regularity with which I repeat that ALL political support for our Individual Rights is based upon a respect for Property Rights, and that dispensing with Property Rights inevitably dispenses with all Rights and all liberty and is, in fact, Anti American. This is why. You may not like that or agree that that is what you are after, you might think it unfair of me to point the fact out that hundreds of millions of lives have been lost or destroyed due to your ideas, however that IS what your ideas are based upon, and what THEY (the ideas you follow) are after."
Our Republic, our Laws, our Rights, our way of life, all rest upon Private Property which requires Property Rights - including having property in your own life and person - to be legally and politically secure in your life and liberty, and our system cannot survive without them. Or as John Adams said in 'Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States',
"The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free."If you ever catch yourself thinking "Oh those nasty rich people, they shouldn't be allowed to make all that money, they should have to give some of it back to the community!" or something similar, you are at the very least undermining the Republic, our Laws, our Rights and our way of life as well as putting your own life and liberty in jeopardy.
And if you think that's ridiculous of me to say, try this one on for size: When you oppose Property Rights - following all the words and concepts it is inextricably integrated with - you are not only undermining the Republic, our Laws, our Rights and our way of life, but you are also rejecting reality itself, rejecting the very concepts of Truth, Beauty and all that is or ever could be, Good.
Yep. I'm serious. Gimme a little bit of your time (at least about 30 pages worth) and I'll be happy to demonstraight it for you.
Unless of course you are just fine with having Teachers who ask Doctors to falsify sick notes so they can skip school in order to hang out with union thugs and try to shut down a government whose elected representatives are attempting to do what their constitutients elected them to do - stop breaking the bank by giving away free goodies.
If that's what you're after, well, congratulations, you've got it.
Me? I intend to repeal, reduce and restore the Constitution and the Rule of Law.
I had an interesting SAT as well. I've never seen this country so divided.
ReplyDeletehttp://badbadjuju.com/2011/02/high-noon-protest/
Had an interesting afternoon with our O. on Friday. We didn't really play- just organized my button box- and our chat about practice for the upcoming third grade TAKS tests and why they have to strip their desks of everything during, led into a discussion about why teachers would help their students cheat on such. And on to where the $$$ for her public school comes from, ie. the taxes G-Daddy and Daddy pay on our houses and taxes collected by the federal government from people exactly like Mimi and G-daddy and her Mom and Daddy. So, she should remember that there is no magic money tree in Washington, D.C. and the government is supposed to work for her.
ReplyDeletePrecept by precept, line upon line.
Damn, but I despise the people who have turned me into the Grand-pedant. (While acknowleging my own mush-brained youth.)
Thank you, Van. You are a great encourager!
Yabu said on his site "Mark my words. I have never seen this country so divided…the people (both sides, all three sides?) are pissed"
ReplyDeleteYeah... although Vietnam & Busing didn't seem all that copacetic at the time either, but I definitely hear what you're saying, and I don't discount it any longer, as I did not so long ago. There are so many issues even just locally: Soc Sec, Medicare, unions, health care, income taxes and other ways of spreading the wealth around, guns, speech, regulations on this and banning that... that all come down to the same issue of whether or not the govt has a right to trample the rights of some, for the benefit of others... moving on one will domino into all of the the rest... that it's hard to see the issues being resolved peaceably, at least not without people first understanding the issues beyond the headlines and blogpost titles.
Our Rep. Akin made a good point in his speech at our rally Saturday, about how Americans faced up to another thorny and deeply divisive issue in our past, one where half of the population felt entitled to particular benefits, and the other felt they were completely unjust... how politicians made one adjustment after another, one compromise and agreement after another which satisfied neither side, decided nothing, and only kicked the can down the road, rather than face up to the reality of the situation and admit that it had no good solutions, and resolve it.
When the issue came up to the Supreme Court, it was stocked with those who were ideologically favorable towards the entitled side of the argument, and Justice Taney ruled that Dred Scott was a slave and as such was in no way entitled to the rights accorded to Americans... and we saw just how much a Supreme Court ruling can resolve an issue which half or more of the populations still feels is just plain unjust.
Because we didn't face up to the core issue, because we continued to game it and toy with the matter, it reached that point where all of the other issues and interests helped to push what had once been a political issue into politics being carried on 'by other means' than reasonable discussion.
It's a sobering point. Nearly as much as your other incident. And especially as you contemplate how the one might evolve into the other. As Jefferson said, "I tremble for my country when I contemplate that God is just, and his justice will not sleep forever", and just because we don't resolve the issue, doesn't mean that it won't be resolved. Bad Ju-Ju indeed.
The only escape I can see is trying to educate people on the issues and the ideas behind them... if we don't manage to up the quality of discussion; it's hard to see how voices and insults remain the only things being raised and hurled. I post as I can, hold classes here and there, but it seems ridiculously insufficient... but the other option is...?
YOU were THERE, Van????
ReplyDeleteSo was I!
In a brown leather jacket and brown fedora.
Dang, I would have loved to have met you. I met Jim Hoft there. I had no idea. I heard Phil Todd got the permit for the south lawn (the MoveOn'ers hadn't bothered to get one) and with that great coup, I knew I must go. Glad I did, too.
(I know, I left this same comment on Bob's post. I live in Columbia, by the way.)
Hey Philmon, yep, I was there! Hoft, Sharp & I had some fun with the union folk... I'll have to try and meet up with you at one of the future events... is your email on your site? (late for a meeting, or I'd check first).
ReplyDeleteYes, my email is on my site. One of my emails, anyway. I don't read that one as often.
ReplyDeleteI should, though, apparently.