Today, rank and file Americans who are absolutely unaccustomed to protesting, assembled on Capitol Hill to express their concerns about the difficult-to-imagine direction this Congress and Administration are driving our nation. Absent the checks and balances our forebearers believed they had cemented into the foundation of our government, we are on a course that I, for one, never even considered possible in my lifetime, absent losing a very bloody war with an adversarial nation intent on conquering us.
Congressman Mike Pence from Indiana spoke at today's gathering. Reading it made me regret, in a Saint Crispin's Day sort of way, not having sacrificed the time I set aside to catch up on my work at home so I could be a part of this movement. I certainly would have fought and even shed blood if an external adversary were attempting to eliminate the vestiges of Democracy and Capitalism that made this country so great. I wonder why I, and certainly others, failed to heed the call when the assault is occuring from within. I have included his speech below. I'm thankful we have fellow Americans so committed to stopping this madness and am reminded that I not only can, but must, do more if I love my country as much as I say I do. How about you?
"I am Mike Pence. I am from Indiana, and it is an honor to welcome the largest gathering of conservatives in American history to your nation's capitol.
There are some politicians who think of you people as astroturf. Un-American. I've got to be honest with you, after nine years of fighting runaway spending here on this hill, you people look like the cavalry to me.
We stand together at a historic moment in the life of the conservative movement and in the life of this great country. The coming weeks and months may well set the course for this nation for a generation. How we as conservatives respond to these challenges, could determine whether America retains her place in the world as a beacon of freedom or whether we slip into the abyss that has swallowed much of Europe in an avalanche of socialism.
While some are prepared to write the obituary on capitalism and the conservative movement, I believe we are on the verge of a great American awakening. And it will begin here and begin now and begin with you.
This Administration and this Congress are getting a badly needed history lesson, starting with just what our founders meant by 'consent of the governed.' If silence is consent, it is now revoked.
We the people, do not consent to runaway federal spending. We the people, do not consent to the notion that we can borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing America. And we the people, do not consent to government-run insurance that will cause millions of Americans to lose the insurance they have, and that will lead us to a government takeover of health care in this nation.
This week, the president came to this hill and he gave one more speech about the same bad plan. Mr. President, America doesn't want another speech, we want another health care plan that is built on freedom.
And we the people, do not consent to Members of Congress passing thousand-page bills without anybody ever reading them. Members of Congress should be required to read ever major bill that Congress adopts. I've got to be honest with you, I think Members of Congress should read major bills, but I'd be just as happy if some of them read this just a little more often - the Constitution of the United States.
You know, there is a lot of good stuff in there and it reminds us that we are a nation led by the people, and not the elites and the bureaucrats and the politicians. It reminds us that the powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states or to the people.
And nowhere in our Constitution can you find the word 'czar.' It is time Washington, D.C. became a No Czar Zone.
The American people are not happy. But it is not just about dollars and cents. It is about who we are as a nation.
As Ronald Reagan said in 1964, it's about whether 'we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.' My money is on the American people. My money is on freedom. My money is on the future.
This great national Capitol is filled with memorials to freedom's heroes. Americans whose faces are carved in bronze, whose names adorn monuments, and just across that river, lie the remains of Americans who paid freedom's price so we could gather here today. In their time, they did freedom's work as citizens and patriots. Now it's our turn.
Let us do as those great Americans we remember in this city have done before: let us stand and fight for freedom. And if we hold the banner of freedom high, I believe with all my heart that the good and great people of this country will rally to our cause, we will take this Congress back in 2010 and we will take this Country back in 2012, so help us God."
H/T - http://www.powerlineblog.com
Saturday, September 12, 2009
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6 comments:
I appreciate the sentiment. I really do. I just wish that I could be as convinced that the rank and file who were out there protesting have actually ever read the Constitution. Call it a hunch, but I guessing the number who have is low. I bet if passage of a civics exam had been prerequisite for participation in the protests the showing would have been a little light. Might not the truth of the message be devalued by the ignorance of the messenger?
Furthermore, the federal debt went from $5.7T (Jan01) to $10.6T (Jan09). Two wrongs don't make a right, but because these same patriots hadn't taken to the Mall at anytime in the past decade to protest profligate spending, today's events seem hypocritical and ring hollow to me.
I guess if there's such thing as a Born Again Christian, there can be a Born Again Debthawk. Let's just hope they succeed in convincing the Obama administration to forgo its spendthrift ways and they (the people) stay committed to that philosophy regardless of the party in power.
CC--you make two great points. I am certain that we are beaten over the head by both sides with "constitutional" arguments wielded by those who've never read the document.
As for born again debthawks, you are again correct. In fact, I'm one of them. I spent the Bush years pooh-poohing deficit spending, wrapping myself in the notion that we were doing so in order to defeat an insidious international foe. Then we passed a prescription drug benefit and I realized that it was just a function of being the party in power--not a response to external threat.
You're right--conservatives didn't take to the streets then--and they probably should have. But the conservative press was rich with criticism of the Bush Administration for the prescription drug benefit, the creation of DHS, and for backing down on social security reform. The difference then was that average citizens' concerns weren't as high then as they are now.
If the GOP ever retakes the House, Pence should be elected Speaker. Now I wish I would have gone up to the event as well.
I've enjoyed looking at some of the signs from yesterday, too-my favorites:
'I'm 80 and I'm here, what's your excuse?' and the best one:
'it doesn't matter what this sign says, you'll call it racist anyway.'
I detect the clarion notes of elitist snobbism being sounded by those of you who make the unfounded assumption that only you may have read the constitution or were able to comprehend its meaning.
Furthermore, the amount of debt an individual or a country may owe is of little consequence if they have the means to service that debt without having to resort to deficit spending.
Generally speaking, with certain exceptions, the debt is the sum total of our deficits, minus our surplus, over the years. Since it appears that we have no hope of any surpluses in the in ensuing years it would appear that both debt and deficit will increase while the value of the dollar decreases. HELP!!!
Mudge, I think the voice of the people should be heard and I'm all for public discourse as the means to wage civil war. I think it sounded like an impressive showing and as an American, I'm listening.
But most of all, I LOVE that you've just referenced Henry V. (I spoke a passage from that play as part of my wedding vows -- well, not that particular speech, of course ... "And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap..." might have been an odd start to the vow). Thank you for, as usual, being so thought-provoking.
anon-
Notes that are clarion by definition would not require such fine discovery. I would also offer that my statement is not unfounded. While not gospel, the following website would indicate that my statement might have some basis. http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/2008/major_findings_finding1.html
Finally, I did not make the assumption that you suggest - that I am the only one who has read it or understands it. I will clarify that if one is going to roll the document up and poke the powers that be in the eye with it, so to speak, one should be sure that one has read it.
I suggest that actually admitting that one was "asleep at the civic switch" before doesn't undermine the current interest. Such admission would show a little humility and contrition which I think are good things.
Paraphrasing one the preeminent smarty pants of our day:
One must be willing to risk the charge of elitism in order to say the participants in such events MAY often be the dupes, and that those who run the show are often the REAL elitists. "Demogogue" would be meaningless if there weren't popular prejudices (in the broad sense) that could be taken advantage by leaders to gain power.
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