Posted on 06/15/2010 5:20:12 AM PDT by markomalley
Rick Barber -- a Tea Party Republican competing in a congressional run-off down in Alabama -- is airing the first TV ad this reporter can remember that advocates taking up arms against the United States.
Seriously.
In the ad (below), Barber has a discussion with men dressed up as America's founding fathers. "I would impeach him," Barber says at the beginning, obviously a reference to impeaching President Obama.
Barber continues, "Today we have an Internal Revenue Service that enforces what they call a 'progressive' income tax... Now this same IRS is going to force us to buy health insurance, cram it down our throats or else. Now I took an oath to defend that [the U.S. Constitution] with my life, and I can't stand by while these evils are perpetrated. You, gentleman, revolted over a tea tax! A tea tax! Now look at us. Are you with me?"
One of the men dressed like a U.S. founding father -- George Washington? -- replies, "Gather your armies." And to drive home the point, there are clear images of pistols in the ad.
(videos at link)
(Excerpt) Read more at firstread.msnbc.msn.com ...
It’s interesting how our current situation has evolved. The US from 1900 through 1940 was a Progressive’s dream! If none of that garbage happened, we would be in a completely different country right now; I daresay a country as the Framers intended!
I’ve had a lot of exposure to pre-1900 American literature and history, but it was in college and under the Liberal microscope. I’m interested in reading everything under the Conservative contextual lens. Yes, I’m a bookie. Always preferred reading to TV, so it’s appropriate that I’m studying our history so ardently now.
Would you include the National Park systems, women’s suffrage, the rise of the auto and the suburbs, and workplace issues such as hours and safety as “that garbage”?
They’re all part and parcel of the US during that period. You’d have to dump them too, if you want to roll back the clock.
Like I said, I haven’t gotten into the nitty gritty. National Park systems “seem” like a good idea, but I’m wont to err on the said of caution and say that it’s not an enumerated power. Women’s suffrage, that goes without saying that needs to stay in place.
Not sure what you mean by the rise of the auto? What laws are in place to regulate automobiles that are so egregious?
And workplace issues are another one that goes without saying.
I said in a previous post that my primary concerns were private property rights, 2A rights, and individual freedoms. I just want the government out of my life. The Federal government’s primary responsibility is to protect the country by maintaining an Army during times of conflict. That’s my understanding of it anyway. I’d be interested in hearing your impression of the Constitutional enumerated powers. I admit I haven’t reviewed them under a historical lens.
I guess I’m a typical liberal, then.
The auto and suburbanization were perhaps the most important forces in shaping our present physical America. The approval of the first developed subdivisions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the legal equivalent of authorizing residential development on land, rather than insistence on maintaining farmland close to population centers, that is, cities.
Those early subdivisions were made possible by trains, trolleys, and refrigerated shipping. But when autos began to dominate the roadways, overwhelming all other forms of transport, in the 1920s, those same zoning laws encouraged development at ever-wider rings around the cities. Municipalities paved roads, built new ones, used eminent domain to seize property for even *more* roads, and generally began to create a tax- and toll-system to support the use of cars.
It’s not that the laws are so egregious - although we do have all sorts of road rules that true Libertarians might hate. (Speed limits? Right-of-way and yield signs? Lines to designate lanes?)
It’s that the laws *support* making driving by car convenient and inexpensive. Automobile travel is the only sensible way to travel though much of the country because our nation has put laws in place that make it that way.
I admit that I am a Federalist, if only because we live in an industrialized and monetarized world now. Our nation stays strong because it remains unified. If the sates fractured into independent nations now, I don’t think it would take very long before they ended up like the former republics of the Soviet Union.
I prefer a strong and free people, able to raise their families, do their work, and worship as they wish to. We have a much better chance of doing that as a union first, rather than as states primarily.
But then, I am one of the people who preferred buying a finished house with sufficient local infrastructure such as water, electrical lines, and sewage, to building my home from scratch on a piece of raw land.
We’re on the same wavelength, FRiend. Great wrap up of the transportation and suburbanization initiatives in this country. You’ve sufficiently piqued my interest that my next visit to the library will ensure card catalog searches for those items. I never thought about suburbanization in that way. Thank you for opening my mind!
I, too, own a home with pre-run infrastructure. I daresay we couldn’t live without it, but I believe that I could subside on the land if forced to do so. It wouldn’t be fun or easy, but I believe I could survive.
Likewise, I wouldn’t want us to split into individual states, but we need to seriously curtail the Federal government’s reach. They’re too involved, and that’s not how the Framers wanted it. If I had to choose, I’d actually say that I’m an anti-Federalist, believing that a centralized Federal government is bad, but that’s based on recent historical trends rather than actual historical realities. I believe with sufficient rollbacks, freedom would be restored, and this country would realize a reformation like we’ve never seen.
Yes, we have a lot of outlooks in common. Once you’re a Scout, you always feel pretty comfortable camping out. But having to live on the land day after day for years gets tiring.
I think of my great-great-great-grandfather, who owned 200 acres of NW NJ back in the 1820s and 1830s. He had a homestead he’d built himself, a plow and a cow and a feather-bed (I found his property list in his estate papers.) He and his wife had eight children! One day in 1831, this 36 year old man tried to pull a stump out of a new field he was clearing. He “ruptured,” lingered for a winter and died in the spring. The entire homestead was auctioned to pay for his debts at the local general store and for his bar tab (lots of cider).
The kids were split up to various family members or just sent out to find work. My 12 year old forebear spent the next 5 years leading mules along the Morris Canal. His memoirs, written in his 90s, describe sleeping rough in the stables, crying for his Mum and family. He didn’t see any virtue in it.
Life on the land can be rewarding. It can also kill you and leave your children homeless. We have a tendency to only remember the winners, unfairly I believe.
Oh, I understand the unsteady nature of it. As a former Scout, I spent many days and nights in the field with nothing more than a compass and a Bowie knife. I ate local plants, setup a camp, trapped a raccoon, skinned it and ate it, and made fishing tackle out of a vine and a bottle top. I agree with your ancestor: there’s nothing virtuous about any of it. I would take air conditioning and high speed Internet any day, but those of us who wish to be prepared for the worst need to understand that the worst might come and it will likely be worse than what we expect. I’m ready for that eventuality. I’m trying to get my better half to get it, but it’s a tough sell.
I don’t have any ancestors with stories like yours. Most of my family emigrated here from parts of Europe back in the late 1800s. The most I know is that my Russian family owned a few hundred acres in what is now the Ukraine and half of them were mowed down by Russian troops seizing their lands. My great grandmother told me stories of her father being executed while she and her mother and brother watched. Once she fled with them to Greece, they got on the first boat to America to begin a new life.
I love history. It tells us where we’ve been and warns us where not to go. I wish our politicians took that lesson to heart.
“We The People” formed this government which has grown way beyond any reasonable size, and We The People have the right to dissolve it if we see fit.”
The guy is actually correct. My Grandparents told me that when I was a little kid. The government belongs to the People, if the government gets too corrupt we can take it back from them.
It’s ours. We are not their subjects. They work for us. The founders were smart enough to know that the government might get too power hungry.
I don’t think that it’s time to take it by force yet. They haven’t totally squelched the media and we can still vote in November.
Your story is remarkable. Your great-grandmother must have been a memorable woman. How did her father’s execution affect the family? Was this part of the collectivization of the kulaks? Sometimes it seems like all the misery in the world has been caused by people who believed that it was their right to kill and starve other people, whether because of some belief that they hold, or sheer greed and desire for violence.
I also agree with you about history. Family history is perhaps the most powerful, because it personalizes the struggles and sacrifices that literally led to our own existence.
But I also love learning about other people’s histories, because it shows us that no matter where we are from, there are similarities: parents who struggled and loved their children; children who pursued learning and self-betterment; the beauty of the daily tasks well done.
I also agree that our nation would be a far better place if more of our politicians remembered that.
Thank you for sharing yours with me.
One other thing: I have never eaten raccoon. How was it? Of course, we both probably agree with Cervantes, that hunger is the best sauce!
I’m very fuzzy on her history. I know the Italian and Scotch side of my history better since I have living relatives from those countries. From what I remember as a child, I believe they were cossacks. I haven’t done my homework on that sect of Russian society, but where she was from was relatively isolated. She was born in 1911, so I’d imagine this was part of the events leading to WWI. I’ve got a book on Russian history from that era that I’ve not cracked, but it’s on my short list. I’ve also read memoirs from my great-uncle (her brother), but his English was broken and a lot of the entries are written in, what I would assume is, Russian.
It was gamy. I think being in a trap for a few hours got it amped up. The meat was greasy (think dark meat on a turkey), but it cooked up quick. I roasted the legs with some salt and pepper and an allspice I carried in a tin, but the rib meat was thin and burned and the posterior muscles didn’t taste right. (I might’ve not skinned the anal area properly which may have contaminated the meat.)
All in all, not a bad meat in a pinch. I’d take squirrel over coon though, strange as that might sound.
I thought the spot was very creative and impactful (a word?). But MSNBC has dedicated a portion of every show to slamming it and accusing the candidate of violent militancy. I bet he appreciates the free media.
“Gather your armies.”
From the Declaration of Independence: — “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends———
———it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
I totally agree that the lamestream media is goosestepping to the same beat as BrainWashington. I'm just saying that they are still "allowing" us to have the Internet, Fox, and talk radio--they would love to kill all three.
I'm very glad that our military pledges to uphold the Constitution. There is where you find the patriots!
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