SHOCKED, SHOCKED I tell you that local right wing blogger, Leo Pusateri, is mad as hell about something! Usually he is so calm and rational and never prone to rhetorical outbursts that his LTE in the St. Cloud Times comes as a complete surprise. Yet, a couple items caught my eye in this heralding of the recent tea parties held across the country.
Yes, the Tea Party was about confiscatory taxes and spending, but it was so much more than that.More so, the April 15 Tea Parties held across the nation were a collective “mad-as-hell-and-we’re-not gonna-take-it-anymore” reaction to the abuses of individual liberty that have taken this nation by storm within the past two decades.
Let us accept for a moment that there have been "abuses of individual liberty" over the past twenty years. It seems to me that 12 of those past 20 years saw Republicans controlling one or more of the branches of government. So, it would stand to reason that Republicans share more than 50% of the responsibility for these abuses, right? That's strange, because from a brief overview of images and video from these tea parties you would think that Barack Obama had been in power over these last two decades. It was apparently he, and not the 12 years of Republican leadership, that caused this abuse of liberty. So, you have to wonder why Mr. Pusateri doesn't just come out and say that it has been these past weeks of the Obama Administration that have brought about the OUTRAGE by conservatives. Furthermore, if this has been going on for 20 years, what took them so long to finally organize protests?
Confiscatory taxes and regressive tax codes used to fuel unbridled spending have by default placed restrictions on behavior, and are thus instrumental in stealing one’s individual economic, and by extension personal freedoms.
Regressive tax codes? Well now you are starting to sound like a Democrat, Leo. I imagine you will be heralding the new and improved progressive tax code being put forward by Democrats at the state capitol.
Let me get this straight, taxation with representation has "stolen" your economic liberty and has also "stolen" your personal freedom?
While I support the right of Leo and his conservative brethren to protest and demand lower taxation, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that their freedom has been taken away. We held an election in November and your ideology lost. If voters decide in the coming election that they are not satisfied with decisions made by the Democratic majorities, then they will vote them out. Until then, it is highly disingenuous to claim that you are losing some freedom. The fact is that the only thing you lost is an election.
Given that Leo decided to invoke the founders of this country, I would remind him that our first President put down a rebellion over the direct taxation of whiskey.
Let me get this straight, taxation with representation has "stolen" your economic liberty and has also "stolen" your personal freedom?
While I support the right of Leo and his conservative brethren to protest and demand lower taxation, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that their freedom has been taken away. We held an election in November and your ideology lost. If voters decide in the coming election that they are not satisfied with decisions made by the Democratic majorities, then they will vote them out. Until then, it is highly disingenuous to claim that you are losing some freedom. The fact is that the only thing you lost is an election.
Given that Leo decided to invoke the founders of this country, I would remind him that our first President put down a rebellion over the direct taxation of whiskey.
On September 25th, the President issued a proclamation declaring that he would not allow "a small portion of the United States [to] dictate to the whole union," and called on all persons "not to abet, aid, or comfort the Insurgents."
Washington understood something which apparently today's conservatives do not. Once you are given the right to vote on representation, the proper method of protest is to use that vote and not invoke uprising and revolution.
2 responses to "Leo Pusateri, MAD AS HELL..."
the proper method of protest is to use that vote and not invoke uprising and revolution.Well, thanks for clarifying how we're "properly" supposed to protest. But somewhere in between shuffling meekly to the polls and taking up arms there's the little matter of "free speech", which protest, last I checked, is. Indeed, for most of the past eight years we were told that dissent and protest were the supreme manifestations of patriotism!
Bit of a strawman, anyway, LitLoC; Leo's not calling for insurrection. Or as you'd write it, "What? LitLoC ascribing bad behavior to conservatives via a facile strawman? That never happens".
Never said that Pusateri himself was advocating insurrection. Also, I did note that Pusateri and you and anyone else who wishes can protest to their hearts content.
My problem is not with the protest itself but rather with the claims of liberty stolen. So, it seems you have a strawman of your own there Mitch.