Saturday, April 19, 2014

Why a lot of federal jerks really wish April 19th would go away

It's a reminder people stood up to a government before, and can do it again if they choose.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
That piece of prose scares hell out of a lot of people.  With good reason.  To borrow a phrase "They mean to be good rulers, but make no mistake, they mean to RULE."  And that little piece of poetry reminds them that there are answers to that that get rather noisy.  And final.

Something I posted before, from an interview with Captain Levi Preston of Danvers, at 91, on the events that day.
An historian asked him, “Captain Preston, what made you go to the Concord Fight?” 
“What did I go for?” the old man replied, subtly rephrasing the historian’s question to drain away its determinism. 
The interviewer tried again. “... Were you oppressed by the Stamp Act?” he asked. 
 “I never saw any stamps,” Preston ansered, “and I always understood that none were ever sold.” 
“Well, what about the tea tax?” 
“Tea tax, I never drank a drop of the stuff, the boys threw it all overboard.” 
“But I suppose you have been reading Harrington, Sidney, and Locke about the eternal principle of liberty?” 
“I never heard of these men. The only books we had were the Bible, the Catechism, Watts’ psalms and hymns and the almanacs.” 
“Well, then, what was the matter?” 
“Young man, what we meant in going for those Redcoats was this: we always had governed ourselves and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.”
Neither do the dictator wannabes in Sodom on the Potomac. And they really don't like knowing that, comes to it, people can tell them to go to hell and back it up.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep, it is ALWAYS about control, a benevolent dictatorship is STILL a dictatorship.

Anonymous said...

Like they would ever play this again on a Saturday afternoon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZMmPWTwTHc

Brass