*Image courtesy of AP Images.
Taxpayer Tea Parties are taking place all over the country today. And rightly so.
Here's a brief history of our taxation history in America, and why citizens are rightly appalled that President Obama has the audacity to push for greater financial burdening when the country is diving deeper into recession and drastically shrinking its own potential. And all this while the average, responsible family increasingly struggles to pay the bills that others have so shamelessly and selfishly left behind for everyone else.
Additionally, there is the ludicrous spin from those arguing that we are privileged to pay nearly half of our income in some cases to support bloated government inefficiency.
What asses like Paul Begala don't get is that this isn't a bunch of right-wing crazies sounding off. And paying more isn't an opportunity to do something patriotic. This is oppression of the worst sort--the kind that kills initiative, diminishes opportunity for the individual for perhaps generations to come, and weakens our country in the face of shockingly violent enemies.
Yet clearly, these gatherings across the country are also an embarrassment to the current administration. This is major cities and small towns full of Americans--regular workaday men and women, home owners, students, professionals, and plain patriots--protesting the largest money grab by the government in our history. What they know is that this move to strap greater financial burdens to the backs of Americans is repugnant, unpatriotic, and downright cruel class warfare for all involved.
The President also knows this, but he appears to be much more bound by ideology than many are willing to admit. One hopes he hasn't forgotten that this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people--not an experiment in diminishing the liberties of the freest people in the world for the false safeties of government growth and godless political policies.
Maybe these gatherings will send that message to those who seem so hard of hearing right now. Doubtful. But the only other option offered--tongue-in-cheek, I might add--by some is
secession, and that is distasteful to even the most ardent of small government proponents.
Good heavens, I don't think even America could take something like that again.
