The Daily Plunge

Once again, my family and I saddled up Old Blue and headed for Colorado’s state capitol for an old-fashioned protest. Last time, as you may recall, we joined a hastily assembled and relatively small crowd (maybe 500 or so) to protest the so-called Stimulus Bill, which President Obama was signing down the road at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
This time, we joined a much larger crowd estimated at around 3,000-4,000 as part of a larger grassroots movement and nationwide gathering on Tax Day to protest government spending and the tax policy necessitated by that spending.
They called it a Tea Party, in honor of the original American patriots who protested the British taxation of tea (without representation, which was their main beef) by tossing a bunch of it into Boston Harbor (a.k.a., Bastan Hawbaw). I’m not sure the analogy holds up very well to close scrutiny, but I suppose it’s a brand of sorts that people can identify with.
So, what’s our beef? Why bother? Isn’t the government trying its best to “stimulate” the economy? My reasons for supporting the movement are best encapsulated by James Madison, who wrote in Federalist #62:

“The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood…”

This is exactly the situation we find ourselves in today. These mammoth spending bills, which spend money we don’t have, are both voluminous and incoherent to the point that even those words fail to accurately describe their monstrosity. What we’re seeing is a massive transfer of wealth from the average person to the bottomless pit of political favoritism and cronyism, paid for in part by the current generation, but certain to multiply to future generations.
Any serious and ideologically-blind study of the economic consequences of this type of spending policy, and the term policy is being used very loosely here, shows that it is unsustainable. At the recent G-20 Summit, even socialist Europe balked a bit at America’s latest and seemingly unending spending spree. If America goes down that road, who’s left to support Europe and defend it from the crazies who are feverishly working to develop nuclear weapons so they can spring their version of Utopia on an unsuspecting, welfare-numbed, drug-addled, and American Idolized West?
Moreover, a government that grows outside of the bounds set by the Constitution is certain to infringe on our individual liberties. The state that takes on a parental role supplants the role of the individual and the family. What has made America exceptional is not the government’s ability to provide for every need, but to empower the individual to meet his own needs without governmental interference.
Thus the Declaration of Independence declares, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These unalienable rights are not derived as government handouts. I do not have a right to free medical care (which I’ll be on a waiting list to receive) or anything else from the public weal. Nor do I have an express right to “happiness”. But I do have the right to pursue happiness, unfettered by government dictating to me how I should pursue that happiness.
It’s important to remember that the founders did not dive headlong, willy-nilly into the creation of our unique governmental system. Instead, they wrangled over every jot and tittle. They painstakingly studied the history and form of every government since the dawn of civilization, marking their strengths and weaknesses to derive a form most suited for a free people.
It’s safe to say that the founders’ studious approach is not taken by our current leaders, either Democrat or Republican. The only studies they do are based on maintaining their power and filling the coffers of those who help them maintain their power.
So when a bill comes before Congress that’s piled three feet high in pork and partisan paybacks and sold as stimulus, thinking people begin to think that maybe we’re heading in the wrong direction. The majority of people I met at today’s protest were thinking people; average Joes, if you will, who want our government to exercise self-control and discipline in order to secure our right to pursue happiness. Happiness, as anyone knows, is not found at the DMV or any other government bureaucracy that makes you stand in line for hours and has no concept of customer service, nor does it care.
Another striking thing about the protest was how orderly and well-behaved everyone was. This was in stark contrast to your typical left-wing protest, where profanity, invective, and mean-spiritedness prevail. My hope is that the hard-working, family-oriented American wins the day and wins back our country.