Blogs For Victory

Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) set off a bit of a firestorm yesterday:

When Perry addressed those gathered in Austin, he spoke as one of them and mocked the Department of Homeland Security’s warning that tea-party participants could be part of “right-wing extremist radicalization.” Said Perry: “I’m just not real sure you’re a bunch of right-wing extremists. But if you are, we’re with you.” He then told the cheering crowd: “We will not stand our pockets being picked, our children’s future being mortgaged, our rights being taken away.”

Yet as important and poignant as Perry’s words were to those gathered outside City Hall, it’s what he said to reporters afterward that set the blogosphere ablaze: “My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that.” While Perry didn’t come right out and use the “s-word” (secede), you can sure bet that’s what he meant, and he made it crystal clear by adding: “Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.”

I am not a secessionist – I believe as Lincoln did that a political union cannot be broken up, save by war, unless all parties to the political union agree. To secede is to defy at least part of the union – it is not to say “let us part” but, instead, to say “I’ll have no more to do with you”. The United States was, of course, founded by secessionists – we call our founding war the Revolutionary War, and it was in the sense that we changed from monarchy to republic, but what it all really amounted to is part of the British body politic exiting the union without the consent of the rest of the body. And so there was war, and war decided the validity of the assertion of independence. The South tried this again in the 1860’s and, once again, the issue was decided by war – with the result, this time, being that secession was disallowed.

What governor Perry has done, however, is quite useful – the government in Washington, and its liberal cheerleaders around the nation, need to be strongly reminded that the federal government serves the needs of the States, or the people. We did not seek a more perfect union in order that a few people in DC shall tell us what fuel economy our cars shall have, nor whether or not some allegedly endangered species trumps our property rights. Governments are instituted among men, goes our sublime Declaration of Independence, in order to secure to men the rights endowed by their Creator – what liberals want is a government instituted by liberals in order to secure what they consider a just outcome in the game of life. This is un-American – and it has gone on too long, and gone too far…and now Obama proposes to make it go longer and further.

And thus the Tea Party movement – a healthy and very American reaction, long delayed, against an overbearing government. Don’t get me wrong; plenty of Republicans participating in the creation of this devouring, political monster in DC – there is plenty of blame to go around. But we’ve gotten off the track – ’round about 100 years ago, a section of American political life got it into their heads that there was no area of life off limits to the ministrations of supposedly enlightened people who knew how to set things to right. The best way to describe the ultimate outcome of this is thus:

Imagine a man, leaving his job as a customer service rep for a global corporation, walking past a boarded up church, around the philosopher with his mouth taped shut, down by a patriot with his flag burnt in front of him where he then goes into his trendy apartment building standing on land once owned by a mechanic dispossessed of his property via eminent domain and then, finally, into a darkened room where he masturbates to internet porn and shouts out “I’m free!”.

We’ve really screwed up – and while we are the unworthy heirs of better men and women, we can still repair the damage we have done if we show the courage to confront the beast we’ve made and cut it down to its proper size. We can, once again, be the America our Founders pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor for – a nation of free men and women who rely upon God, themselves, their family and their Church; a nation which makes, mines and grows its own wealth for its own use; a nation which is, once again, that shining city on a hill.

All we have to do is show courage. Will we do? I think we shall – and then we’ll have that more perfect union we can all stand for.