Writing about the crowd who pitched up for last fall's Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis, in an article called "The Republic Strikes Back," political writer Bill Kauffman was heartened by what he sees as a newly skeptical attitude towards the Old Boss ethics on either side of the aisle:
"Liberty has a constituency . . . bright and enthusiastic kids afire with the spirit of liberty, of resistance to regimentation and the tyranny of standardization. Homeschoolers, homebrewers, punk rockers, evangelical Christians, radical Kansans, and reactionary New Englanders. These were American girls and boys, beautifully stained in the American grain, hip to Republican lies and numbing Democratic statism. Hell no, they won’t go. They’ll not be cannon fodder for the wars of Bush-Cheney or Obama-Biden. They demand honesty and liberty and respect for all things small and smaller; they have nothing but scorn for the liars and whores who run the empire.
"They reminded me of Emerson’s description of the Loco Foco generation: 'The new race is stiff, heady, and rebellious; they are fanatics in freedom; they hate tolls, taxes, turnpikes, banks, hierarchies, governors, yea, almost laws.” (Spare me the mewling about “ordered liberty,' please—50 years of conservative pieties about “ordered liberty” led to Dick Cheney and a movement full of “men” who dared not open their mouths to defend liberty when she needed it most. Give me disorderly hinterland rebels any day.)"
Yippie kay yay, I say.
8 comments:
each heirloom tomato is a mini revolution. cash business out of the back of a pick up is a mini revolution. kill your television is a mini revolution...and so forth.
rebel, indeed.
Chickory: Alas, my heirloom tomatoes, if not blossomed end rotted, are cracking along their fault lines. So here I sit in my feather boa, ready to go to the Farmer's Market down the street . . .
Heff: Hot punks, we love them so.
it's important for everyone to remember not to drink the kool-aid just because it's free.
Isn't the big news that Tammy Faye Bakker hasn't look this good since about ten years before she died?
Heh--great assignment.
The appliance repair feller came by--said he was over it. He's got his revo shoes on too. Amazin' how many folks ain't buyin' the poked pig no more.
Boxer: Bwahahahahahaha - on many levels. That wins you the Fresca Spew Worthy Comment of the Day Award.
Czar: Snort. Get in line behind Boxer.
Aunty: Despite many popular pundits' protests to the contrary, people in this country just ain't that stupid. As the article points out, we have a good healthy distrust of the government ingrained in us. It may be buried, but it's there.
Methinks Kaufmann has no idea what's really going on.
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