Belle of Liberty

Letting Freedom Ring

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Signing the Paper

Today, Obama signs into legislation the ominous Health Care Reform bill.

Some Americans are downcast, feeling defeated. In spite of all our efforts, the Liberals won this battle and we’re wondering what else we could have done to prevent its passage and what we can do now.

First, we can look on the bright side. Yes, there is one. We conservatives fought them to a closer draw than was comfortable for them. With polls showing Americans against the bill, 219-212 is hardly a sweeping mandate for the Democrats.

It took all of Nancy Pelosi’s sledge-hammering, bribery, corruption, conniving, and threats to accomplish it. Despite her smug smiles and carefree laughter on the Capitol sidewalk, you’d probably find her expensive suit was stained with sweat.

A sledgehammer is a double-edged sword. You use it to destroy old obstacles in order to create new ones. But when you’re an American legislator and that obstacle is the U.S. Constitution, and you’re publicly photographed smiling and laughing as you’re about to sledgehammer the nation’s founding legal document, you’ve got an image problem.

That indelible image is going to follow her around at every Tea Party this summer, right up until the elections. Thank God for the photographer who shot it, though their intentions were no doubt in service of the Liberals.

Nancy Pelosi is rather like a suicide bomber, minus the bloodshed. The ends justify the means – it’s the communist mantra. Anything she does in service of the greater cause of socialism she’ll consider an honorable sacrifice, even to sacrificing her own career.

We know what they are. But do we know what we are? We’ve been too complacent for too many years, and too trusting. We believe anyone who espouses our conservative cause, without any actual proof beyond vague promises.

We also let the Liberals write too many of the rules of the game. Last evening, Glenn Beck spoke of battle ball, or dodge ball. He said too many parents were overprotecting their children in this game and that they must learn to accept defeat.

Glenn’s a guy of course, and the rules are different for guys. But I remember dodge ball, too. I remember for too many years being lined up against opponents for whom I was no match. I didn’t stand a chance and neither did other, weak team mates.

It’s true, we can’t always win and life isn’t fair. But that doesn’t mean we have to paint bulls-eyes on our foreheads, either. That’s what we’ve allowed the Liberals to do to us.

When I was in the 8th grade, the gym teacher pitted the boys against the girls. You can imagine how that match was going to turn out. It was one thing when there were mixed teams, some stronger boys, and even girls on each side.

In this match, it was the girls versus the gorillas and the only weapon, a rubber ball. Had we other resources, perhaps we could have devised some defense, at least. But there was nowhere to hide and nothing with which to deflect the balls.

I decided to take the Sixties option - I rebelled against authority and held a sort of one-girl sit-out. I refused to play. There was nothing sportsman-like about this game, nothing fair, nothing to put us on an equal footing with our opponents.

This wasn’t a game, I told her in conclusion; this was target practice and I wasn’t having any part of it. If the boys wanted to play this game, let them play amongst themselves.

The teacher asked if any other girls felt that way. Nearly all did. Only two husky girls admitted they were up to the challenge, but they wouldn’t blame the smaller girls if they didn’t want to play.

Obama and Pelosi would like to change the rules of the American political game so as to leave the other side exposed and vulnerable. They want to play dodge ball. We conservatives, however, have more resources at our service than we did in the 8th grade.

Media coverage was very one-sided back in the Sixties, also. But that’s not the case today. We’re still out-numbered in outlets, but intellectually we hold our own, and in fact, we enjoy the advantage. We can Twitter as well as any young Liberal.

They would have us believe that we’re making ourselves targets by holding Tea Party rallies. Mocking us, they hope to intimidate any other followers. Some are frightened, but none more than the Liberals themselves. We’re fighting back and nothing daunts a bully more than a victim who suddenly turns on them.

We must hold our team captains to a higher standard, though. John McCain was clearly not that man. Various warning signs about him went unheeded. Average people were aware of them and perplexed when he commandeered the primaries.

The red light went on in the news interview with the Viet Cong prison guard. “He betrayed his own country,” said he. “He signed the paper.”

When you envision John McCain, his arms paralyzed, his hair white, his face burnt from the torture of the hot box, it’s difficult to condemn him for signing that paper. They’d only have had to say “Boo!” to me and my signature would have been on that form.

To censure him would be to censure every prisoner of war who’d ever gone through that kind of hell. Who would we be to judge him who’d never endured that sort of treatment?

Still, that statement, “He signed the paper” hovered, like a bothersome fly you don’t want to swat but won’t go away. Conservative Americans were placed in an awkward position regarding John McCain.

He had no reservations about crossing the aisle, either, particularly on immigration reform. If he signed that paper – which other POWs had not, though they suffered the same treatment and worse – if he crossed the aisle, what else would he sign, as president?

Still, impugning his patriotism is wrong. He’s an honorable, if at times misguided, man. I believe McCain loves America. His ambition, hubris, and determination to win at all costs, controverting the will of the people to choose their candidate, cost us the election and have helped bring us to this pass.

Of course, the crossover voters casting ballots for him in the Republican primary were of great value. Alas that we awoke to that danger too late. Enough people harbored doubts about McCain to avoid the polls in the 2008 election, and Obama became part of history.

If we are to learn the lessons from the past, as Rush Limbaugh bids us do, rather than simply gnaw on the old bones like a toothless dog, it’s that the people, not the money, power, and influence of political machinery must decide America’s direction.

That’s been the resounding message of the Tea Parties. We’ll not make the mistake again of leaving our representatives to their own, corrupt devices, to backroom deals and other shenanigans, beyond the light of reason and honesty.

If we knew John McCain would sign the paper, then it was a certainty Barack Obama would. Only those who voted for Obama not only entertained no doubts but welcomed that certainty.

Today, Barack Obama, displaying the same flaws as his opponent, will sign the paper that will betray our country and send it spiraling into the gulf of socialism and inevitably communism, and then totalitarianism.

To watch this event unfold will be certain torture for loyal Americans. We must meet the battle head-on, however, and not shirk from the coming onslaught against our rights as Americans.

We must stand our ground. We must not give up and we must not give in (inspired by Winston Churchill, my World War II-era mother drilled that bulldog mantra into my head when I was young and being bullied in school).

We cannot and must not walk away from our duty as Americans.

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