Patrick Henry, Meet Ted Cruz
by Rodney Dodsworth – March 13, 2016
The solution to America’s problems resides within the American tradition.
The Left’s Holy Grail, the unasked-for Obamacare, is centered around onerous fines/taxes. Like socialism itself, Obamacare is a European import that is incompatible with the American experience. Its social justice progressivism is irrelevant, hostile, and has no legitimate place in America.
We long ago faced a similar situation in which a foreign ideology meant taxes that couldn’t be avoided.
In 1765, Parliament imposed the Stamp Act. The stamp tax had a logical basis. Great Britain spent enormous sums to kick France out of North America, and a tax on those who stood to benefit the most from victory made perfect sense . . . in London. Colonial businesses and individuals were to be irritated by an insidious sliding rule of taxation.
While there were rumblings of opposition on this side of the Atlantic, and colonial legislatures sent letters of protest to Parliament, it appeared the tax would be implemented.
That is, until a certain member of the Virginia House of Burgesses stood to be recognized.
This rube, noobie Burgess from the backwoods of Virginia was met with sighs of displeasure from the aristocratic planters who wanted to adjourn and get back to their plantations. By custom, new Burgesses sat quietly and learned for at least a session before asking to speak.
Patrick Henry didn’t get the memo. In five resolutions, he spoke the words of republican free government liberty. He was met with shouts of “Treason!” Henry concluded with a phrase which echoed through the ages, “If this be treason, make the most of it!” His passionate appeal was printed in colonial newspapers, soon followed by mob protests, and a congress of the colonies.
Fast forward almost 250 years, and the offspring of Henry’s resistance confronts tyranny with a different face. Touted as affordable, reasonable and utterly logical, Obamacare makes perfect sense to those who dwell outside the American traditions of freedom and personal responsibility, and inside the twisted minds of Obama, Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, and the Democratic caucus.
The outer colonies of the Washington DC empire, the states, have chafed under and resisted Obamacare. Instead of letters to a distant Parliament, various states’ attorney generals lodged formal complaints in Obama’s courts, and met with the same response as the American colonies. “Obey, or else.”
In September of 2013, and shortly before the full force of Obamacare was to take effect, a freshman senator from out of nowhere in Texas named Ted Cruz rose to spark the flame of modern resistance to tyranny. His colleagues shouted him down, ridiculed him, and accused him of treason and terrorism.
Derided for republican, Tea Party extremism, Ted Cruz took on Obama as certainly and squarely as Patrick Henry took on George III. Fueled by his example, the people of America rose up, and in 2014, booted the Democrats from control of the senate. The rise of non-establishment front-runners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz speaks to this building groundswell of resistance to tyranny.
Sparked by Patrick Henry, the Stamp Act protests sent the colonies to a convention, the first congress. It is time to heed the words of our modern day Patrick Henry, Senator Ted Cruz, and resist tyranny while we have the peaceful means to do so.
Congress has received hundreds of Article V applications, yet has never called the states to convention. The states could send a thousand more, and the response will be the same.
If the great American experiment in free government is to be saved, the states MUST meet in convention, and very soon.