Pirates, Tea Parties, and Secession

Quick, somebody check the calendar and remind me what century we are in. If one were to have taken a long nap and awoke only this week, he might think that he was a Rip Van Winkle in reverse, instead of waking up 20 years into the future, he would find himself waking up a couple centuries in the past. Proving that they never let relevance get in the way of an entertaining story, the mainstream media (which alas also includes my beloved NPR) has been all over the case of these important developing events regarding pirates, tea parties, and the threat of secession by the Lone Star State.

Yo ho yo ho…! We all know about the Pirates of the Carribean, both from the Disneyland ride and the Johnny Depp movies, and back in the early days of the Republic piracy was a serious threat to our shipping lanes and commerce. Today we are being bombarded once again with stories of pirates, this time off the east coast of Africa, and tales of courageous sacrifices and heroic rescues, which no doubt they are. But do we really need to be this concerned with the issue? While it outranks in importance the Octomom and the latest celebrity rehab or adoption stories, I question the notion that this is the top priority for our government or our attention as a public.

A few thoughts before moving on to the other blasts from the past. Will we have an updated Disneyland ride now titled Pirates of the Horn, complete with dark skinned Somali’s chasing and whipping light skinned women and forcing them to live under Sharia law? Will sports teams in the name of political correctness now have to change their names? What will the Oakland Raiders, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Pittsburgh Pirates become known as? Will there be a market now in Somalia for eye patches and swashbuckler hats? Stay tuned.

The original tea party as we all learned in school took place in the Boston Harbor, and was a protest against both taxes and the fact that the British Parliament had granted a monopoly over the tea industry to the powerful British East India Company. The rallying cry then was “no taxation without representation”. The current protests have the mantle of “no taxation or representation”. These people seem to want to do away completely with both taxes and government, and while I am sympathetic to arguments that our federal government spends like a drunken sailor on leave and doesn’t produce enough results to show for their largesse, I can’t fathom the faction that thinks that we can do away with government and taxes.

This is an offshoot of the Reagan Revolution, an anti-big government and tax cutting movement that has much legitimacy, but which never called for radical abolition of government. It appeals to the hard core conservatives and libertarians who think that somehow roads and schools and public services will just magically materialize in the absence of government due to the forces of the free market and the natural benevolence of the people. How soon we forget our lessons of recent history, namely the whole financial mess that we are in due to lax or non-existent regulation and the free market running amok like a co-ed on spring break in Mexico. While we must not over correct by going to undue regulation and government control, and while the spending and increasing debt our government is taking on on our behalf is a serious concern, I see these tea parties as mere demagoguery at its finest, as evidenced by the fact that the purveyors of such banality, namely Fox News and their bed buddies in the GOP are supporting this whole-heartedly. Perhaps one of these groups should have dressed up as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama and dumped stimulus money into the Boston Harbor.

Lastly, we have word that nearly a century and a half after the Union was restored, at the great cost of human life, that the governor of Texas is in a secessionist mood. This is related to the tea party movement, basically the sentiment here is that our government is leading us down the path of damnation and socialism, and it is the right of sovereign states to fight the power by declaring their independence, lest they be part of a union that is going to end up like France. States rights are fine, the Constitution guarantees them limited liberties in our federalist system, but the overriding concept here is federal supremacy. We simply can’t have a functioning union when all the parts are free to do as they please. I love both my native state of California and my adopted state of Arizona, but I prize being an American much higher than any quaint 19th century notion of loyalty first to my state.

Last time I checked, patriotism was high on the list for conservatives, and what could be less patriotic than supporting a movement that would effectively disband our nation. But then again, conservatives of the social or fiscal variety have never been kept in check by consistency in their belief system. They’re opposed to regulation and taxes so long as they are making money but then blame the SEC and government in general when things go bad. They want the government out of our lives but have no problem with that same government in your bedroom if you want an abortion, or at your alter if you happen to be gay or lesbian. They want us to fight unnecessary and ineffective wars with money we don’t have, then complain about government spending and threaten to leave the Union over it. As the Church Lady (no doubt a Republican supporter) would have said, how convenient.

I’m going back down for a siesta, somebody wake me when we are back in the 21st century and when our media decides to start reporting again on issues of relevance to our lives. Something tells me that I may be in for quite a long summer’s nap.