The New Whiskey Rebellion

After all of the tea parties, what seems to be obvious is that Progressives need something to get some attention. What should be proposed is a new Whiskey Rebellion.

A Whiskey Rebellion is obvious. First of all, the tea parties are full of Buick-driving, Rascal-riding old coots that have been getting their information from some clown prince of Conservatism like Limbaugh or Beck. Tea partiers come in two varieties: sober and dull, or sober and arrogant.

The great thing about being progressive is that we don’t have to drive home!

Progressives can take public transit. Therefore we can get hammered and still get back to the collective. Thus, we should bring whiskey, and lots of it. Conservatives no longer drink, much like many conservatives are no longer members of traditional religious denominations.

As progressives, the opportunity exists to offer areas where we may agree with some of the tea party objectives, but with a dollop of unspun truth.

Tea partiers hate government, pretty much in all of its forms. Pop quiz: who was the last president to leave a budget surplus and a thriving economy? (Bill Clinton.) Anyone who wishes to complain about the deficit should be raising hell at George W. Bush, and the Republican congress he had for six years of his administration.

Apparently, the Bush doctrine was somewhere along these lines: Woohoo! Found money! Let’s go blow some stuff up! Whaddaya mean we spent the found money? We can print more! Ah, dang! That blowed up good!

While there are plenty of progressives who really like government, most of us lean toward the libertarian approach to civil liberties. Things like gay rights and abortion rights are not the province of government to regulate, but the responsibility of those who love freedom to protect.

A man may find abortion appalling, but he will never be in the position of making that decision alone. What is the answer to a woman with four healthy children whose husband deserts her when he discovers that she is carrying a fifth, a fetus who will be born with a grave medical issue which would imperil the futures of every healthy member of the household?

It’s easy to be pro-life until the babies are born, requiring education, food, health care, housing, jobs at decent wages, and so on. If a small group has control of the necessities of life, one could care less about their commitment to the unborn, only to starve the ones they don’t like once they’re ambulatory. That is a totalitarian abuse no different from the Soviets.

With regard to gay rights, one more time: marriage is the only religious structure defined by government. If government can define marriage, it is also able to define any other religious structure: baptism, last rites, holy orders.

You know, like government licensed priests and ministers and sanctioned religious operations in Nazi Germany. (Ooops! Wrong answer to that question! Looks like you’re going to camp whether you like it or not!)

With regard to firearm rights, more than a few progressives are weapons enthusiasts. More than a few progressives wish that more progressives still were weapons enthusiasts, but hell, we’re a big tent.

Maybe a progressive likes unions. Maybe he doesn’t. But he might like the option of having a bargaining organization which is equivalent to the collective which he is now obligated to negotiate with alone. We’re just saying here.

A lot of progressives agree that mind-altering substances are a blight on communities. But it seems that a well-regulated system of distribution focused upon keeping dope out of the hands of kids would work a lot better than organizations which finance the destabilization of countries which are ostensibly friendly to the interests of the United States.

Prohibition does not work. It just gives crooks the chance to look like heroes in places which might thrive as strong, prosperous democracies, like Mexico, Colombia, and Peru.

As far as taxes go, nobody is very fond of them. Flat taxes do not work, and a consumption tax is painfully regressive. Therefore, a taxation system which requires more of those who have prospered beyond the average is most just. There is no reason for some poor shmoe yanking down fifty large a year to cough up a pile of dough to hand over to a corporation that just shipped a boatload of jobs overseas.

Someone may dislike entitlements and programs designed to defeat poverty. The amount in question pales in comparison to tax breaks for businesses exporting jobs from the United States. I’d rather pay fifty percent on a hundred grand than ten percent on fifty.

The whole thing about national responsibility on health care is rather embarrassing. We don’t have private fire or police departments. If someone wishes to drive an automobile, every state requires the owner to have insurance. Most places in the United States do not have public transportation options that would allow someone to forego owning a car.

Reform health care. Now. Please. Thank you.

And finally, we tackle immigration reform. Five paragraphs earlier, one will see the words, “prohibition does not work.” It doesn’t work here, either. When one hears of twelve million undocumented in the United States, the number is screwy.

Large numbers of those who are unpapered would have qualified under the law for normalization before the Orwellian-named Immigration reform and Immigrant responsibility act of 1996 a/k/a IRA-IRA. (A single digit salutes President Clinton for signing this piece of crap.)

More than half entered legally. A bureaucracy which makes other despised government entities look warm and fuzzy impeded many more. The real number of people who behave badly and are harmful to the nation as a whole is probably under 500,000. Another couple of million not only have no business here, we would probably be better off without them.

That leaves about nine million or so who are being dealt with inappropriately by a bad law. That number, if given the opportunity to work and own property, with full legal rights as residents, could replenish the social security and tax rolls. Those have been decimated by retiring baby boomers who have nothing better to do than listen to Glenn Beck and complain about government daring to put its hands on Medicare.

Maybe progressives should call this a Tequila Rebellion instead.