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Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Laura Hollis :: Townhall.com Columnist
Americans Must Refuse to Be Cowed into Submission
by Laura Hollis
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If Americans had any doubt how the liberal elite (Democrats in Congress, the press, the entertainment industry) felt about them before this month’s congressional recess, surely they must understand it now.

Hard-working taxpaying Americans have been relatively complacent until recently, understandably occupied by their jobs, their finances, their families, and their personal responsibilities. Americans have had a largely unspoken but abiding faith in the enduring principles of American government, the fidelity of their elected representatives to those principles, and the vigilance of the press in defending both.

Culture of Corruption by Michelle Malkin FREE

Oops. The past few months have been eye-openers, haven’t they?

As awareness of Obama’s true intentions have grown, so have Americans’ concerns.  Disgusted with the profligate spending of the Bush administration and an earlier Republican-controlled Congress, many Americans believed Obama and the Democrats when they promised fiscal accountability.  (This was, to steal Samuel Johnson’s line, the triumph of hope over experience, but that’s another matter.)  Skyrocketing deficits, double-digit unemployment, and nationalized private industry were not what most Americans signed up for.

Slowly but surely, Americans have begun to make their feelings known.  And as they have, they have discovered what the Left really means when it waxes rhapsodic about freedom of speech, dissent as patriotism, and civil liberties: only for those who agree with us; not for you¸you dimwitted, knuckle-dragging, greedy, gun-toting, child-bearing, God-fearing idiots.

When Congress passed a $787 billion “stealfromus” package without reading it, when buyer’s remorse began to set in, and when the “tea parties” sprung up, the tenor of the Left’s accusations changed.  Now, taking a page from Obama’s intellectual “mentor” Saul Alinsky, the press, the entertainment industry, and Democrats in Congress stepped up their tactics and attempted to marginalize and ignore public sentiment, mocking the protestors repeatedly as “teabaggers,” (a vulgar slang term for a particular type of vulgar activity), laughing at them during prime-time newscasts, and giving airtime to inflammatory personalities like Keith Olbermann and Janeane Garofalo, who called Americans “racist rednecks” and “bigots.”

As if this were not bad enough, the Department of Homeland Security leaked a memo in which Americans having served in the military, favoring limited government, opposed to abortion, supporting restrictions on illegal immigration, or Second Amendment rights were characterized as potential “home grown terrorists.”

All of this was supposed to shut Americans up.  But it didn’t.  When Obama announced his call for nationalized health care, he unwittingly has persuaded people of the ominous threat his power grab represents.  April’s dainty tea parties have morphed into August’s contentious town halls. Support for Obama’s policies has plummeted, and Americans across the country have confronted their congressional representatives with their objections to Obamacare and its inevitable faceless bureaucracy, deficit spending, rationing, and declining quality of care.

And how have the liberal elites responded to their countrymen’s concerns, their exercise of their First Amendment rights of free speech, assembly, and petitioning the government?  By calling them Nazis, accusing them of bringing swastikas to town halls, characterizing American taxpayers as “angry mobs,” dismissing their grassroots protests as fake “Astroturf,” drummed up and funded by multinational corporations; by cancelling town halls, and insulting constituents who want to know why Congress passes laws without reading them.  Uh-huh, sure.  When ACORN and other Lefty activist groups pay and bus in homeless people, union members, and others to disrupt and intimidate, that’s “democracy.”  When taxpayers, parents, and senior citizens show up on their own and protest how the government plans to spend their money, they’re a threat.

Hey there, average American - NOW do you understand how much they hate you and everything you stand for?  The lengths they will go to to discredit and marginalize you, and take from you everything you have worked a lifetime to secure for yourself and your family?  They want you to shut up.  They want you to go away.  They want to humiliate you into backing down while they take over your country, dismantle your constitutional protections, seize your assets, tax you into submission, and insert themselves and their appointed bureaucrats between you and your doctor. Continued...

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About The Author

Laura Hirschfeld Hollis is a Clinical Professor of Business Administration at the University of Illinois.

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Passing this along....
...to all on my email list! GREAT writing, Laura! I was on my feet, CHEERING, as I read it!

Mentors from the past.
Another great article by Laura Hollis. She does write right. The Mentor's can be seen. Vote the Bums out and change in 2012. The power in Washington should have the motto, "Family, Country, Party", in that order. If not, they go.
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