It certainly began well. Anyone who has walked The Freedom Trail will tell you that Boston holds a unique concentration of American history. Over the course of the 2.5 miles of red brick, you will see Park Street Church, attended by Oliver Wendell Holmes, a church and a thought-leader both known for supporting abolitionist causes. You will also find Faneuil Hall, birthplace of the American doctrine, “no taxation without representation.”
America’s oldest public school is on The Freedom Trail, Boston Latin, which produced such greats as Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Robert Treat Paine -- four of whom signed the Declaration of Independence.
At the end of The Freedom Trail is the dock of the magnificent USS Constitution, the world’s oldest commissioned warship. I proudly keep a scale version of the USS Constitution on a shelf in my personal library. And of course, Massachusetts is the location of the landmark Boston Tea Party, the most famous tax revolt in history.
But something happened between the tossing of tea in 1773 and the $15 billion mismanagement of the Big Dig project that was finally declared complete in 2005. How did this headquarters of rugged individualism become the peddlers of the dependency drug of oligarchy? How did the state that contributed such patriots as Paul Revere, John Adams, Sam Adams, and John Hancock end up saddling the nation with the likes of Ted Kennedy, Paul Tsongas, John Kerry and Barney Frank?
Perhaps it began with the filling of dirt into the Boston Harbor to create more real estate. The site of the Boston Tea Party is now marked as having taken place at the corner of Congress Street and Purchase Street. How ironic is that name combination?
Oligarchy and its cousin, American liberalism, are unbecoming of a member of the American union of states. And, I would like to suggest to the United States Congress that it consider disinviting the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from the Union, under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution. Within this section, labeled New States, reads “The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.” I think that’s the motion that I am looking for -- “dispose.”
America is growing up, and slowly following is the rest of the world. The realization may be moving with the speed of a glacier, but mass communications has many people recognizing the cause and effect of electing narcissists into office. Only the religiously committed left, like Cybill Shepherd, can know the personal history of Massachusetts’ eight-term Senator (God rest his tainted soul) and worry that the GOP is waging a war against women.
Only the religiously committed left can see the monumental tragedy for millions caused by Frank-Dodd and find that George Bush is to blame for the nation’s financial collapse. The Bush Administration warned many times against the sub-prime mortgage practice, but Barney Frank received enthusiastic compliance from Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae, along with tens of thousands in campaign contributions and sexual favors from one of its senior executives.
Only the religiously committed left, like Speaker Nancy Pelosi submitting to an Islamic head scarf when visiting Syria, would support someone for Commander-in-Chief whose most memorable statement about military funding is, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it."
Only citizens who have lost their gratitude for the sacrifices made by the purchasers of their freedom would so reliably vote against the principles that those historical figures fought for. So, I say we let them live their corrupt socialist utopia in isolation. No tax subsidies from the rest of us and no influence on the electoral college from them.
What could be a more powerful statement to the free world and to the slouching states of California, Illinois, Minnesota and Washington than removing a star from Old Glory? After all, “experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”