Friday, April 16, 2010

Tea Bagger History Lesson: Federal Gov't Was Created To Be Strong

On this day in history, 16 April 1789, Revolutionary War hero and Sarah Palin’s Favorite Founder George “Father of My Country; Also, Owner of 316 Slaves” Washington set off from his posh digs at Mount Vernon (“The Mount That Slaves Built”) for New York City, loathed metropolis of punchy-faced Glenn Beck, to get his inauguration on.
Teabaggers idolizing Sarah Palin because she’s so smart and contains untold quantities of something called “spunk” should note that Washington is indeed the exemplar of their anti-taxation movement, most notably in his response to my favorite of all historical uprisings, the Whiskey Rebellion, sponsored by Maker’s Mark Fine Kentucky Bourbon. See, in the 1790s a bunch of toothless hooch farmers got their corncobs in a twist over a tax levied by the U.S. Government (“So Far This Is Working Out Fine!”) on whiskey so that Alexander Hamilton could pay off that troublesome Revolutionary War Debt. Getting together a drunken little Tea Party of their own, these anti-tax Patriots started a rebellion that – not at all like what is going on today, because this shit never Repeats Itself – led to the harassment, beating and tar-and-feathering of tax collectors. Hahahahaha! History's funny because it's tragic!
Now here’s the part Sarah Palin loves about George Washington, her favorite Founding Father: Agreeing with Hamilton that some serious taxation was necessary to pay for the ass-kicking we’d just handed Britain and to “secure the power of the new federal government,” Washington did what any freedom-loving anti-tax Teabagging historical Super-Patriot would have done. He got the fuck on his horse and – in the first real test of Federal Authority – led a massive army against these tax-dodging pricks.
Let me repeat this for our Teabagging friends who don’t read so good, or can’t understand “irony”: In the first real crisis of the new Federal Government, Sarah Palin’s bestest Founding Father Figure (you know, the one she loves because he’s the one she remembers from all the crisp one dollar bills she feeds into the Fox News Mountain Dew machine) personally horsed up and led a federalized army into battle against protesters bitching about high federal taxation. And he kicked the shit out of them, which wasn’t difficult because most were – much like today’s Teabaggers – drunken or retarded.
States' Rights with a weak central government did not work, FAIL. They tried, it failed. That's why the Constitution was written. That is why they created the Federal Government.  It was created to be powerful.

They did not create them to be weak or because they were not needed. They did not say "let's create this system to take over a weak system that does not work, but let's make it weak, too". 

The Federal Government had to be strong to levy and collect taxes. They had to pay for the war they just had. Sound familiar?

The Whiskey Rebellion of 1793 and President George Washington's response proves this: "This marked the first time under the new United States Constitution that the federal government used military force to exert authority over the nation's citizens. It was also the only time that a sitting President personally commanded the military in the field."

1 comment:

Ashlee said...

Preach. Great History lesson. People like to talk about the founding fathers and the "principles" that this country was founded on without really knowing anything besides what they learned about in 1st Grade.