Monday, March 22, 2010

Duties of a Patriot

The un-American, un-patriotic Michelle Bachmann is at it again—encouraging her misguided admirers to ignore their civic responsibility to pay their rightful share of the costs of living in a free and affluent society. And the reliably inane and insane Glenn Beck is encouraging Americans to break the law by ignoring their legal duty to fill out a census form.

Once every ten years, we Americans have two opportunities in April to act responsibly and do a little something to earn the privilege of living in this great nation: we can stand up and be counted, and we can pay our fair share. I, for one, will do both with pride.

4 comments:

Six said...

Bachman is a loon. However your source is more than suspect, if nothing else for this one statement in describing her, "a hero to the libertarian movement". A male bovine 'bowel movement' comes to mind reading that statement... last time I checked, being a supporter of the wars/nation-building, being opposed to equal rights for homosexuals, being pro-drug war, voting for and to extend the Patriot Act, opposing a woman's right over her own body and on and on are all very non-libertarian (and all stand opposite of 'limited federal government') positions. Then again, I guess it is the tradition of politics to hyjack words, case in point are the progressives who have stolen the word 'liberal' when clearly todays 'liberal' policies are anything but... well, liberal - such as using the threat of criminal prosecution and the power of the IRS to collect and impose fines if you do not hire a private companies services... does not sound very liberal if you ask me.

Citizen Jane said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Citizen Jane said...

Six, my apologies. You're absolutely right about the inappropriate appropriation of the word "libertarian" in that article. (To tell the truth, I picked that piece out of several--probably for the photo--and didn't read it as closely as I should have.)

Thanks for keeping me honest--as usual.

Six said...

Oh I don't blame you. There has been a lot of (intentional?) line blurring mainly by the right in using the word 'libertarian'. I think I heard Beck describe himself as a libertarian once... it is one of the few times I wanted to call in to a radio show, but instead I just decided to turn the channel to 1090 and catch the Stephanie Miller show instead.

And as for Beck and the census, if he is encouraging people not to fill out the census forms, it is further proof of what a babbling ratings whore he is - saying whatever he thinks will get the most people tuned in - basically doing what he is paid to do. Funny thing about the census is that it is constitutionally mandated and they have been asking questions about race and also phrasing the questions around '# of persons' intentionally NOT using the word citizen since the very beginning.

If the government wanted to know something about you, it would not need the census. It would be more trouble for them to use the census than it is worth. We can thank George Bush for giving the government plenty of unconstitutional powers to do that - then again, I don't think that would excite Becks listeners.