Dale K. Robinson
April 18, 2009
I am a radical rightwing extremist redneck racist. It has to be true. The Department of Homeland Security and the Main Stream Media has said so.
I am former military, I’ve been hurt by the economic downturn, I regularly attend Christian church services and Sunday school, I support the 2nd Amendment (and the rest of the Constitution as well) and I even (gasp!) own a gun. I sometimes watch Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and I even went to one of the local “tea parties” on April 15th.
It would appear that a lot of folks on the left don’t get the tea parties. Sure, they’re about what a lot of us believe is excessive taxation, but they are also about a runaway government that keeps growing at an alarming rate (President Obama has now appointed seven “czars” – people who are not accountable to anyone but him – to run everything from the auto industry to the border problem), a government that passes spending bills they do not read (remember the AIG bonuses?), a government that we believe wants to mortgage our future.
I was at the tea party because I don’t believe President Obama’s tax-and-spend policies will shorten the recession, but do believe they are burdening our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren with an unsustainable debt.
When I was kid, we knew families who would get so far behind in their electric bills that their electricity would be turned off. Paying the past bill, the reconnection fees, and the deposit to get reconnected was prohibitive – it could easily run to $1,000. So the parents would open a new account in one of the kids’ names for the cost of a deposit and connection fee. It worked okay until they fell behind again, then they would open a new account in another kid’s name. They didn’t realize what they were doing to their kids until the kids tried to buy a car or a house when they were grown and found they had these bad debts on their credit records. Those parents had destroyed their kids’ prosperity and the kids had had no voice in the matter; they just had to pay the price.
What our president wants to do to our kids is really no different. We’ll destroy their prosperity in the name of bailing out banks and auto makers and universal healthcare and other social programs. At some point that debt will have to be paid by people who had no voice in it: our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren.
To answer the CNN reporter who badgered the tea party-goer in Chicago before cutting him off when she didn’t get the answer she wanted, I do expect that under Obama’s income tax policies, I will get a tax cut. And that is a good thing, because it will help offset the increased costs of energy - one estimate says the average American household will pay an additional $3,000 per year on their electric bill if Congress rubberstamps Obama’s cap-and-trade legislation. I’ll pay less income taxes, but more than make up for it in “user fees” and other hidden and not-so-hidden taxes. If you use a quart pail to bail out your boat, but for every quart you pour out, another quart and more comes in over the gunwales, you’re still going to sink.
So, because I oppose President Obama’s policies and went to one of the 2,000 tea parties around the country with some 250,000 other Americans (there was only one arrest nationwide, by the way!), I am a “teabagging redneck racist” according to Janeane Garofalo. MSNBC personality Keith Olbermann, sitting next to her, simply nodded. Well, Ms. Garafolo, I’ll accept the “redneck” appellation, but I didn’t see any oral sex anywhere during the tea party last week. And the color of Mr. Obama’s skin has absolutely nothing to do with my opposition to his policies. I opposed the previous administration’s bailout policies as well. I expected the left to play the racism card when Mr. Obama meets opposition; it is a typical ploy they tend to use to silence disagreement. No one wants to be labeled racist.
As for the “rightwing extremist” label, I guess I’ll accept that as well. I fit the definition DHS put forward. On top of being a church-going, gun-owning former military man opposed to current government policies, I’ve also been hurt by the economic downturn – on March 20th, due to budget cuts, my position was eliminated at the school where I taught history.
Not sure what I’ll do now – Okaloosa County School District is on a hiring freeze, Santa Rosa County is cutting 250 positions and Escambia is cutting 300 positions. I guess our schools aren’t too big to fail. Just another way we’re destroying our kids’ futures.