The array of the American people is bewildering. Patriots, wing nuts, terrorists, left wing socialistic dimwits, gays, centrists, intelligent, dumb, capitalists, socialists, white, black, brown, yellow, taxpayers, freeloaders, conservative, liberal, literate, illiterate, educated, uneducated, informed, uninformed. Just about every category you can think of is ascribed some kind of label.
Somehow I seem to see the average Joe the Plumber in the photo you see. The picture was sent to me by one of my relatives in Oklahoma.
As I looked at the picture I thought of Benjamin Franklin. Funny how the brain works. Franklin was asked:
“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
The response is attributed to Benjamin Franklin—at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation—in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention. [Bartleby.com]
What brings me to all the above? Beats me. Reading the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Las Vegas Sun this morning started it.
Then I read this from TPM.
Chris Broughton, the man who brought an assault rifle to an Obama event in Arizona earlier this week, and William Kostric, who protested outside a presidential forum in New Hampshire armed with a handgun last week, are both listed as “team members” of the Arizona chapter of the We The People organization.
That prompted me to see if Nevada has a chapter of the We The People. Before I even looked I was certain it would have. You’ll find Nevada here. Since I live in Nye County I thought I’d see about a Nye Chapter. Nye is here.
The Nye Chapter doesn’t seem to be very robust, which surprises me. Doesn’t have a “Coordinator” but does have single solitary “Team Member” listed, complete with name, phone number and e-mail address.
The We The People organization exists to fight a government that “continues to systematically plunder our People’s wealth, ignore constitutional checks and balances and destroy the last vestiges of Freedom.” So reports TPM.
From my cursory glance at the We The People site, I came away with the impression it is a group that doesn’t like taxes but likes to carry guns to public gatherings.
I suppose toting guns to such affairs is their way of keeping the “Republic” Ben Franklin said the Continental Congress gave birth to. Somehow visualizing those tax hating gun totters in my mind’s eye brings me back to the photo above.
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