On my calendar, I have a note attached to December 16th — it was on this date in 1773 that the Sons of Liberty boarded ships moored in Boston Harbor and tossed chests of Chinese tea into the briny drink.
The act became known as “the Boston Tea Party,” of course, a protest against taxation without representation. It happened 250 years ago today.
Every time I mark one of these events in the struggle for Liberty, I’m ashamed of what’s happened to this country on our watch. Our complacency insults the sacrifices of the Founders. The Sons of Liberty, including the likes of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, committed acts of treason over taxes on a freakin’ beverage. Now we hand half (or more) of our money to the State without so much as a whimper.
Taxation is theft. Treason against tyranny is fidelity to Liberty.
If you want to do something to truly honor Patriots who risked everything for a land in which men can be free, disobey.
Break rules. Commit an act of “treason” against the Permanent State. Flout a regulation enforced as if it were law, one codified without the consent of the governed.
To the tyrants who presume to rule over us, that’ll make you a traitor. It’ll also make you more American than you were before. Liberty or death.
Rain overnight led to a drizzly, foggy, gloomy Saturday morning. Deb and I took care of chores around Home, then headed for Baxter County to join in what we believe is a worthwhile Christmas tradition.
The mission of “Wreaths Across America” is to lay a pine wreath on the grave of every US military veteran, in every cemetery nationwide. Today was the annual event, and Deb found a participating cemetery in Gassville.
We were the first volunteers to arrive, other than the USAF vet unloading boxes of wreaths from his pickup truck. Eventually the wreath-laying crew numbered nine, and we scattered to make quick (and yet respectful) work of what we’d gathered to do.
There are over 900 veterans buried in that ground. Sadly, we had fewer than a hundred of the donated wreaths. We did the best we could.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Deb said later of our presence there today. Indeed — honoring those who gave this nation their best years and, in many cases, their very lives, always is the the right thing to do.
As long as we were in Gassville, we hit the laundromat and did the week’s warsh. (If you know, you know.) From there we drove to Home Depot in Mountain Home to pick up an unidentified birthday present for Deb, from our younger boy and his wife.
It turned out to be an outdoor gas grill and cover, which is wonderful. The grill already was assembled, however, which was not wonderful — though the truck bed was empty, there was no good way to secure it standing up, and that was our only option.
The exercise was, in a word, a clusterfuck.
Cinching down the appliance tightly threatened to crush its thin sheet metal, so we had to back off on the tie-downs. The hood of the grill extended above the Silverado’s cab, too, catching the wind and causing it to sway, which at one point forced us onto the shoulder of US 62 to re-think our lashings.
I discovered quickly that maximum velocity with the awkward, tenuously tethered load would be 45mph. The posted limit for most of the 25-mile drive was 55mph to 60mph, and that made us quite the rolling roadblock.
The half-mile creep up The Mountain alone took almost ten minutes.
But Deb’s birthday gift made it Home. Damage appears to be minimal. And now we have a gas grill.
(I don’t think we lost any parts.)
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB