The Letter
Wow. A fantastic letter to Glenn Beck from a listener/viewer that came to my attention via Maggie at Infidels' Paradise. Read the whole thing below the fold or go here.
I'm a home grown American citizen, 53, registered Democrat all my life. Before the last presidential election I registered as a Republican because I no longer felt the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. Now I no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue the issues important to me. There must be someone. Please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me that you are there and that you're willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please stand up now. You might ask yourself what my views and issues are that I would horribly feel so disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me?Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:
One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.
Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.
Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.
Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.
Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!
Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don't you start there.
Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.
Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why ?? what do you have against shareholders making a profit?
Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.
Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band?Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.
Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try ?? please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.
Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.
Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let's just slow down and get some input from some nonpoliticians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.
I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.
From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington. Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we're morons.
We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work , pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when hewill rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.
Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.























Did Beck cry when he got this letter? He loves to cry. http://gawker.com/5231807/glenn-becks-greatest-hits-his-insanity-is-very-real. Compared to this guy, Rush is Walter Lippman
It has been hitting out there, everywhere since two days ago, when Glenn first read it on the radio show, I believe it was Tuesday -I posted it too. And when I did, the online petition site total number of signatures was increasing by the hundreds every time you refreshed the page.
Take a look at it now: it's crashed and there is a message saying the response has been so "overwhelming" (aparently they couldn't handle the amount of people and the petition page is close, pending to reopen again.
Like I wrote yesterday; we're the silent majority, no more!
Caballero, right on schedule. Let me do to you what you just did to Glenn Beck: compared to you a retarded squirrel is a rocket scientist.
I can centinly add my name to that letter.
Do you see the crowds in the streets in Tehran?
THOSE are the numbers we had better get to ... and fast in this country.
They said at first that Amydidherdad won in a 'landslide' ... Yeah, that's some landslide in the streets every day since over there. Half of the half of this country that voted for Obama out of party loyalty are finally waking up to what this guy and the party, and the repubs who lost their balls, really are, and are doing to us. There are several really big and bad things that need halted RIGHT NOW ... cap and trade, Obamacare ... and we need to open domestic drilling ASAP and build a few refineries.
Time to man-up, America ... and it starts with opening your mouth and shouting at the Elected Class in this country who have waaay overstepped the terms of their job(s) as laid out in the US Constitution ... and pay grades as laid out in OUR Declaration of Independence.
And ACORN needs to be abolished ...
More letters like this are needed ... everyday.
Amen, drillanwr.
Actually, George, I was running a little late this morning. Traffic into the Lincoln Tunnel was a bitch. Otherwise I would have responded to this inanity even earlier. In any event, I don't know any retarded (do we even use that word anymore?) squirrels but you never disappoint when it comes to over-the-top, Beckian comparisons. Beck is a sad and, from what I can tell from the few times I actually watch Fixed News, a profoundly disturbed man. There are a bumper crop of issues to oppose Obama on--the GM takeover, marriage equality, the too-quiet-for-my-tastes response to the current events in Iran--but these "I'm not going to take it" letters are so snooze-inducing that it may be tough to describe. For as long as there has been a media, there have been demamgogues who enable the poor souls who write these letters, making them feel like they aren't part of the problem, that they are the "silent majority" that can make America work if it weren't for all the bad people in Congress/White House/Governor's Mansion etc. Even more sad is the fact that this poor letter-writer actually believes that his pure patriotic call for American renewal is non partisan. Please! The litany of complaints reads like a list put together by the GOP. America has and has always had problems. These letters do nothing to address those problems and actually drive us away from meaningful exchanges and debates on ideas.
I have only one problem with the letter. The writer claims to be a life long Democrat. Yet the Democratic Party has stood against everything the writer claims to believe for my entire life, and I'm 62. A 53 year old would have turned 18 in about 1976. Could someone who believed as the writer says have chosen Carter over Ford or over Reagan? Or Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore or Kerry? How? I don't understand it.
Oh, and Cabby?
You sound ever bit as silly as anyone associated with Paris would be.
kghahn -
Not so hard to believe. Many people simple go to the polls and vote party ... and mindlessly. In my adult voting life I have been both dem and repub ... and while registered as either/or have still voted outside my party affil. in favor of what a candidate has campaigned on. Perhaps we are now waking to the fact we need to stop taking our votes so for granted and actually listen and learn ... and vote accordingly.
My own father is a life long dem ... and voted for Obama, even though I could see he was gritting his teeth doing so.
I could tell he didn't want to, but recited the mantra that all blue collar voting dems do, "Democrats are for the working man" ...
Well, Daddy has watched his GM stock flush away, and his retirement benefits also ... As I sat with him under the shade of his gazebo the other day to inform him of Obamacare and how it compared to socialized healthcare in other countries, and how it will be rationed ... the elderly suffering the most ... he just rubbed his brow a bit deeper and fell silent with regret.
"It wasn't about the party, Daddy," I said. "It was about life as we know it ..."
But I suppose your pessimism is understandable, since I didn't believe all those who claimed to have voted for Bush, but came out against him every chance they got ... especially regarding the Iraq War. I believe even one of the "Jersey Girls" was one ...
Caballero,
"These letters... actually drive us away from meaningful exchanges and debates on ideas." And we can learn all about such things from you, right? Look at the end of your original post here. And look at what you have to say about "fixed" news. How any sane person can know about Matthews and Olberman and the rest of those guys and complain only about Fox...
And don't try to tell me you were only talking about Beck so the other guys are irrelevant here. Baloney.
Glenn Beck is an excitable, fabulous commentator. I am excitable as well these days. I have a lot to be upset about.
For me anyone, "conservatives" or whatever who is busy complaining about Rush or Beck when there is so much dangerous stuff going on on the other side is a waste of space. In our hierarchy of needs, any brave and sane person must fight the major fight these days, the daily thieving of our rights, power, and pocketbooks by the left.
Mi muy querida Miel,
From what I can gather: you believe that Glenn Beck is excitable (we agree), you believe that you too are excitable (again, we agree,) you like baloney (discrepamos), and you're upset about, well, things. This isn't the sort of meaninful debate I was hoping for. Can we try again?
I am not Spanish so the opening phrase is lost on me.
If I have to elaborate the way Obama and this Congress are day by day demeaning my beloved country, screwing Israel, coddling our enemies, ignoring the efforts at free speech, assembly and democratic choice in Iran, spending money we do not have in the trillions for things the government should not be doing, grabbing power and centralizing it in Washington, then there is no way you and I can have a meaningful debate.
I have four axioms, like in geometry. Anyone who chooses to debate me must accept these four assumptions or I will have nothing to say to him. I use Wm. Buckley's formulation. How is it - compared to every other choice?
1. America is the greatest country in the world by any measure.
2. Israel is the greatest country in the Middle East by any measure.
3. Capitalism is the best economic system in history.
4 . Communism and variations of any kind of statism never work and must not be tried.
If you disagree with any of these four points using Buckley's formulation, if you have yes, but's galore to any one of them, then go argue with someone else. You are a waste of space as far as I'm concerned.
Honey -
As a former geometry/trig student the only 'axiom' such opposing 'debaters' know is the circle jerk ... But that's just been my experience with debating such tail-chasing dogs ...
Luvs ya, Honey!
Maggie
drillanwr,
I love all the regulars on babalu. This blog is my oasis of sanity in an upside down world.