Today while doing yard chores I caught part of Rush’s show on my Walkman, and heard him comment about a recent speech given by Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. I was trimming some dead branches and trying not to step on spring flowers starting to poke up, so I was only half-listening.
It wasn’t what Limbaugh said that caught my attention, but the way that he said it. A little light flashed in the back of my head. When I finished the job I came in and fired up Old Sparky and looked around the internet.
Representative Ryan spoke last week, on March 31st, to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. If this sounds like Ryan is tap dancing his way through the Rubber Chicken Circuit, put that thought out of your mind. I found a transcript at Real Clear Politics and it took about 20 minutes to read. It was riveting and you should take a look at it; Click Here for Paul Ryan Speech.
The whole thing is a freight train of ideas barreling along at 80mph; one terrific passage after another. There is nothing half-way about it. He absolutely demolished the Health Care Reform Bill, Cap & Trade, the concept of “ethics” in the current Administration, but one part caught my eye:
“Since America began, the timid have feared the Founding Father’s ideas of individual freedom, so they yearned for Old World class models. Our Progressivists are the latest iteration of that same fear of the people.”
A few weeks ago I happened to run across a quote by Samuel Adams that said the same exact thing more than 200 years ago.
Many people would be surprised to learn that after the Founders won our independence an astonishing number of colonists packed up their belongings and moved back to England. Isn’t that astounding? They sailed here, and then sailed back. They could not comprehend living in a representative democracy without a Monarch. No King, no Duke, no Sultan, no permanent ruling class; just “Mr. President”, some Congressmen and Senators and “We the People”. It’ll never last. Who’ll take care of them?
There was, understandably, some resentment at the time directed toward those who wanted no part of The American Adventure, who couldn’t comprehend any sort of “American Dream” and Sam Adams expressed it beautifully:
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
The spirit of that quote lives in Paul Ryan’s Oklahoma speech. As does this sentence, which I take to be Ryan’s Topic Sentence:
“We are at the beginning of an election campaign like you’ve never seen before!”
Read Ryan’s speech, and mark the man well. We will see him again before long.
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