A revolution is underway in the United States, brought on by the Tea Parties and the resounding repudiation of the leftist form of government that has grown up around us like a cancer. There are those, of course, who do not like revolution; too messy, too untidy. These people understand the revolution is happening, but hope it is conducted with a maximum of civility. Can a modern major revolution be conducted in a civil manner? The answer is to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s A Modern Major General.

We like our revolutions with the maximum civility

We like to think we get along to best of our ability

We want no fuss nor wish no muss

We want the world to liken us

To cheerful riders on a bus

That leads to our facility

Where we can do our best to see that everyone is happily

Engaged in work and play they do precisely well and snappily

A world where men know best and then

We’ll dance and sing and laugh again

And poets take up ink and pen

To Nomes and Indianapoli

Yes revolutions are done best when all are smiling merrily

And friends and foes alike are greeted ma’am-ily and sir-ily

And when it’s o’er our little war

Leaves no one mad and no one sore

The rich still rich the poor still poor

And all will shout, yea verily

The Tea Party has come under intense fire from the administration, the press and liberals in general, and with good reason. The Left knows the tea partiers are dangerous to their continued mastery of the culture and politics of the country. The tea partiers are dangerous because they are ordinary Americans, middle class people who never before thought of protesting the government or anything else, who believed that as long as things went along fairly well the country could correct any deviations, any mistakes. And for most of our history they were right; the country was self-correcting. But now ordinary Americans are afraid the Obama administration is taking the country down a path of debt and socialism that the country may not be able to recover from. And so they gather in greater and greater numbers, shrugging off the lying attacks by the Democrats and the lapdog media, gathering strength. The Left knows the Tea Parties are the tip of the tsunami. Ordinary Americans are slow to anger, slow to get seriously involved, as slow, almost, as the tectonic plates moving the continents about, but once they are engaged, once their anger reaches the tipping point, the country changes course to common sense and first principles, to the rule of law and the Constitution. And the Left cannot abide the thought.   

Thin as eggshell mantle slides

Creating tectonic divides

As continents on magma creep

Subducted in the ocean deep

And so it proves in man’s affairs

When times are good that no one cares

Who gets to sit on Caesar’s throne

Or who decides the culture’s tone

But when the movement starts to speed

When things grow dark and start to bleed

It’s then America grows tense

And some will say with common sense

We’ll stop the madness in its tracks

If act before the mirror cracks

If not then just as plates collide

We’ll be subducted in the slide

And pass from history with a sigh

Without so much as a goodbye

A recent Belmont Club post discusses Ben McCarthy’s New Yorker article on the rise of the Tea Party movement, and finds that McCarthy thinks it is just another of the many cultural movements that have taken place in American history – that it’s just one of those things. But it isn’t just one of those things. The country has never been in such perilous economic condition before, with over 30 trillion dollars in debt facing our children and grandchildren, and the Congress and the Executive, of both parties, committed to distributing more and more of the wealth we no longer have to more and more outstretched palms. No, the Tea Party movement is not just one of those things. The Tea Party movement is composed of ordinary patriotic, tax-paying citizens who are frightened at the direction the country is taking, and are determined to reverse that course and reintroduce the forgotten concept of sanity. 

It was just one of those things

Just one of those crazy flings

One of those yells that now and then brings

Just one of those things

It was just one of those nights

Just one of those fabulous flights

A trip to jejune

On gossamer wings

Just one of those things

If we thought a bit of the end of it

When we started bagging the tea

We’d have been aware that this whole affair

Would result in setting us free

So goodbye Barack and amen

Here’s hoping you’re never again

You’ve been great fun

But you’ve been just one of those things