Fundamentally Un-American

On PBS's "Inside Washington," host Mark Shields, pontificating about raising the debt ceiling, pointed out that because of "two wars" we are spending 25 percent, but only taking in 14 and a half percent in revenues. "That's unsustainable and it's unacceptable and it's fundamentally un-American."

True, spending ten and a half percent more than you're bringing in every year is unsustainable and unacceptable, but raising taxes to cover for the greed of self-absorbed politicians who can't control their spending urges is hardly American. It's ignorant stupidity.

Mark Shields needs to go back to school. No, I take that back. It's the public schools that liberals are always crying need more money that are dumbing down America. Politically correct liberal education policies are failing to teach America's children real history, and instead are rewriting it to fit a socialist agenda. Public education is not teaching, but keeping the truth from America's children.

At the end of the Seven Year's War (French and Indian War) in 1763, the British government was deep in debt. Parliament passed a series of measures to tax the colonies and make them pay for their share of the war debt. It began with the Quartering Act in 1765, which allowed the British Army to billet soldiers in private homes without the consent of the home owners.

The Stamp Act followed in the same year, requiring all paper used in the colonies to come from London based companies with a government stamp indicating a tax had been paid to the Crown. Protests in the colonies led to the Declaratory Act of 1766 in which Parliament claimed it had the right "in all cases whatsoever" to pass legislation for the colonies, even though the colonies had no one to represent them in Parliament.

This was followed a year later by the Townshend Acts, five laws taxing the colonies for the salaries of Crown appointed governors and judges whose allegiances were to the King. These were intended to punish the colonies for failing to comply with the Quartering Act and previous taxes, and to force the colonies to submit to trade regulations. Resistance to the Townshend Acts led to the occupation of Boston by British troops in 1768. Tensions grew until in 1770, a confrontation in the streets resulted in the Boston Massacre.

Protests were so great that eventually most of the taxes were rescinded, but the Quartering Act remained, and Boston remained under occupation. Then on May 10, 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act to strengthen the British East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade, which further restricted international trade in the colonies, driving up the price of goods and burdening the colonial economy.

In response, an underground colonial patriot organization led by Samuel Adams held a party. In December 1773, the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians, boarded British ships in Boston Harbor and tossed their entire cargoes of tea into Massachusetts Bay, an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party.

Parliament countered with a series of laws, which became known as the Intolerable Acts, to try and force colonial submission to Crown authority. The effect was just the opposite as colonists were outraged and even more defiant than before. To coordinate their protests the First Continental Congress was organized in 1774.

Step by step events led slowly toward the Revolution, but underlying all the protests was one consistent theme. In 1765, James Otis declared "taxation without representation is tyranny," but the phrase that became a slogan for the Sons of Liberty and a battle cry of the Revolution was first used in a sermon preached by Rev. Jonathan Mayhew in Boston in 1750; No taxation without representation.

Mark Shields might well argue that we have a representative government, and on paper that is true. We have the Constitution, yet the current issue of Time magazine showing a picture of a shredded Constitution and asking whether it is still relevant, shows how far our government has drifted from representing "we the people." With a majority of Americans opposed to raising the debt limit, opposed to deficit spending, opposed to higher taxes, and in favor of a balanced budget amendment, a government that insists on ramming all of these down our throats and refuses to balance the budget is not representing its citizenry.

Higher taxes without the consent of the governed is fundamentally un-American, and so indeed are Mark Shields and all his leftist, elitist, socialist friends. They need to read some real history (let me suggest books by David McCullough and Richard Brookhiser) and find out what America is really all about.