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Don't Tread On Me: Fascist Czars & People who don't believe in private beaches—THIS MEANS YOU!
by Jeff Fullerton
[email protected]

Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

"Once upon a Tea Party"—Should have been the title but being the hardline controversialist I just had to get in another dig in at the tyrants and populists. Which were on my mind back then on the first weekend of July 2011 as they are now.

It turned out to be one of my better Tea Parties and to think I had even considered not going.

The snarl began the previous day on the way to grocery shopping prior to my trip. The Civic started shifting a little jerky and got worse while I was off seeking Rosyside Dace on the boundary of the Ohio and Potomac drainages in Somerset County. Babied it over the Divide and back and stopped off at the NAPA store in the morning before the event to get some ATF to top off the transmission and sought out my friend the Historian who is also a former industrial millwright and some what good mechanic. We diddled with the problem and could not get the place to pour in new fluid open. We weren't even sure it it was the right place so rather than risk screwing things up I opted to take it somewhere to get it taken care of.

My friend figured as long as I took it easy, it should get me around a while so I went ahead to the Tea Party which at the time was being held at the old airport near Brushy Run Battlefield, now running late because the doors open at 11:00 and it was 10 after. After a few holdups with a couple pokey Joes, tractors and someone hauling a backhoe along the way, I was ready to quit again, assuming it was getting too late and they really didn't have any really exciting names like Herman Cain, Rose Thennet (talk show co-host with Quinn of local fame) or Brad Sussman the meteorologist who spoke at the previous Tea Party at that location in April. But after I had gotten there I was glad to have stayed the course.

Turned out to be a really great event and I was not late after all. They were still parking cars on the grass along the runway leading down to the temporary stage. I even got to meet one of the pre-event speakers; Marc Scaringi, the young "constitutional conservative" candidate who was going to run for the republican ticket for a shot at Pennsylvania's other Senate seat held then and now by democrat Bob Casey. He just walked up with his entourage to where I was sitting in the grass to say "Hi"! And they liked my sign:

A slogan inspired by the reading of Atlas Shrugged during one of the snowpocalyptic winters of recent lore which at times seemed very much like some of the natural disasters described in the novel. His assistant took a picture of us standing with the sign and we all agreed that it pretty much summed up what our current government is all about. I also managed to put in a good word on behalf of the reptile and fish hobbies—with an old quote from Rush Limbaugh in regard to threatened and endangered species; "Let some people privatize them so other people don't pulverize them"! Was hoping I might have finally planted a seed for a cause that is dear to me and many of my fellow hobbyists and what could in addition to advancing conservation of rare species by way of financial incentives and free flow of information that is being stifled by the contraband approach—it would also advance the general cause of human Freedom. I don't think conservatives and many libertarians for that matter are aware of us and what we are capable of accomplishing or what we know that can give them ammunition to debunk the arguments of our common foes.

Scaringi was a really cool fellow and it is regrettable that he did not survive the primaries and we are still stuck with Bob Casey. Being a realist—I know a label like "Constitutional Conservative" or "Tea Party favorite" is no guarantee that a candidate will hold true to the principles he or she ran on. There are a lot of former "Tea Party favorites—we all remember Scott Brown who went soft on Obama Care and other things—good riddens. And Marco Rubio and Michele Bachmann have disappointed a lot of tea partiers lately. And let us not forget PAs other Senator; republican Pat Toomey who turned into a squish recently—caving on the Second Amendment and was last heard refusing to support the defunding of Obama Care.

At times I want to give up and things have not changed that much in two years time—but like it was then—I somehow manage to keep going.

There was a gun guy at the event and a conservative comedian who gave the lowdown of his progressive fellows in the entertainment media and I learned a new term—actually not all that new—from another speaker who quoted Daniel Webster : Designing Men. America's early intellectuals had the likes of today's progressives in mind since they obviously are 'Designing men"—and women—with designs on the lives and property of others.

Best speaker that day by far was an old German—sic—Austrian lady by the name of Kitty Werthmann—from Forum Eagle, I believe—who gave her testimonial of life growing up under National Socialism. When she was a child in Austria of the 1930s, they had 25% unemployment and the same percentage of inflation and things were looking grim. They saw Germany next door prospering under Hitler so the majority of the people voted the Nazi Party into power and then came the Anschluss where they invited the Germans in and merged the two countries. An Obama supporter of today would have loved all the free stuff the Nazis handed out. Those willing to sign their lives away were given employment, housing and food rations, free cars. Young men got motorcycles. There was legislation similar to an "Equal Rights Amendment" which sounded good but the real intent was to force women out of the home and into the workplace because they needed everyone working to keep National Socialism afloat and even more important: to get the childern away from parents and into state run day care where they could be indoctrinated and turned into loyal and obedient citizens. And no mean feat given all the fun activities and free stuff to bribe them with.

And free health care. Doctors and hospitals were overwhelmed and the same kind of long waits and other horror stories told by those familiar with socialized medicine in Canada, the UK and other countries. The same as what is likely in store with the coming implementation of Obama Care. The hypercondriacs and other moochers came out in droves to take advantage of the system which was very inefficient depite the myths propagated about national socialism and fascism by American progressives who were quite enamored with it during the time.

Of course the Gestapo was efficient at setting up sting operations to catch people cheating the rationing systems and turn them into informants to catch others.

Then there was the subject of guns. The Nazis at first pushed for registration because of all the ongoing violence and murders. Then they came back because the policy did not work and called for all weapons to be confiscated. Reworking this story a few years later—Mrs Werthmann's history lesson on the rise of the Third Reich is disturbingly prophetic. After the recent wave of mass shootings that contemporary politicians attempted to seize upon as an excuse to water down the Second Amendment even more and the ensuing shortages of ammo—I regret not heeding her advice sooner. She was urging everyone to buy guns and ammo. I did take her seriously enough to price a shotgun in the way home—which I ended up buying a few months later. But I didn't want to load up on ammo until I had a safe—now it's way more costly—when I can get it—and 22 caliber is especially hard to come by! The shelf at Walmart is usually bare.

Left before the final presentation—a speaker for a Christian outreach to Muslims because I was not feeling well. A headache from the heat despite drinking plenty of fluids. Would have been interesting to hear that guy but sitting in a long line of cars waiting to get out would have aggravated my condition and perhaps my car problem as well. Made it home after a stop at the gun store, and a visit to the Redneck Chateau to talk briefly to the local "Historian". Also made an appointment to get the car take care of the following day.

Looking back, that was a memorable weekend in a memorable year for the Tea Party as well as other things. Going a little off topic—the expedition mentioned above was a smashing success despite the high mortality of the specimens collected due to the hot weather. I lost most of the adult fish—giving credence to the pun—"Decline-ostomous" on the genus name Clinostomous by others who had bad luck with them. But I still had plenty of younger fish and a shot at spawning them later. Also had two Rosysides , now pickled in Old Crow that were caught from a stream west of the drainage divide—a possible range extension of a fish from the Atlantic Slope to the Ohio drainage either by bait bucket release or possibly natural processes. Which I detailed in a series of communications to friends as part of a work I hope to eventually publish one day for the benefit of fish hobbyists and others interested in natural history.

Before closing, there is a significant talking point for this thread that almost got omitted: People who don't like private beaches.

My last day at work before that break, I had a conversation with someone related to vacations. while talking about trips to Ocean City and other places on the Atlantic shore she was lamenting that many of the places where one could freely go are now privately owned and off limits to public access. I said that she might feel differently if she owned beachfront property. The idea that beaches are somehow different by virtue of their recreational appeal to the mass population is the same as any other claim by the political left—or statists of any stripe for that matter—on the income, property or lives of others in the name of the common good. A hard sell for someone of a working class background in a blue state but there may be hope. She was last heard a few days ago grumbling about Obama Care.

As for the guy I debated on the eve of an earlier Tea Party; who appeared at times to be quoting strait out of the Gospels of Marx and John Maynard Keynes—I am not so sure.

Because so many people tend to think that way, I really fear for my country. Populism of this sort is truly the seedbed of Tyranny. Those were the kind of people who got in line for all the freebies from the Nazis in Germany and Austria and ratted on their neighbors out of sheer envy or malice, or for incentives like extra food rations or having charges for various infractions dropped by the Gestapo.

The same kind of people who think others shouldn't be able to own fish, and other pets or even land for that matter—let alone private beaches! Jealous, low achieving plebes who rally around a tyrant looking forward to him forcing everyone else to conform and share in their misery.

Ayn Rand was onto something when she wrote "The Virtue of Selfishness". Unfortunately many people, even some libertarians misunderstood the message. An interesting website I've discovered. Perhaps topic for another day.

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