Don't Retread Me

"Don't Tread on Me"

I see that motto a lot, usually on pick-up trucks. I see flags bearing the phrase when I’m driving country roads. Today, I saw them on the streets in front of the Michigan State Capital.

The implication is that government is walking all over us, crushing our spirit, controlling our lives.

The motto dates back to the American Revolution era when England was, in fact, walking all over the colonists, crushing their spirit and controlling their lives.

The colonists had real grievances and that flag and motto served the purpose of uniting all Americans to rise up against their common enemy.

The problem with commandeering another cause’s slogan is that even if there are some similarities, no two causes—or their grievances—are alike. Sometimes, slogans may be hijacked for no other reason than a fondness for a good slogan. 

In the first place, our government isn’t really treading on anyone—not the way the Crown was treading on the colonists back then. We may not be happy with everything our governments do, but everything they’re doing is for our welfare, or at least that appears to be their intention. Some governments are better than others.

I honestly don’t think any governors enjoy shutting down their state’s economies the way King George III enjoyed slapping a tax on tea.

Possessing freedom will not prevent bad things from happening. A freely elected government to deal with bad things happening did not exist in colonial days. Today, we have a voice in government.  We can change our leaders if we don’t like them. 

Accusing them of treading all over us simply because we don’t like the things they are doing in behalf of our welfare seems a little extreme.

Protesting has been in the American DNA from before the revolution right up until this day. We have always had a voice and never been afraid to use it. What we need, before we use that voice, is a legitimate cause.

Blacks have had legitimate causes—demanding their freedom from the bonds of slavery, the right to vote, access to a justice system that doesn’t discriminate against them. They have used their voices to demand solutions.

Over the course of our nation’s first century, woman used their voices to demand universal suffrage. The last century has seen them fighting for social and economic equality.

Immigrants have always had to fight to be treated as full-fledged citizens and not just workers keeping the rest of us happy. They rightly believed they deserved happiness, too.

The LGBTQ community in recent years have stood up and demanded their voices be heard.

Most recently, high school students have united and gone public with their demands for safer schools and meaningful gun laws. They have been met by 2^nd Amendment advocates and gun enthusiasts, using among others, the all-too common “Don’t tread on me,” slogan to protect them from being forced to do things that protect others.

All these groups have resorted to slogans, peaceful protest, and sometimes in-your-face protests to actually attain the freedoms they were guaranteed. They may have carried flags or signs saying, “Don’t tread on me,” but generally their demands were more specific.

“Don’t tread on me” is just too damn easy. It’s nothing short of laziness on the part of people who simply don’t like being told what to do by elective representatives, the very right  we fought for and won in the Revolutionary War. Those forefathers waging that fight did so with the nation’s welfare in mind, not their own.

“Don’t tread on me,” morphs into a pitiful, “Don’t pick on me,” when offered up by one group in America that has never been picked upon.

Whenever I see a young white male at the wheel of a pickup with a gun rack in the back and a “Don’t tread on me” sticker on the window, or marching in front of a State House carrying a “Don’t tread on me” flag, my immediate thought, is “Give me a break.”

Don’t plagiarize real patriots from three centuries ago. Tell me what you want. Do you want the right to die from a disease that can only reach you through one of your co-workers? Do you really want the freedom to put your family at risk, because you’re tired of elective officials telling you what to do? Do you think your forefathers risked everything so you could have the right to risk everything?

Carrying “Don’t Tread on Me” flags make as much sense as reviving and carrying around signs bearing the “Lock Her Up” slogan. Sadly, those lame signs could also be found at the Michigan protest. What I didn’t see anywhere was the Michigan state flag, which contains the Latin word “Tuebor.”  Tuebor means, I will protect. I wonder how many protesters are aware of this.

It’s enough to make one long for the good old days of 1776, when protesters not only had legitimate grievances, but were willing to take real risk to find solutions to those grievances; not just make noise. They also had creative and original slogans to support their cause, not 300-year-old retreads.

No one is treading on you. People smarter than you are merely trying to protect you, to save your life.

Fourth of July—the way our forefathers intended it to be

There are probably a dozen different ways to celebrate the Fourth of July, but this year I found myself focusing on only two. One I actually participated in and the other, an imagined Tea Party rally based on what I’ve garnered from the nightly news over the past four years.

Both celebrations included flags, lots of them, often incorporated into shirts and vests, but everything else about the two happenings were very different.  

The Tea Party party I envisioned in my head featured a number of speakers who called for taking back the government—from whom, no one would say. They also touched on the notion that our president is a dictator; that our unemployed—once productive workers when they were working have somehow morphed into lazy moochers now that their jobs are gone; and that the immigrants flowing across our borders are a different, substandard class than the ones most of us are descended from.

The speakers were confident that once this government take-back was accomplished, taxes would go down, the economy go up, roads will become drivable again, and the nanny state will get off our backs—freeing us all up to become the millionaires we were always meant to be. We will again be a nation of God-fearing, patriotic, self-reliant rugged individuals like the ones that built this nation into what it is today before all the losers started tearing it down into what it is today.

It goes without saying that there was a multitude of guns present, which any freedom loving American will tell you is the cornerstone of a strong free nation—not to mention, the lynchpin of a strong economy.

The Fourth of July celebration that I actually attended took place in the community of Brockport, New York along the banks of the Erie Canal. It consisted mostly of farmers from the neighboring towns or men and women who used to work at the nearby Kodak plants before those in charge cashed in their chips leaving Rochester’s industrious workers to fend for themselves. These people now worked in the local businesses that dotted the area more known for its cabbage, corn, and fruit crops. In spite of the hard times that have bedeviled this area for the last 20 years or so, everyone seemed to be having a good time.

Because the real world they lived in kept them from trouncing around the country all the time, and they were too practical to invest in something they could wear only once a year, I saw a lot of overalls but no tri-corned hats.

The flags at my real celebration were your basic “Stars and Stripes.” I didn’t see a single “Don’t Tread on me” or any flags with images of Sarah Palin. There were no Confederate flags because even though New York fought in the Civil War, New Yorkers choose to associate with the war that won our independence, not the war that almost tore our nation apart.

The Brockport celebration didn’t depend on outside agitators with agendas to carry the day but rather on locals with unbounded spirit. Instead of incensing the crowd with rhetoric, they inspired us with song—patriotic music performed by community choruses and ensembles and, of course, the world famous Brockport High School band. Each performance, no matter the group, included present members, future members and alumni from across the nation. To my untrained eye, the adults, young adults, children and senior citizens seemed to value each other’s contributions.

One highlight was a medley of service songs, calling on those in attendance to stand when their anthem was played. This was as military as it got. There was no discussion of America’s involvement or lack of involvement in overseas struggles.

Our president wasn’t insulted. He wasn’t accused of being too weak, too strong, too hardheaded, or too indecisive. It wasn’t even suggested that he is un-American. In essence, the whole affair seemed to be a celebration of America and not a condemnation of Americans.

I didn’t speak to anyone during my stay in Brockport who wasn’t a hunter or didn’t own a gun; but I saw no firearms. And there didn’t appear to be any militias present, although everyone seemed capable of defending themselves and property. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, was exercising his or her own second amendment right to own and bear arms but apparently, the right to own and bear arms does not entail making a spectacle of yourself. 

I came away from the two events—one witnessed in person and the other seared into my brain by three or four years of news reports, with one very intriguing question about America.

Why do people who proclaim to love their country seem to hate their president, government and fellow citizens so much?