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.