Why Do You Make The Big Bucks?

Back when I was building things for a living, I had these two laborers on the jobsite who were constantly trying to either get out of doing their assigned tasks or take credit for someone else's production.  Their names: James Carter and Willie Clinton.

Seriously, if they'd have been state road-working employees, they'd have been outfitted with upside-down shirt pockets, so the shovels they'd be leaning on would have a place to catch and keep them from toppling over when/if they fell asleep standing up.

One day, I saw them talking with each other and was wondering what they were up to, when Willie walked over to me.  He said, "We was wondering why it is that you make the big bucks."

I asked him if he didn't consider it possible that I earned more because I was willing to take on more responsibility and answer for my errors or wrong decisions instead of blaming someone else or some seismic anomaly, that I came to work prepared to do those things required to help my employer be successful, and that I considered his success was a good thing worth working for, and that I actually work harder and more efficiently than anyone else on that jobsite, and that I show up for work even when I don't feel like it, or because I do things myself that others in my charge cannot or will not do?

"No," he said, "I don't think that's why.  I think there's something else."

"You're right," I said, "come here and I'll show you why I make the big bucks."

I walked over to a block wall that had been poured solid with concrete, and held my open hand in front of it.

"Now ball your fist, and hit my hand as hard as you can."

In a rare moment of compliance (or maybe it was just that he was willing to seize upon any opportunity to take a whack at me), Willie did just that.  And I pulled my hand back, as he bloodied his knuckles on the unforgiving wall.

"That," I said to Willie, "is why I make the big bucks."

I watched Willie walk back to where Jimmy had been waiting expectantly.

Jimmy: "What'd he say, what'd he say?"

Willie then held his palm up in front of his own face and said, "hit my hand."

I chose those names in this tale because we've recently had a couple of former US Presidents by similar names inject themselves into the national discussion as if they're some kind of authority on, get this, the Tea Party and its emerging force as a voice for, and of, America.

Back in April, Slick Willie claimed that the Tea Party was "dangerous,"  but this past week was heard listing things "they" may be good for, peering professorially (and condescendingly) over his bifocals.  And Jimmy the peanut head recently suggested that Tea Party rallies were a lot like his own Presidency.

Wow.  Things are so bad now for the Corruptocrats that the two most-recent, most egregious examples of Presidential ineptitude not named Obama are swimming hard as hell to get in front of the wave, in an effort to deflect the reality that honest, law-abiding citizens who never envisioned themselves at a political rally, are indeed rallying to protest all the big-government intrusion and dependency that these two fostered and perpetuated their entire political lives.  Next thing you know, Owl Gore will be claiming to have invented the Tea Party.

It isn't a single person that gives the Tea Party ralliers their drive and focus, it's the result of caging good people in an ever-deepening invasion of statism.  The more those statists try to put their own brand on the Tea Party movement or belittle and ridicule its participants, or infiltrate those ranks with nutcases bent on smear tactics, the more they succeed in only defining themselves for everyone paying attention as the real enemies of America.  Like that bumper sticker said, "If they don't want civil disturbance, why do they keep disturbing us?"  The answer is that they just don't get it.

Power, for the statist, is the only thing that matters.  More laws and more regulations equals more authority and control.  Kinda like if I'd have let Willie and Jimmy have a "boss-for-a-day" experiment on the job, these folks have taken the past 23 months and proven just how inept and corrupt and un-American and rabidly evil they can be, given such unbridled authority.

The thing they did not count on was that good people maybe wouldn't sit silently while their country was sabotaged by its government.  We've seen the harm you can, and will, bring to our economy and national security, and individual liberty.  It would seem that enough good Americans weren't numb or asleep or addicted to your benevolence, despite the hardiest efforts of your assumed intelligensia and media, and none of your twists and perversions and slander come as a surprise to us now.

Anything other than finding useful occupation outside and away from public scrutiny, now that we've all seen you for what you truly are, only serves to reinforce our understanding of your destructive motivation, and the inherent danger therein.

...And for all those folks out there who were duped by empty Democratic rhetoric, Dennis Prager has a spot-on essay for overcoming emotional hurdles when it comes to "Danger on the right" at TownHall.com.  Please consider checking it out.