Like this:

Why, pray tell, do conservatives just have this infatuation with the American revolution?  I understand it’s the birth of our nation and what not, but these people, A) a lot of times don’t really know much about the revolution, and B) have a sick obsession bordering on mental illness.  So I did a living history event in Orem Utah last night (for those of you who don’t know, Orem and Utah county in general is about as conservative as it gets) for the fourth of July.  I should’ve seen the red flags since it was called the 1776 Freedom Village, but no, of course not.  This wasn’t actually terrible, and isn’t the thing I wanted to rant about; however, there was a “native american,” (like Iriquois or Huron, not Sioux or Cheyenne) that was clearly white.  This isn’t super uncommon unfortunately, but this guy was creative, he had painted his skin a brownish red, in order to look like a real indian.  I think this is incredibly offensive, but I could be wrong.  Anyway, this guy had painted his face, hands, arms, feet, legs, etc. he went all out, it was just a bit odd when his skin color was rubbing off on his white shirt.

Anyway.  My mom is obsessed with the founding fathers (thank Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck for that one), and thinks that since I point out their faults, and don’t like John Adams or Andrew Jackson (I know Jackson wasn’t really a founding father, but to her, he is), I therefore hate America, and might even be Muslim.  OK I made the last part up ha ha.  I was trying to explain to her that Adams thought that the president should be like royalty, referred to as “your highness,” and so on.  He thought that the American people couldn’t be trusted to rule themselves and that smart people like him needed to.  She replied with “well you think you’re really smart, and you do know a lot, a lot more than me, but I know that they were good men!” I’m completely baffled as to how to respond to that, obviously logic doesn’t work, merely appeals to emotion, and only if they’re from a neo-con.

So the revolution.  The conservatives I know seem to be all about the revolution, and 1776, and “no taxation without representation!”  So they love the revolution I think because it was a states’ rights movement, and because it was a war against taxes.  The states’ rights part first, so the whole state sovereignty argument was basically rendered obsolete/useless/dumb in April of 1865 at the end of the civil war.  Heck, even the states’ rightists’ patron saint, Jefferson, wasn’t all that much for states’ rights.  He always talked about it, and how a state could nullify any federal law, but then he got elected president, and realized that doesn’t work.  He passed an embargo, which if any one state were to say they were nullifying it, it would be completely ruined.  Also, the war on taxes.  I get that you don’t like taxes, I really do, but the government has to pay for roads somehow.  Oh ya, and we also have to pay for those little trips to Afghanistan and Iraq that so many of our nations’ young men and women seem to love taking so much.  So I read an article today about how the tea-party has adopted Calvin Coolidge as one of their patron saints too, because he was so anti-taxes.  See the thing about ol’ Silent Cal, is that the Great Depression was totally his fault, not to mention he was a major supporter of the Klan.  He made huge tax cuts, and drastically downsized the government, and removed all kinds of market regulations.  See that made for a decade of massive prosperity, but after that we took a major downturn, that somehow conservatives are blaming on FDR, I’ve yet to figure that one out, but maybe someone can enlighten me.

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