Sunset's Coming
or
The Sunset Pledge
by Don "Free Traveler" Childers
[email protected]

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

We, the People of the Baby Boom Generation, hereby place our Federal employees on notice that the generation that shouted a resounding NO! to you over the Vietnam war, demanded true equality for all, and refused you permission to dictate what we could smoke or who we could sleep with, is looking over your shoulder again—and we don't like what we see.

It almost worked. We got so side-tracked by the effort to survive in the world you were running, both of us working, leaving our kids in your care so that we could earn all the taxes you demanded to keep your programs growing, in some nefarious cancer-like organization that now eats almost exactly half of what we produce in taxes. You wonder why women joined the workforce and broke up the nuclear family? You stand in front of the camera and posture at the loss of the American Family, never admitting your taking of half of our productivity as the cause.

And while we were both out working so hard to pay your bills, did you do a good job of educating our children? Please, let's not even go there. In 1953, when you decided you needed a Department of Education, our educational system was the best in the world. Now, 54 years later, our kids are ranked 24th out of 29 industrialized nations in practical math skills.

Look what you did with equal rights. . . you've got us all pissed off at each other, by taking a noble idea and twisting it to make quotas, keeping good people from getting jobs they fit because of the color of their skin, but just in a different way than it was when we started. Maybe you've had a good laugh at our consternation that such a good idea has been made so horribly wrong. Well, this is notice that we know who screwed that up, too, and you better get it straightened out, fast.

Meanwhile, you decided we needed a huge standing army, contrary to the wishes of our founding fathers, so you supported other gangs of thugs across the sea by shipping them our wheat, to justify the army you were building. If they were such a threat to our way of life, you could have just let them starve to death.

Now you warn us of a terrorist threat, one that you created by sending our children to 150 countries around the world to spread your vision of right and wrong. Poke a stick in that many hornet nests for that long, and eventually you're gonna get stung. And we haven't forgotten that before they were our enemies, you were training and financing Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and a whole string of eventual villians before that. We've noticed, too, that it's really you, the politicians, that all these enemies are upset at, not us. If you've got a problem with somebody, fight your own battles. No more taking our kids and grandkids to force your miserable vision of the future on the rest of the world.

You've militarized our internal police, creating a class of Jack-Booted Thugs who think "serving a warrant" is synonymous with "home invasion", and given them a whole class of "criminals" to practice on by making it illegal to smoke a weed. What made you think you had the authority to do that anyway, when prohibition required a Constitutional Amendment? Are every one of you too dense to recognize that the gangsters of Prohibition have been replaced by the gangs of the Drug War, and that the War On Drugs has met with every bit as much success as Prohibition? An Amendment would have made it possible for We, The People to have stood up and said "Enough!", but we have no recourse. Meanwhile, you steal from us to build more prisons, making us the most incarcerated population on the planet, and half the inmates are there for crimes you've created to justify your increasing war of terror against your employers.

Oh, and what are you doing snuggled up to Big Business, including Big Oil? You know we wanted alternate energy explored, and instead, the Illinois Department of Energy is threatening one of us with prison time because he's running his car on used vegetable oil instead of gasoline. Are they upset because it's environmentally dangerous or puts our energy policy under the control of Big Grease? No, they're mad because he's not paying gasoline tax. Pay attention, idiots, he's not using any gasoline!

Consider notice served. You think you had problems in the sixties? We're back, and we're bad, and we've got the bucks to kick some serious ass this time around. You think we were mad when you wanted to ship us to Vietnam? Well, we're awake again, and we're going to be a lot more protective of our grandbabies than we were of our children. Try to sell tear-gassing a bunch of gray-haired grannies to the world press and you'll really come off looking like loons.

The handwriting is already on the wall. Look at all the positive reactions you're getting from telling us we can't smoke a doobie when we want to, even if our doctor says it's a good idea and our state legislature says it's okay with them. You're starting to look an awfully lot like the Gestapo, and even those of us who are most asleep still remember those were the bad guys in the movies our parents watched.

All the time you were making us both work, you promised us you'd take care of us in our old age, and we're starting to hear rumblings that you're not going to be able to afford that. Well, guess what? You own almost half of everything in the country, including more than half the land in several western states and that whole damn city you write your rules in. Look at all the limos and cool toys you've bought yourself, all the stuff you've let police agencies steal by claiming it was used while breaking one of the rules you made up but apparently don't have to follow. Guess it's time for one hell of a yard sale.

Each and every one of you, from King George on down, have taken an oath of service. You've made a pledge on your sacred honor to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. We suggest you read it. Since you've used your lawyers and weasel-word definitions for so long, read it closely. Interpret it the way you'd expect it to be interpreted if you were on the receiving end, instead of the two-faced way you've been interpreting it up till now. Forget your fancy arguments about the "General Wellfare Clause" and that "Armed Militia" bullshit. You may get the Supremes to parrot your party line, but we are your peers, too. . . and a jury of your peers will not judge lightly the way you've played with words all these years. Amnesty ends soon, and after that you will be held accountable.

You've done a great job of "bait and switch," but the game is over. We know the real problem isn't terrorists, or drugs, or commies, or the Nazis. The problem certainly isn't the blacks, or the whites, or the chicanos, as you want each group to believe about the other. No, the problem is you, the politicians who have turned your jobs into featherbeds, while you expect us to sleep on the floor. The problem is the lawyers who write the Unconstitutional laws for the politicians, the Judges who interpret them with no reference to their contract with We, The People, and the Jack-Booted Thugs who hold the guns to our heads to force us to swallow this travesty you call Justice in this land you claim is Free.

Here's the way it is. Let Our People Go!, as an earlier wise bearded man said to another Emperor long ago, or there will be hell to pay. The 2008 election is the line in the sand. We're not getting any younger, and we want this fixed before we "shuffle off this mortal coil". Offer us some employees we can hold our heads up about, ones who understand this letter in the core of their being, and they can take this huge mess you've built and get us back to the small, Constitutional Republic of a national goverment our forefathers intended, instead of the bad remake of The Empire of Rome you've been producing lately.

Yes, all those bureaucrats you hired are going to have to get real jobs, and they'll have to give some to charity to take care of those who honestly can't work, but they won't be paying for a whole army of accountants backed up by an army of soldiers and a huge prison system to make sure they pay their fair share, so their fair share will be a lot smaller than the 50% you've been taking from all of us.

It's sunset time for all your big schemes. It's time to get out of out pockets, out of our bedrooms, and out of the raising of our children. No more money for foreign adventures at our expense. No more money for bridges to nowhere. No more money for schemes to make us all wear a tracking badge under the guise of protecting us from people who hate you and people who want to come here to live. Simply require proof of citizenship for any of your redistribution schemes, and you've solved the illegal immigrant problem without breaking a sweat. Do we have to micro-manage everything, or are you starting to get the idea?

It's sunset time for the thousands of pork-barrel projects that you've attempted to justify with your fancy weasel-words, stealing from each of us to buy our votes. It's sunset time for your foreign adventures that have cost us so many of our children, before you devour more of our grandbabies. It's sunset time for rules for the rest of us that you choose not to follow yourselves. It's sunset time for turning our children and grandchildren into unthinking zombies who know how to listen to authority, stay in line, and placidly accept a chip in place of the tattoo that undesirables were given by past governments like the one you're trying to build.

We have time, now. . . time to stand in long lines, time to be really confused about any bureaucratic process you want to put us through, time to waste your bureaucrat's time so that they have less time to harass those you still keep too busy to think. We have time to march in the streets now. We have time and money to defend our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, as you have pledged, and failed, to do. Will the world look kindly on a government that treats its elderly to a new Tienneman Square?

And, to remind you, you're going to start seeing a lot of sunsets. Every sunset you see as a lapel pin, every sunset you see as you paw through our email without a warrant, or see posted on a website, will be a reminder to you that your job is forfeit in 2008 if you don't grow up and start acting like adults. Sunset graffiti and sunset stickers will remind you that we have had enough.

If we have to, we now have the time to form sunset clubs, organize sunset sit-ins, tackle sunset education projects to help everyone be awareof how you've stolen from us for so long. We have time for sunset demonstrations, if it has to be that way, and there are even those of us who will form sunset squads, if it comes to that.

The treason will end now, and if we must help you understand the Constitution and Bill of Rights, as written, not as interpreted by Nine Old Folks in Robes who have a vested interest in keeping control out of the hands of "We, The People", we've got the time, and the energy, and the funds, to assist in that education.

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