Freedom Line Blog

After our experience at the 9-12 March on Washington, there is a renewed push to turn that event into another way to persuade Congress that more government is not the answer to what troubles our nation.

If you have a message for your Representative or Senator, please send them here, by responding directly to the You Tube video.  This is a project of the National Taxpayers Union but the effort is shared by all taxpayers and all Americans concerned with runaway spending.

These messages will be burned onto a DVD and delivered to Congress during the current health care debate.  If Congress didn’t get the message during the rally, give it to them one more time.

Leftist author and weekly Wall Street Journal columnist Thomas Frank called CFIF out by name in his commentary last week, entitled “The Left Should Reclaim ‘Freedom.'”

Continuing his Wednesday morning habit of superficial analysis and juvenile critique, Frank attacked the previous weekend’s taxpayer march on Washington, D.C. that drew hundreds of thousands of everyday Americans.  The opening sentence of Frank’s denunciation summarizes his angst well, as he stated, “[t]here are few things in politics more annoying than the right’s utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word ‘freedom.'”  Nothing torments Frank more than the reality that everyday, middle-class Americans disfavor his leftist political agenda, so the taxpayer march had to be particularly painful for him.

He then identified CFIF by name in his futile attempt to justify reclamation of the term “freedom,” and engaged in his typical straw-man argumentation when he asserted, “that our ancestors could ever have understood freedom as something greater than the absence of the state would probably strike protesters as inconceivable.”  First, Frank should take a moment to contemplate the difference between anarchists, who seek “the absence of the state,” and conservatives.  And second, which “ancestor” does he cite as proof of his assertion?  Thomas Jefferson?  James Madison?  Abraham Lincoln?  John Locke?

No.  Norman Rockwell.  Now, we love Rockwell’s artistry as much as anyone, but one would think that even Frank could do better than that.

Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, we at CFIF can take pride in counting Thomas Frank amongst our antagonists.

Here’s another great video from the 9-12 march on D.C.  This is courtesy of our friends at Reason.

The 9-12 taxpayer rally was simply an amazing experience.  I arrived just before noon, having to endure a packed Metro ride full of taxpayers headed to the event.

It took about 30 minutes to walk from 12th and Pennsylvania to the Capitol.  Contrary to what some left-of-center pundits might say, the rally was not packed with crazies preaching secession.

The rally was full with ordinary taxpayers who drove thousands of miles for the rally.  I met a group from Georgia who drove through the night to attend the rally.  They planned to drive through the night again because they couldn’t afford to spend two nights in a hotel.  They weren’t paid off by anyone to come and this was actually the first protest they had ever attended.

This was not an AstroTurf rally.  The 9-12 rally was a legitimate expression of taxpayer frustration over reckless taxing and spending.  Estimates vary from 60,000 to 100,000, but whatever the number, the experience was amazing and the politicians in this city ought to listen.  As our friend Andrew Moylan noted, “Hell hath no fury like a taxpayer ignored.”

Here is some footage:

The official count, according to early news reports, is 60,000 people who have turned out for the 9-12 march on Washington.  But tune in to Fox News and I am pretty sure you’ll agree that it looks like a lot more.

Of course, House Democrats tried their hardest to diminish the significance of this event before it even started.  According to FoxNews.com, a House leadership aide penned a memo to fellow Dems warning that 2 million people could show.  The strategy?  Float a ridiculous number and anything less is failure.

These so-called leaders in Washington just don’t get it.  It is not a Democrat vs. Republican thing.  It’s not about which major political party can score the most political points.  This is about a bunch of ordinay people standing up for the principles on which this great country was founded. 

In addition to the 60,000 plus who have turned out in D.C., tens of thousands more are gathering in large cities and small towns across the country.  The more Washington politicians continue to play games and ignore the voice of the people, the larger this grassroots movement gets… and rightly so.