Samuel Adams:

It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.

Samuel Adams was tied to the original tea party movement in this country, the one that led to a British naval blockade on the Boston port. Disguised colonial freedom activists dumped tea in the bay. Other tea shipments sat unused in the cargo holds of ships that could not be unloaded due to the refusal of dock hands to perform the labor. What was the big sin that so riled New England and other colonial citizens? Was it a tax that made tea unbearable to buy? Not at all.

The tax that so outraged the American Colonists was a corrupt bargain. In fact on the issue of taxes, many taxes that were hated by the colonists had been lifted by the British parliament. Seen as a finger in the eye, the Tea tax was a statement by parliament that not only basically said, “Not only can we tax you dirty colonists but we will.”

To make this statement more palatable to supposed subservient citizenry, parliament made a tax arrangement with suppliers of the East India Trading Company that actually made the tea cheaper for the colonists. The EIT Co. would  supply tea to the colonists at tremendous discounted wholesale cost and the British government would then subsidize the suppliers with revenue from a tax placed on the tea. The resulting cost of the tea was cheaper than it would have otherwise been.

It may have been cheaper tea, but it was unacceptable government to a large minority of citizen colonists. It was a finger in their eye. It was a matter of principle to principled people. The parliament had made a corrupt bargain that, leading to cheaper tea, also would lead to a cheap purchase of individual freedom from colonist British citizens who could not have a vote in parliament and could not effect future taxes and potential corrupt bargains.

Samuel Adams:

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.

It was the Lockean notion of Natural Law that sparked the grassfires of freedom in the American colonies. No intellectual elite in a far-off capital could trump the natural freedom of people in the dominion of the elites, true. Still, natural law meant more.

Justice was equally important. The British government had made corrupt bargains with one group in favor and others not in its favor. It was not the outcome that was important, but the injustice of taxing one to pay another and to take from the justice-minded colonist his voice to appose the injustice.

The colonist minority activists had but one recourse. “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” This was treason to the crown! To the minority freedom activist colonists it was treason to natural law to allow liberty to erode further.

Spontaneous opposition arises from the grassroots of a society in a democratic republic. From the extreme cases of the Boston Tea Party to the Contras of Nicaragua or from simple voter revolutions like the ascendancy of Andrew Jackson to the election of Ronald Reagan. In these cases, the people felt like they were having freedom taken away from them or their fellow citizens. They felt that they were being abused and that their nation was being destroyed.

We are seeing a spontaneous grassroots movement catching fire. President Obama is already, according to some of the more creditable polls, one of the most unpopular presidents at this time in his presidency since these running polls have been taken. He is more unpopular 6 months into his first term than the two Bushes, Carter, and Nixon. Though the legacy media will continue to slobber over Obama and make him out be the most popular president ever to fill the office, the grass is beginning to burn out here in the real America.

Hats off to Lee Cary, writing in the American Thinker “The Obama Resistance Grows”. He has clearly outlined the growing distrust of Obama. Many didn’t know him or what to expect and his empty rhetoric sounded sugary to them. Now, they have been shown what a true ideologue does with taxes, healthcare, global warming scares, and economic crisis. They have heard “We need it right now” too many times and are now suspicious of any such proclamation. So, they begin to investigate more the details of the “emergency legislation” and find the decaying skeletons in the closet.

The grassroots resistance sees politicians defaming their spirited opposition as an artificial movement payed for by lobbyists when they are making the effort to leave work early to attend events. They hear the speaker of the house literally say that she doesn’t care what they think—this in a free representative republic. They hear that their politicians are beginning to cancel town-hall appearances for fear to meet up with their own constituencies.

As their representatives become more aloof the Grass gets dryer and the fire spreads further and hotter throughout the population. Those of us that saw this socialism and elitism coming can only hope that this is the spontaneous combustion of the American will.

Update

Watch as an AARP representative, ignorant or a liar, proceeds to deny AARP’s official endorsement of the Obama healthcare plan. She is rude, condescending, and hypocritical. When the audience shows its passionate knowledge, she leaves the podium then later unplugs the microphone when she can’t simply talk over the audience at will. The outrage—if you can call it that, being very civil on the part of the audience—is a complete alignment of opposition of disparate people with disparate lives and it is completely spontaneous.  Kudos to MichelleMalkin.com for pointing this YouTube video out…