I watched this short video that I found at Michelle Malkin’s site:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As I watched this video, I had this very weird feeling that something was deeply, deeply wrong with this protest. It looks wrong.

I’m a child of the Vietnam era, and I’ve managed to keep my eye on the news — and the protests — for the 40 years since those Vietnam era protests. I know exactly what they’re supposed to look like. They’re supposed to be heavy with references to blood, whether in words, photographs or paint splatters. All this blood is meant to remind smug Americans sitting at home in front of their TV sets that evil Americans have, for decades, been spilling the blood of innocents. You know who those innocents are: Innocent North Vietnamese, innocent Hondurans, innocent AIDS victims, innocent rape victims, innocent South American communists, innocent Iraqi special forces, innocent Afghani victims, innocent mass murdering terrorist victims — all brutally slaughtered by an avaricious nation given to torture and deceit. Heck, as far as the Truthers are concerned, even the 9/11 victims were killed by Americans.

The look of the protest is wrong too. People should be dressed in dark clothing and have grotesque masks on, symbolic of America’s torture and rapine. Regardless of the march’s ostensible purpose, there should always be at least a sprinkling of signs likening Jews and Israeli to the Nazis and demanding the Jews’ imminent return to the gas chambers. As we learned during the last eight years, there should always be death threats against the president, provided that the President is George Bush. And, of course, the American flag should be burned, trampled, despoiled, desecrated and in all other ways treated to the humiliation due the symbol of the evil nation being protested.

So what’s with these wacky conservatives and their amateur attempt at gathering a couple of million people to march on the Capitol? They’re going about it all wrong. They’re wearing and waving the American flag as if they’re proud of it, and they’re spouting incredibly foolish notions that have absolutely nothing to do with America being evil or America murdering people. They’re also not excoriating Israel.

Here are just a few examples of these neophyte activists who seem to have absolutely no appreciation for the fact that the purpose behind a march on D.C. is to let everyone know how evil America is but. These guys seem weirdly stuck on archaic concepts such as freedom, self-governance, self-reliance, and informed representative government:

Liberate Don’t Regulate

No Government Controlled Health Care

Stop Spending My Future (with a baby picture)

We Are Not “Astroturf,” Not “A Mob, Not “Nazis.” We Are Fed Up.

Repeal What You Have Not Read

Socialism Sucks. Always Has. Always Will.

Dependency Is A Form Of Slavery (my favorite)

Socialism Is Not Freedom

Freedom Of The People, By The People, For The People

We Are . . . America

Got Common Sense?

Most peculiar of all, the marchers aren’t demanding (or fantasizing about) the President’s death. Sure, some of the signs are hostile to Obama (likening him to a self-styled monarch or a socialist), but they don’t liken him to a Nazi or demand his death. There are no paintings of him dripping blood, decapitated, or with bullet holes in his head. Those foolish marchers, unversed in the way of protests, seem merely to resent his overreach, without having any desire to threaten him personally.

As for me, I don’t know…. Let’s must hope that ordinary Americans, sitting in their living rooms, will be impressed with this amateur style of activism, one tied to love of country and freedom. Indeed, they may be so struck, as I was, by the bizarre look that this protest has, that they’ll actually sit up and pay attention to what the protesters are saying. We can dream, can’t we?

UPDATE: Can’t link because I’m on an iPHone, but Little Green Footballs shows that there was an ugly side to the protest. That doesn’t change the top notes of patriotism and liberty, but the ugly side was there too.

UPDATE II: In the interest of full disclosure, here’s the link to LGF. I find it interesting that the negative signs are Charles’ focus. I think that, while he continues to remain admirably strong with regard to Israel and the war against Islamic terrorism, he’s souring on the conservative movement generally. As for his umbrage at the sign to “Bury ObamaCare with Kennedy,” I don’t see that as being as offensive as he does. It’s an appropriate response to the fact that the Democrats leapt upon Kennedy’s death as a way to sell Obama Care.

UPDATE III by The Watcher: Apparently the nutroots think that pictures of the massive numbers of people is faked! They just can’t bring themselves to believe that that have been trumped by mob. Yeas, right wing extremists, that were coincidentally characterized as McCarthyite by a former DNC political strategist on FOX News. I say in response, that is a great strategy. These idiots on the left have spent so much time bashing the right and got away with it because the right just didn’t protest in the same manner. Bookworm has shown here that the right can protest; only better. Every time the left calls us names like racist, radical, unpatriotic, Nazi, wing nut and McCartyite they touch a raw nerve. I hope they aren’t paying attention because the 2010 elections are just around the corner and payback is due at the polls! It is time to take this country back. KICK THE BUMS OUT!

Here is a time lapse camera showing the protest. Watch it and weep lefty non-believers! (h/t Hot Air)

Click here to view the embedded video.

See Also: Gay Patriot: Yahoo! Ignores Million-Person Protest (for Freedom) on same page it Featured 150-Person Petition (against Cheney)

John Trumbulls Declaration of Independence

On July 4, 1776, American citizens made their Declaration of Independence known to the world. Although the bulk of the document is a catalog of very specific grievances against George III, the document is remembered for its stirring beginning, describing “unalienable” rights inherent in all human beings, as well as describing a government’s role in ensuring those rights:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But 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.

The enunciation of those core rights — “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” — was an almost staggering statement in 1776, when most of the world labored under the rule of despots.

In the 21st century, however, we tend to be rather blase about those same rights. We can no longer envision a world in which citizens had no say in the government, although their (heavy) taxes supported it; in which people were constrained to work in jobs by government diktat; and in which ultimate power rested in the government, not the people. Our representative democracy, coupled with the enormous freedoms of our daily lives, seem so natural, as if preordained. The result of this unthinking acceptance of these rights is that many of us are not even grateful for the blessings they confer, viewing the rights more as burdens, than benefits.

Why do I say this last? Because more and more people resent the fact that one has to work for the basic freedoms the Founders risked their lives to institute. Sometimes one has to fight and die for them. In a life wrapped in comforts (heated and air conditioned homes and cars, endless supplies of food, gadgets for every purpose), we’ve come to the point where we resent even the necessity of working hard and, perhaps, suffering a little to ensure those blessings in our lives.

“But,” I hear you ask, “what about those chickens? Where do chickens come into this?”

Before any feathers get ruffled, let me explain that the chickens I’m thinking of have nothing to do with cowardice. Instead, I’m thinking of the way in which chickens are raised in this country — factory farming versus free range (or cage free).

Factory farmed chickens do not live a good chicken life, and this despite the fact (or, perhaps, because of the fact) that all their basic needs are fulfilled. They are provided with all the food they need, which many might think is a good thing. They are protected from all dangers during the short chicken lives which, again, many might think is a good thing. They are doused with antibiotics to ensure their health. They need not fear any chicken hawks or foxes. Indeed, so protected are they that their beaks and claws are cut off to make sure they don’t injure either themselves or others. They even have private housing, one home per bird, if you consider housing decent when it is a teeny cage in which they cannot move. These chickens exist and are fully cared for, not to fulfill their own chicken destinies, but to enrich the farmer and feed the consumer.

If one were to apply a political-systems label to the factory farmed chickens, one would have to say that they live in a totalitarian state. While their basic needs are fulfilled (food, shelter and even health care), they have no freedom. Each of their liberties is constrained for the benefit of the state. They live, but they live without chicken joy.

Cage free (or free range chickens) live under a very different philosophy. Although they ultimately benefit the farmer and the consumer (with eggs and chicken flesh), the fact remains that, during their lives, they are allowed to fulfill their real destinies as chickens. They wander around, they scratch the ground, they flap their wings. They are fed, but they have to fight with the other chickens for access to the feed. They have access to shelter but, when the hawk comes, it’s their decision (and ability) to seek it. They are not stripped of their beaks and claws because they need those to live a chicken life. The farmer is responsible for protecting them against predators but, given the chicken’s freedom, it’s not always possible. Their lives are a bit riskier but, for chickens, infinitely more fulfilling.

Applying a political-systems label to the free range chickens is a bit more difficult, because they have freedom but (being chickens) no representation. Nevertheless, I’d say that their lives are more akin to the type of democracy the Founders envisioned, because they are given the means to live their lives to the fullest extent but, beyond that, they are subject to minimal farmer control. It is true that they are taxed (the farmer gets their eggs) and that their lives ultimately enrich the state (once they hit the chicken pot), but they are free in chicken terms.

What is so interesting to consider this July 4, half way through the first year of the first (and, one hopes, last) term of President Barack Obama, is what kind of chicken-farmer-in-chief he is turning out to be. Given his propensity for arugula-eating and Whole Food shopping, one would think that he would want to give the American people at least the same benefits he extends to his free range chickens: A fairly safe environment within which free range Americans can live their lives as they see fit.

All signs, though, are that President Obama is trying to turn the American people into caged birds. He wants us neatly boxed up, with the government/farmer dictating every aspect of our lives, right down to ensuring that we are unable to feed, house and defend ourselves without full government/farmer control. As with caged bird chickens, the American citizen lives to serve the American state not (as the Founders demanded) vice versa.

The whole foodies constantly remind us that this totalitarian regime is bad news for chickens. I would argue that it’s also bad news for Americans.

So this year, as you go to your fairs, watch your parades, have your barbeques, and delight in fire works, think about what the Declaration of Independence really means, and ask yourself this question: Do I want my government to give me more rights than the average chicken? If your answer is yes, spend the next year working hard to effect a change in the 2010 elections, and an Obama ouster in the 2012 elections.

This article is crossposted at Bookwormroom!