Gov. Rick Perry was talking about America’s problems to fraternity students at Dartmouth College.
He said: “Our founding fathers never meant for Washington, D.C., to be the fount of all wisdom. As a matter of fact they were very much afraid of that because they’d just had this experience with this far-away government that had centralized thought process and planning and what have you, and then it was actually the reason that we fought the revolution in the 16th century was to get away from that kind of onerous crown if you will.”
There are two kinds of errors in that statement. First, the war was fought in the 18th century. He was just a couple of hundred years off. That’s the kind of slip a person can make when his tongue is in gear but his mind isn’t. It can be forgiven.
The second error was far more troubling. The governor said we decided to declare independence from England and fight to back up that decision because we didn’t like the centralized government that a monarchy produces. That explanation fits right in with Gov. Perry’s opposition to the federal government of the United States. But it is a grossly inaccurate explanation of the causes of the American Revolution.
As any Tea Party member will happily explain, Americans revolted because they wanted to keep the wealth they were producing and run their own affairs. They not only resented the heavy tax on tea and the grants of their land the British king handed out to his cronies, but they also were tired of kowtowing to Redcoats, British governors and British companies and decided to send them back home.
Maybe Gov. Perry knows this and ignored the facts to make an anti-government point. But maybe he actually hasn’t bothered to learn much about our nation’s beginnings.
One must hope that any Dartmouth students who were truly listening walked away from that meeting shaking their heads and muttering, “that guy isn’t smart enough to be president.”
Yep.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
