The Quiet Conservative January 29, 2010
I Am Spartacus
The 1960 movie with Kirk Douglas called Spartacus gave rise to a cultural saying of "I am
Spartacus." In the movie when the slave uprising is crushed, the Roman conqueror stood before the
captured slave army and wanted to know which prisoner was the leader named Spartacus. Kirk
Douglas as Spartacus would be executed and the rest of the prisoners would be sent back into slavery.
Kirk stood up and said "I am Spartacus." The other slaves then began to stand up and yell "I am
Spartacus" because they were loyal to their leader and didn't want him killed. So, the Roman general
crucified them all.
This bit of the movie jumped into the public culture. A person would walk into a room and yell "I am
Spartacus." Then the people in the room would jump up and yell back "No, I am Spartacus." Thirty
nine years later you saw this cultural impact again with the 1999 Budweiser beer commercial "What's
up," or more accurately, "Wassup?" You walk into a room and say "Wasssup!" The people in the
room yell back "Wassup!" and brain cells die.
Eleven years later it's popping up again. After Massachusetts special election it is now: "I am Scott
Brown." Republicans all across the nation, who were trying to imitate Democrats only days earlier to
get elected, now stood up and said."Scott Brown! Scott Brown! Hey, I'm that guy. I'm just like him!
If you like that guy you are going to love me!" Fund raising emails were quickly sent out from every
advocacy group on the right saying that this was the next shot of Lexington and Concord. The new
American revolution has been launched and for your small contribution online you too can help Scott
Brown and us bring change you can believe in! So a politician walks in a room and says "I am Scott
Brown!" And the people look back at him and say "No, you are not. Tell us who you really are. Be
an individual. Stand up for your beliefs. Who are you really?" If there is any lesson to be learned, it
isn't being learned. For, more likely than not the politician will repeat "I am Scott Brown. Really. Trust
me."
Scott Brown seems like a peach of a guy. He certainly stood head and shoulders above Marcia
Coakley. (That would be Martha Coakley to the rest of the nation. But in "Massachusettes" to Patrick
Kennedy, she will always be 'Marcia'.) Brown didn't insult Red Sox fans, show disdain for shaking
voter's hands, or take the holidays off before being anointed to replace the late Senator Kennedy. He
ran as a Massachusetts politician who would vote no on the plan to nationalize health care and yes on
treating terrorists as terrorists and not as simple criminals. Neither topic makes him very ‘Republican.’
In fact, most non Marxist legacy Democrats who work for a living probably share that view. It is why
Brown even won the town where Kennedy lived, over the Democratic heir apparent.
But a Massachusetts Republican might be equivalent to a liberal Democrat anywhere else outside of
the collective. When listening to him talk about health care he doesn't seem opposed to universal
health care on the back of working taxpayers. He only seems opposed to it because Massachusetts is
already sinking their economy with their own state version and he didn't want to end up paying for
everyone else's future failure also. Brown is also pro abortion. Running through a Google of "Scott
Brown on the issues" anyone outside of the collective can get an idea of what Scott Brown thinks on
the issues. The site www.ontheissues.org show him as a hard conservative, although I don't know
how you can stand for infanticide and be called a conservative. His opponent in the race, Martha
Coakley, was shown to be a liberal populist on the site. Translation?-Maoist instead of a Stalinist. But
Scott had one major advantage in running in Massachusetts. He ran in Massachusetts. He stayed in
the state and ran in the state talking to his constituency. Martha Coakley, who woke up too late in the
campaign, ran out of state to the national Marxists to raise money and while it flooded in from the
unions it was too late. Grassroots money flowed in to Scott Brown from everywhere and the negative
ads Coakley ran were too late to have an impact.
After being elected Scott Brown said he would work with Democrats on issues and wouldn't always
follow the Republican line. Great! thought all the grassroots people that sent him money. We sent
the money so he would stop the overwhelming onslaught of Socialism and he turned into one more
RINO. Maybe, maybe not. Senator elect Brown has a chance to be Spartacus. He can vote along his
own lines. While he did show to be pro abortion, he also showed to be for a conscious clause so
people wouldn't have to choose between their religious beliefs and having a job. Senator Brown has a
chance to show he will vote his conscience and stick to his principles regardless of party.
This, this would be something that hasn't been seen since the beginning of the nation. The nation
wasn't formed on the two party system. It simply distilled down to two parties in practice. We don't
have the Whig Party, the Tories, or the Bull Moose Party anymore. Maybe it is time for the two
national behemoths to fade also. The design by the Founders was for individuals to be elected on their
merits and to have them represent their states and the nations with the best of character. At least that
was the theory. But human nature showed that to be a bit of a utopian ideal. Parties quickly formed
and evolved into the sports team like set up we endure today.
With the advent of the Internet people can, however, directly track what their representatives are
doing in Washington rather than rely on the slanted (O.K. totally corrupt) news they receive through
traditional channels. This led to the tea party uprising and the completely shocked congressmen
getting hostile receptions at their town hall meetings last August. What has been, for the last hundred
years a virtually unaccountable form of representation now has to answer questions from their not too
happy constituency. Lawmakers are hiding. Lawmakers are retiring, Lawmakers are lying their butts
off in the hopes of keeping their cushy posts of power. But what is not happening, is the easing of
dismay from the people that have too long allowed Washington to be Washington. They are paying
attention and not liking what they see.
Why was Scott Brown's election so shocking to the Socialists in Washington? What did it portend?
People have a misunderstanding of how the Federal government operates. This misunderstanding has
been fostered by the Left and the corrupt media for years. What swept the progressive Obama into
the White House was the mantra of failed Bush policies and failed Bush legislative efforts. But Bush
never had a super majority. He had parity of a fifty/fifty type arrangement. No major initiatives were
accomplished because of the solid concrete wall obstruction of the Democratic Party for eight years.
He was a lame duck on everything but foreign policy, and even there the Democrats carped on every
move he made. Remember Harry Reid declaring the surge a failure before a single troop was sent?
You get the idea.
With one special election the Socialists have lost their super majority. Now, the talk of working
together, bi-partisanship, and getting things done have reappeared after a full year of closed doors and
completely ignoring the minority party. The Republicans have been shut out of everything for the past
year. Now people can see, if they want to, what really has been happening not just for this year but
for the past administration. This has been the longest lie and the most clever the Left has been telling.
A simple majority doesn't mean you get to pass what you want.
The Republicans, meanwhile, are busy trying to tamp down, stamp out, and co-opt the Tea Party
grass roots activism of people across the nation. People becoming involved in their government is
very much the same threat to their establishment as it is to the Socialists. Both mentalities are a form
of elitism and neither thinks all that much of you. What is the fear on both sides of the aisle is that the
man and woman on the street is going to awaken to their power and throw them all out.
Would that be so terrible? Imagine a day when a man, say Scott Brown, walks into a room and yells
out "I am Scott Brown!" and the people jump up and say "I am Sue Smith!" and "I am Juan
Velazquez!" and "I am John Galt!" Well, maybe not John Galt, but you get the idea. It would be time
for a representative government, a limited one, and one far more in line with what the Founding
Fathers envisioned. We get the government we elect in this nation. We can change it, modify it, and
do what we will with it. We have the power, not the establishment, not the parties, not the elite. The
Marxist mantra of "Hope and Change" that got the Left this far might have far more irony and a bit
more karma built into it than they ever imagined.