Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Salting the Earth

After last week's historic ruling by the Supremes on Obamacare, Bayou Renaissance Man posted a piece on how the law must not stand, how the law must not only be repealed, it must be destroyed: “Obamacare Delenda Est

The history here is instructive, and Peter describes the use of the term in war between Rome and Carthage (the historical “Carthago delenda est”);  Rome didn't just defeat Carthage, they eliminated it, virtually wiped it from the face of the Earth.  They razed all of the buildings almost completely to the ground.  Not quite to the “no stone left on another stone”, stones from buildings on higher elevations rolled onto buildings below, but close. 

Although original sources make no mention of it, there's a story that after destroying the city, Rome salted the earth around the ancient city to prevent survivors from growing food, and the phrase “salting the earth” is widespread in historical writing.  Genghis Khan was said to have salted the farms of his conquered enemies, to prevent their farming.  It's a final insult; not only do we kill all the men who could fight, we will force the survivors to go somewhere else to resettle, or starve to death where they are. 

That is what we need to do.  Not just to Obamacare, but to all of the progressive programs that are forcing this country into a direction it was never intended to have.  Programs that are forcing us down the road to economic collapse, and burdening future generations with insane debt levels.  We must remove all traces of them from the code of regulations, and then salt the earth in Washington, so that monstrosities like this never see the light of day again.  

Because that's what they are doing to us.  It's what the big government/anti-freedom forces are doing: salting the earth of liberty, trying to kill any memory of ever having it, so that no one cherishes individual freedom again, and individual rights vanish into the mists of time as we die off.

(cartoon disclaimer - source - yeah, it's not a level of seriousness in keeping with the post, but I couldn't resist).

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