Who is it that they think has their country?

Just saw this on Facebook, from Mick Mulvaney:

I enjoyed being at the Taking Our Country Back Rally tonight with Senator DeMint, Congressman Gowdy, Congressman Scott, Congressman Duncan, and Attorney General Alan Wilson.

Which, as usual, gets me to wondering… Take it back from whom?

Democrats and Republicans are both always saying that — “take our country back.” But they’re never specific. I never know who it is that they think has their country, because they don’t explain. In this case, is it President Obama, or the Republicans who control the House? Who are the “they”?

I almost raised the question there on that post, but then I looked at some of the comments already there, and realized I would be inviting an invasion of my email In box that would go on for days. (How many times have I deeply regretted a small interjection on Facebook?) So I refrained.

I mean, I can handle a little email, but I just didn’t want a flood of this sort of thing.

16 thoughts on “Who is it that they think has their country?”

  1. bud

    Haven’t you heard? The REAL Americans need to take the country back from the Kenyan-born, socialist interlopers. Sheesh do I have to explain everything?

  3. tired old man

    last I heard, the people holding the meeting held all the SC constitutional offices, all but one of the US offices, and had a complete monopoly on all the corruption issues.

    which is why they are so determined to wipe out voter fraud and curb immigration

  4. Herb

    I hear this an awful lot among evangelical Christians. There is a wide-spread idea that the country was once more ‘Christian’ than it is now, and by electing a certain group or party, we can get back there.

    Not only is this rather curious from a historical point of view, but also theologically. Just from a Christian, biblical point of view, both Deuteronomy and Acts 7 describe the history of God’s chosen people as being one of consistent rejection of God’s will So it is hard for me to comprehend this idea that we were once a utopia, and because of socialism we have gone downhill.

    I read an interesting article by Nicolas Kristof today about how we construct guardrails on roads, so why not guardrails for people through a health-care mandate. Which is a biblical idea, since the OT law required Israel to put guardrails on the top of their (flat-roofed) houses.

  5. Phillip

    No, you have it wrong, Brad. For these guys “take our country back” doesn’t mean to “reclaim” their country. It means literally to take the country “back” in time. To go “back” to where we once were…you know, pre-income-tax era, the gilded age of the robber barons, when there were none of those pesky regulations like child labor laws, when you could pretty much do anything in the interest of making money. In the short term, of course, Romney and pals mean to take our country “back” to the fine days of George W. Bush and the financial policies that helped bring us the crisis of 2008. In that sense, the Obama slogan of “Forward” which has elicited a certain derision has its opposite in this GOP motto, “Back.”

  6. Mark Stewart

    The flip side of “taking back” is the acknowledgement that one lost in the first place – and maybe with good reason.

    I was at Antietam yesterday morning in the misty dawn, just over a 150 years to the date of America’s bloodiest single day (I hope ever). So that may explain my impatience with such flatulence.

    They are so proud you would think that flag they hold was Citadel red. Or are they planning the Independent Republic of the Don’t Tread On Carolina?

  7. Doug Ross

    The converse of “Take Our Country Back” is “Cede Over More Control”.

    I prefer the former, naturally.

  9. Steve Gordy

    It might draw more respect if these guys weren’t already lined up at the public trough. I don’t suppose that “Take It Back” means that they’ll step aside and let someone else have a turn at the trough.

  10. David

    They literally want to take our country back in time? Do they have a time machine yet?

    This is all very disturbing.

  12. Herb

    Kathryn, I don’t think Marxists could claim Jesus–he doesn’t really fit anybody’s categories. It is interesting, though, that OT Law (which he never negated, but claimed to have fulfilled) called for a certain degree of redistribution of income. As I’m sure you know, it mandated remission of debts every seven years.

    Which tells me, as one who looks to Scripture for authority on how to live, that, from God’s perspective, the ideal society will prevent accumulation of wealth at the expense of others. I guess the modern way to do that would be to use, instead of Jubilee and sabbatical years, income, property, and estate taxes.

    I was reading an interesting book yesterday on Jewish and Christian tradition:

    ‘[Rabbi] Hillel is credited with the introduction of the prozbul–an innovation which in large measure nullified the ancient law that debts owed by a fellow-Israelite were to be remitted every seventh year (Deut. 15:1-16). By the end of the pre-Christian era this simply meant that a Jew in need of a loan could not find a willing lender among his fellow-countrymen if the sabbatical year was approaching. Hillel accordingly eased his plight by providing for a declaration to be made, before the debt was contracted, that it was exempt from the law of a remission. Thus a regulation which was humanitarian in purpose in the context of a simple agricultural economy was replaced by another, equally humanitarian in purpose, which was more appropriate to a developed mercantile economy’ F.F. Bruce, Tradition Old and New, pp.23-24.

    Of course you know better than I how people misuse laws that have a humanitarian purpose.

  13. Kathryn Fenner

    The loaves and fishes story was all about ” from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

    People asked about who said what often attribute Karl Marx’s words to Jesus or Gandhi….

  15. Steve Gordy

    I quite agree with the Old Testament principles of accumulating resources during times of plenty and deploying resources during times of scarcity. As I recall, both the Reagan and Bush II administrations were scrupulous in adhering to Old Testament principles.

  16. Bart

    @Silence,

    Good reference to how a government should protect the people in times of need. However, if you were to continue the biblical reference you used, you will read further on that all of the grain stored for the famine was “sold” to the subjects of the pharoah and in the end, the pharoah had most if not all of the “coin of the realm” and property.

    Read Genesis 47:13 – 26 to get, as Paul Harvey would say, “The rest of the story”.

    In other words, in the end, the “government” ended up owning everything then gave seeds to the people to plant crops on government land and in turn, had to give 20% of all they raised back to the “government”.

    Just saying.

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