Let's hope this doesn't happen but it probably will...

How to Quell the Tea Party Rebellion

The Tea Party’s political shake-ups of the Republican establishment are undoubtedly causing no small amount of consternation among big-wigs in the Pentagon, the CIA, State Department, and other agencies and departments within the U.S. government.

As of now, the Tea Party is primarily complaining about out-of-control federal spending, debt, taxation, and the prospect of hyperinflation on the horizon. But there is always the possibility that it might figure out that the only solution to these problems is to dismantle and abolish the things that such money is spent on.

That raises a danger that James Madison, father of the U.S. Constitution, warned about, one that every American would be wise to ponder and be prepared for.

Here is what Madison said: “Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended.”

Madison was referring to the old Roman Empire, whose characteristics were similar in many respects to the U.S. Empire today — out of control spending and debt and monetary debauchery, produced not only by the empire’s welfare state but also by its extensive warfare state and military empire that extended far beyond Rome, just like the U.S. Empire, which maintains some 6,000 bases here at home and more than 700 bases overseas in some 130 countries.

In order to keep the Roman citizenry submissive and pacified, the Empire kept them dependent on welfare and entertainment, much like the U.S. government does with its Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education grants, subsidies, and other welfare. In Rome, they called it “bread and circuses.”

Periodically, however, anger and outrage among the citizenry over the taxes, spending, debt, and inflation needed to support the empire’s welfare-warfare state drove people to the verge of rebellion and revolt.

That’s when government officials would resort to what Madison warned about. They would provoke some sort of war or crisis because they knew that the Roman people would immediately bury their anger, outrage, rebellion, and revolt, and rally to the government out of a sense of patriotism.

Would the U.S. government, including the Pentagon and the CIA, do such a thing? Of course they would. In fact, that’s the point that Madison was making — that that would be one danger of a standing army in the United States, which he and other Founding Fathers ardently opposed.

Link:
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2010-09-20.asp