What’s the Difference Between Ed Markey and Donald Trump?
By Matt McDonald | February 22, 2017, 8:37 EST
U.S. Senator Edward Markey addresses We Will Resist rally in Boston on Tuesday, February 21.
Photo by Samantha-Rae Tuthill In 1775 the American Revolution was started by liberal Democrats who today would be fighting for illegal immigration, government-dominated health care, and a higher minimum wage.
That’s the gist of a point U.S. Senator Edward Markey (D-Chevy Chase) made at the We Will Resist rally in Downtown Crossing on Tuesday afternoon.
Here’s how State House News Service framed a quote from Markey:
“‘It was here just three blocks away that the American Revolution began, rising up against tyranny, against discrimination,’ Markey claimed.”
The “claimed” is a clue that the reporter doesn’t think the statement is well-founded.
And it’s not.
It would be bad enough if a U.S. senator born in Oklahoma had made such a statement. But for someone allegedly from Malden it’s hard to fathom.
Let’s start with the details.
The American Revolution began in Lexington, about 12 miles from where Markey was speaking. That’s where local militia were shot down by British soldiers on their way to Concord in the early morning of April 19, 1775 to try to steal the colonists’ guns and gunpowder.
But let’s not be too technical about it. Let’s try to figure out what was going through Markey’s head.
You can almost see the wheels turning as he was thinking about what he was going to say. He was standing almost literally in the shadow of Old South Meeting House, where the Boston Tea Party began on December 16, 1773. That’s when local patriots decided that a sweetheart deal between Big Government and Big Business in England to force Americans to pay taxes they didn’t approve to help pay for government regulators they didn’t want wouldn’t stand.
Surely that’s the historic landmark that made the most sense to mention.
Whoops. Tea Party. Nix that thought.
So he decides to go for a landmark still in the area but out of view. Three blocks away, he said.
What could it be?
Well, around three blocks away, down Washington Street, is the Old State House. It’s where James Otis Jr. in 1761 made his argument before the colony’s highest court against Writs of Assistance, which were general warrants that the British government employed to try to stop smuggling. Government agents didn’t need specific information in order to get them; just by working for the government they had the power to force anyone to open up the doors for an inspection. Otis thought the Writs of Assistance violated what he called “natural equity.” He lost the case, but left behind a spellbound young lawyer, John Adams, who years later wrote that then and there “the child Independency” was born.
The Old State House is also close to the spot where the Boston Massacre took place in March 1770. A couple of British soldiers in a contingent trying to rescue a sentry who had run afoul of a mob decided without orders to shoot at some antagonists whom they had brawled with a couple of days before, and other soldiers started shooting, too. Five men died.
The men in the mob hated the British soldiers, partly because they didn’t belong there — but also because in a poor economy the soldiers threatened these men’s livelihoods. That’s because the poorly paid British soldiers looked for secondary work when they were off-duty. That’s actually what led to the Boston Massacre — on the Saturday before, an off-duty British soldier went into a shop looking for work, and an American who worked there insulted him with nasty language unfit for a family newspaper. The soldier went and got some of his buddies, and the American got some of his buddies, and a rumble ensued. The Americans won. The British soldiers looked for payback, and they got their chance a couple of nights later.
And here’s where we leave the details behind and get to the heart of the matter. The American Revolution had nothing to do with “discrimination,” certainly not the kind modern liberals talk about endlessly.
It was about freedom and local control.
Freedom from overweaning government power; and local control over local institutions.
In other words: The opposite of what liberal Democrats stand for.
Liberal Democrats are about telling you what to do from faraway Washington, and trying to control you by stick (taxes, laws, regulations) and carrot (giving you free stuff with all kinds of strings attached).
Which leads us to the difference between Ed Markey and Donald Trump.
Both have a tendency to get details wrong.
As we all know, President Trump on occasion offers facts that aren’t correct.
Yet somehow he usually manages to get the big picture right. Time after time, such as in his masterful press conference last week or his rally in Florida over the weekend, he correctly diagnoses our problems in clear (even startling) language and offers promising solutions.
His remedy of choice is usually some example of freedom and local control.
“We are a free and independent people, and we will make our own choices,” Trump said during the rally in Florida on Saturday.
This is the opposite of Ed Markey, who supported the Communists in Central America back in the 1980s, who thought he could fix cable television through regulation, who flip-flopped on abortion against the babies, whose global-warming rhetoric borders on insanity, and whose commitment to democracy is so weak that he voted not to count Ohio’s electoral votes in 2004 in hopes of electing John Kerry president over George W. Bush.
Bad facts are the least of the problem. When it comes to the big picture, Ed Markey hasn’t got a clue.
