You are in for a couple of surprises today.  Well, you already saw the first.  In nearly five years of blogging I’ve never used French in a blog title.  Don’t get me started about the French.

The second surprise is that I am a liberal.  A classic liberal. 

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end.  It is itself the highest political end.

–Lord Acton

Classic liberals have an inherent distrust of government, and especially unbridled government power.  From my days of political awakening as an anti-war protester in the 70s (misguided though I was) it has always been so.  The irony that I have spent a lifetime working for the government dosen’t change a thing either.  Respect, yes.  Trust, not so much.

Commenter Kevin asks why I think polls matter and cites the former President’s dismal poll numbers.  Well, polls only matter to the extent that the indicate something of how likely voters feel about the the performance of our elected leaders.  And clearly the majority of folks are not pleased.  It seems they must matter to those in power as well, otherwise the “healthcare” debate would not have evolved into “insurance reform”. 

Last I looked, Obama has Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.  So, if polls don’t matter, why don’t our political betters get on with doing what’s best for us, whether we like it or not?

Frank Wilson notes that many Europeans “think that the U.S. Constitution confers certain rights on the nation’s citizens. As it happens, it does not. It simply acknowledges what the Declaration of Independence makes eminently clear, that those citizens “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and that government exists “to secure these rights.”

That’s exactly the point.  And what Obama and Congress fail to remember at their peril is this:

Americans regard themselves as citizens, not subjects. They may respect their government, but few feel servile toward it, and most are wary of it.

So, to answer Kevin, I’d say the polls are indicative of the fact that what we are witnessing in America today is not an angry mob of rightwing Nazi racists (as Pelosi and Reid would have you believe).  It is rather a reflection that when average Americans perceive a threat to their liberty, the rise up in protest.  It has been that way since the first tea party in Boston. 

We will not go quietly.