Letters, Faxes, E-mails

To the Editor:
A recent Shawnee News-Star letter to the editor described the challenges we faced on the Fourth of July, 2008. 
The colonists faced similar challenges in 1773 when our mother country England was controlling the price and shipment of tea to the colonies.
Their method of protest was to throw a big party. It was called the Boston Tea Party. In the dead of night they slipped aboard the ships in the harbor that were loaded with tea and threw it all overboard.
This act of defiance to England led to the formation of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the beginning of a country with a constitution and a Bill of Rights that gave its citizens control over the government and a freedom never before experienced in this old world.
In the year 2008, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East cartel, joined by American big oil, have become our mother country. Red-blooded colonists set an example in 1773 that we should consider in 2008. They said, “We’re not going to take it anymore,” and they boarded the ships and threw all the tea overboard.
It’s past time for the voice of the average American to be heard. The time is right for America’s Second Revolution. Our jobs are being shipped overseas, we are in debt up to our eyeballs to China and Japan, we have too many Americans without health care, individual credit card debt is out of sight and promotional credit has created a housing crisis.
If we are truly, as Abraham Lincoln said, “A government of the people, for the people and by the people,” we should make our voices heard. 
Perhaps a nationwide strike, where every American refused to go to work for seven days and seven nights, would get the attention of the greedy and our politicians and let us once again grow middle-class America.
James B. Townsend
Shawnee