The inestimably acute and prolific blog-commenter Subotai Bahadur coined that acronym and has propagated it across the conservative-libertarian corner of the blogosphere ever since. It has achieved the status of an entry on Acronym Finder, for whatever that is worth. It is shorthand for “those who are no longer our countrymen” – itself an abbreviation for a slashing denunciation of those American colonists who were in sympathy with the wishes of Great Britain by Samuel Adams on American independence, delivered in a fiery stem-winder of a speech at the Philadelphia Statehouse in August of 1776 –
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Sam Adams was a bit of a fire-eater, and the speech must have been magnificent to listen to, for certain of the phrases sound like a tocsin, a war-alarm on the ear. “Ye love wealth better than liberty,” “The tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom,” and “Crouch down and lick the hands that feed you,” which reminds me irresistibly of the establishment media as represented currently. Not to speak of “May your chains set lightly upon you,” – and “forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Yes, that’s the phrase that slashes like an old-fashioned straight-edge razor; clear and cold and across a couple of veins. “Forget that ye were our countrymen.”
Me – I have now had the experience in several different theaters of realizing that certain people, politicians, media, intellectual and entertainment figures of note, or even the establishments they work for – are no longer our countrymen. In fact, those certain people and their establishments deeply despise us ordinary, moderately-conservative, content and hard-working middle class citizens. They hate us, indeed – with a passion that convulses their souls, and drips in their every word like corrosive acid. They hate that we are individual, un-biddable, independent and proud. They hate it even more ferociously that we are not humble in the manner of the 19th century lower class Europeans in the face of nobles and bureaucrats, and they despise everything that we honor and relish, from church membership, to where we choose to shop, to adorn our homes and what we do for hobbies. They hate it that we have the franchise and exercise it, too – and even assume that it is our right and duty to be politically-involved; most recently with movements like the Tea Party. (Which, inter alia, shook and is still shaking the current ruling class down to its bones – hence the viciousness of the reaction to it, from the media, to popular entertainment and to the long-established political parties.) Most of all, I think – they despise us for not giving a damn what they think particularly, and rejecting practically everything that they tell us to do – ride public transportation, move into urban stack-a-prole housing, give up eating meat (or much of anything else), and continuing to believe that we can raise our own children and sort out our own lives without self-elected nannies breathing down our necks 24-7. Very likely the well-manicured and delicate hands of the new ruling class itch for a whip to give us all a good thrashing for our temerity. Indeed – they are no longer our countrymen in spirit, any more than the Tory sympathizers who departed the American colonies two hundred years and more ago are.
The most galling quality of the TWANLOC ruling class is how they constantly preen themselves on being so cultured, so tolerant, intellectual, competent and so very, very non-racist … unlike the ordinary rest of us; the veteran, the blue-collar working stiff, the stay-at-home-mom, the cashier working at the local grocery store, the owners of companies large and small. Alas, nine out of ten, the TWANLOC ruling class is not particularly cultured, tolerant or intellectual. Nine out of ten, the most vicious bigotries and stereotypes drop from their lips and into their narratives … and yet they remain blissfully unaware of their own faults and shortcomings.
So the division has widened and deepened over the last decade or so. Now we stand at a point where our international standing has never been lower, we barely have any border security at all, a number of cities which once were manufacturing power-houses are all but ruined, federal bureaucracies have been corrupted and weaponized against generally-law abiding and tax-paying citizens, the economy – despite increasingly desperate-sounding news releases to the contrary – is seemingly on the verge of tanking entirely. The anger at the TWANLOC ruling class who appear responsible for bringing this about is building. When it will come to a full boil – in that the anger will be expressed in more than comments, editorials, blog-posts and radio-call in shows – and in response to what kind of provocation is anyone’s guess. The tinder is everywhere, and the gasoline is poured. All it lacks is the spark; something like the stand-off at the Bundy place earlier this year, someone responding with a weapon to being the almost-victim of a knock-out game, a spontaneous local protest blockading a place where illegal immigrants are being processed, as in California in the last few days … that will light the spark. Likely TWANLOCs will be surprised. Likely they will excuse themselves of any responsibility for creating the conflagration. But we won’t.
(Cross-posted at www.ncobrief.com)
A book for you from the latest Claremont Review. The Revolt Against the Masses by Fred Siegel. I’ve already ordered it.
Another good one from that same issue, Wilson by Scott Berg who wrote Lindbergh. The Claremont Review points out that all the lefties praising it missed the theme of Wilson’s over reach. I ordered it, too.
Thanks, Mike – added to my wish-list.
Just saw America, Imagine the World without Her. Really illuminates the paradigm of the TWANLOC elites and the effects of their control over our educational and media sectors. Exceptionally well done and compelling.
Mike
Oh, so apropos these days. Outstanding!
Note the which/that “mistake.”
Sgt. Mom,
Thank you for your kind words. And for your slashingly accurate delineation of TWANLOC. I ran into a prime example of one on the 4th.
Some background. Here in Colorado, the Democrats hold the governorship and both Houses of the Legislature. They passed a series of anti-gun measures, and the County Sheriffs of Colorado took the state to court on them. We of the TEA Party here, along with a group called Support Our Sheriffs march in support of the 2nd Amendment and the lawsuit in parades. Did I mention that we march [for some limited values of “marching”, no close order here] under arms? Since I am in the color party, I wear my old service revolver, but we literally have everything from period Brown Bess’s to Barrett .50’s. And our entry is always led by at least one elected county Sheriff.
Our big parade is the 4th of July at Westcliffe, Colorado. This is the real mountain West. Westcliffe has a population of just under 600. Most are salt of the earth mountain folk. But there is an unhealthy leavening of California Summer people. The type that think that Berkley would be OK if it wasn’t so right wing.
Last 4th of July, the TEA Parties brought in 500+ marchers. This year, there are more open carry parades, so we only had 380 or so. Still, the Summer people do not like us barbaric TEA Partiers.
As we were marching to cheers, there was one obviously upper crust coastal TWANLOC female holding a sign telling us “gun toting lunatics” to get out of town. I yelled [and I admit that I have what is called command voice down pat] “The Constitution belongs to us, too!”.
She quite visibly vapor-locked either at the concept or the fact that I talked back to her; to the laughter of all around her. Which made it worse for her. Those who think they rule over us by natural right cannot abide ridicule.
They cannot conceive of anything worse, at least yet.
The ruling class TWANLOCs cannot stand to be defied and mocked, especially when it is well done, Subotai. Like this sterling example here, at another 4th of July parade. The legion of the perennially butt-hurt are having spasms of outrage, even as we speak.
Excellent post.
The Core American political conflict is that the entire world pays homage and tribute to Washington but not their own people. For they inherited an Empire but their own people remain free.
Until their rage reached the point that we have long been breached, it’s just that we missed it until recently.
Thanks, VVXC – the snobbery of it all is what gets up my nose, mostly. Out of one side of their mouths, they decry a class system, and have all sorts of sympathy (mostly distant sympathy) for the poor, the working class, and now and again in a moment of absent-mindedness, the middle-class – and then they viciously dish on someone like Sarah Palin.
After seeing how Sarah Palin was treated by the professional feminist elements of the new Ruling Class, I immediately regretted that time of my life when I wanted to join NOW, but didn’t have the scratch to pay the membership.
Upon mature reconsideration, and looking at the caricature that NOW has become, likely a good thing, overall.
Welcome Home, Sarnt.
Gee didn’t figure this during Cold war eh?
[I just got angrier earlier, Iraq helped sorry about intemperate past]
I’m going to predict how this ends for POTUS, not for us. You’ll know it’s over for POTUS when Air Force One flies to Hawaii and there he stays. With no fanfare. A quiet phfft. Not the end, just his.
For the rest of us it’s just the beginning of the Trial. That will be his big, decisive move.
This loathsome tactic of putting Latin American kids in the vanguard of whatever storming of the barricades they’re playing out is a sign of desperation or madness.
Probably both.
When you combine their accelerating bizzare actions with more serious people increasing the money supply – M0 – 75% the last year, Rape of Russia alumni Stanley Fischer at the the Fed and so on they may know things we don’t. Their situation may be more parlous than we realize.
Remember there were only little hints until the summer of 89 when they began to relax the borders, but the Wall being opened and sudden DDR collapse was an earthquake.
The fact that it seems a lot of the so-called “refugee kids” have a whole lot of nasty communicable diseases – to include a strand of antibiotic-resistant TB – which have a good chance of leaping through the medical and Border Patrol staff and going out into the larger population … well, thanks, Obama administration. That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.
Wonderful post. And Subotai’s comment: Those who think they rule over us by natural right cannot abide ridicule.
How true.
These people enact laws that don’t pertain to themselves. They do have a visceral hatred of those who are independent.
The alien children so blithely let go by their parents will end up in servitude, whorehouses or dead on the street. The administration is handing these kids out to anyone who states they are a relative, with no background checks or other paperwork. No time, you know, have to process these kids so the new ones can be interviewed. Sure they’ll come back for medical treatment or deportation. If their pimps allow them to. Is there somebody in the Obama administration with a link to the Mexican drug gangs? Its just too easy.
I’ve wondered the same thing Fiona, and I’d be willing to bet there most certainly is. Growing up lefty and coming around late in life, I can almost guarantee such connections exist. The border scene is straight out of the direct action playbook. Just look back at all the incidents of the past few years, look at who the players involved are. That the pawns will end up in gangs, dead or pimped means little to the architects. Ends justify the means.
In the mid-1990’s I bought a Swedish Mauser at Big 5 Sporting Goods in Sunnyvale and walked the three blocks home to my apartment in broad daylight. I felt conspicuous as heck — I was reliant on mass transit at the time and had no gun case for it — but I knew open carry was the law and so did everyone else. It would have seemed weird, even a little crazy, for anyone to be afraid, or for the cops to come screeching up.
I recall seeing numerous firearms at the huge open-air antique show at the Sunnyvale Mall every year — mostly old .22 gallery guns and older model shotguns. You could pick one up and heft it and work the action and point it up in the air to see how it held, and no one was scared. No one called the cops.
Now? I would have to register that old battle rifle with the California DOJ (presumably so they could kick in my door and take it after the Big One hit, as they did in N’Awlins after Katrina), wait for ten days (if I were a homicidal maniac surely the week and a half would cause me to cool down and think better of shooting up the Valco Fashion Center), and hire a taxi to carry me home, or else be shot dead by nervous cops like 13-year old Andy Lopez. Even then I would have to have a gun case ready, or a hysterical neighbor might sic the Sunnyvale PD on me as I walked from the parking lot to my front door.
The so-called liberal left are stuck in a cycle of political and social one-upsmanship. It has even infected Silicon Valley — that last bastion of meritocracy and pro-commerce culture in the failed state of California. There was no need for any form of gun control in the safest, most affluent high-tech suburb on the peninsula. This is simple Saul Alinksy-style harassment for its own sake. I can no longer love my home. It hates my guts, and does it with a huge vicious smile on its face.
So good bye, Sunnyvale. Good bye, California. Good bye, you arrogant blue-state suburban fascists. May your chains weigh you down to the ground. May the Big One destroy what even the Democratic supermajority could not, and may the hood rats and meth heads and OWS hipsters come out of their enclaves and dance on the overpriced rubble. May your businesses flee for free states and your best and brightest desert you. May you turn into Detroit on the Left Coast, and your misery serve as a warning to the rest of American civilization… and may the free state of Jefferson arise from the ashes. I’m going to just sit up here in rural Shasta County on what money I saved before you succumbed to your own ideologically-driven insanity and watch you bring your own way of life to an end.
Oh and I warn you, liberals: This curse works.
Phil I don’t think you would have to register that Mauser at the DOJ today – and as for open carry I think some cities have locally enacted rules prohibiting it – in Sacramento included – someone decided – a few years ago – to walk into the state capitol while it was in session brandishing an “assault” rifle. Walked into either the Senate of Assembly. Never took the sling off his shoulder but you can imagine – these days – what kind of “excitement” that caused.
While it may have been legal, some common sense has to prevail, an item that seems to be missing all too often these days.
But I agree with your post in the main …
An EXCELLENT post, Sgt. Mom. And likewise very good comments. I kind of “stumbled” in here because this was posted on Western Rifle Shooters Association – and I’m glad I did. Thank you all so very much. (I loved Subotai Bahadur’s story. It warmed my heart to hear that!)
And Sgt. Mom, about that outhouse float in the 4th of July parade in Nebraska: to the Alinsky tactics of calling any criticism of our Usurper-in-Chief “racist”… Those who came up with – and built – the float should just come back with something as simple as “Go take a flying leap off a floating log – idiot! Your lies have no power over me!”
Oh the trash who eat, drink and sleep the Alinsky tactics don’t like it when you throw their garbage back at them – especially if they are made to appear what in fact they actually are: intolerant bullies. The fact is, the Left expects anyone and everyone to cringe and crawl and intone “mea culpas” when epithets like “racist” or “Islamophobe” are thrown at those who speak the truth. Surprise them – and throw it right back. They are like little dogs who are aggressive as he11 if you are walking along and minding your own business – even trying to nip at your ankles. However, if you spin around on them and let out a roar they will pee all over themselves running for safe territory.
Be well, and may Almighty God bless you and yours.
@SFTOBEY: Indeed sir. May ALMIGHTY GOD bless you and yours as well.
Never forget….If God be for us…who may stand against us?
The larger Adams quote is even better – makes your hair stand up on the back of your neck:
“Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, ‘What should be the reward of such sacrifices?’ Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
— Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.
May I put in a shameless plug for my book RESISTANCE TO TYRANY, available from Amazon? It’s a primer on how to conduct an armed revolt. You may find it useful in coming days.