I am writing this on Monday, April 19, 2010. You probably don’t know the significance of this day; few people do, even here in Maine.

Here’s a hint: the men and women this day honors would not be in sympathy with the Tea Partiers flying the Don’t Tread On Me flag on this day in 2010.

This is Patriot’s Day, remembering the day Americans decided they’d had enough of foreign rule. The day brave people stood up to the greatest army in the history of the world, and faced it down at a little bridge in Concord, Massachusetts.

Those early patriots were as far from conservative as anyone could possibly be. They were, in fact, radicals and the conservative citizens of the colonies had little regard for them.

They didn’t argue for small government, and those who believe they were fighting against taxation miss the point. They pledged their lives for their own government a government they elected from among their own number. They leveled their muskets against taxation without representation; today’s Tea Partiers have forgotten, or ignore, the crucial part of that equation. Representation, that’s what they wanted.

They were not well educated, for the most part, these Americans. Yet they understood the principles of democracy, for they had lived under them for years. They attended their Town Meetings, and they voted, and the vote didn’t always go the way they hoped. But they respected their neighbors’ views, and did the best they could to cooperate. They might take up arms against the King, but they wouldn’t dream of taking up arms against the man next door.

A man from the town I live in had been a peaceable inhabitant of England when he was “volunteered” to join the British army by a press gang. He came to America under protest, and finally escaped his servitude. But he came to this northern part of Massachusetts and stayed here because he sensed that this was a new kind of nation. When he heard about the battle of Concord, he took up his musket and walked to Boston, arriving just in time to fight at Bunker Hill. Later, he gave his life for his new country.

I can’t imagine that William Goff was a conservative. He knew that nations need government; he just wanted a government that served, as best it could, the people who elected them. He never expected perfection.

The founders of this country designed a system of government that gave most of the power to the majority, while protecting the minority. That shocked and terrified the monarchs of the world. Let the rabble decide what was best for them? Horrifying! Why, they might demand a living wage; protection against dishonest merchants; even water to drink that wouldn’t kill their children. They might want the slums razed! Medicine for the sick! Justice for the oppressed!

When the rest of the world’s governments were conservative, America’s was liberal radically, dramatically, unbelievably liberal. It was a government that cared about its citizens.

That’s what April 19, 1775, was all about. Think about it, and ask yourself which side of the Revolution Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would have been on.

Ray Clark lives in Gray

I am writing this on Monday, April 19, 2010. You probably don’t know the significance of this day; few people do, even here in Maine.

Here’s a hint: the men and women this day honors would not be in sympathy with the Tea Partiers flying the Don’t Tread On Me flag on this day in 2010.

This is Patriot’s Day, remembering the day Americans decided they’d had enough of foreign rule. The day brave people stood up to the greatest army in the history of the world, and faced it down at a little bridge in Concord, Massachusetts.

Those early patriots were as far from conservative as anyone could possibly be. They were, in fact, radicals and the conservative citizens of the colonies had little regard for them.

They didn’t argue for small government, and those who believe they were fighting against taxation miss the point. They pledged their lives for their own government a government they elected from among their own number. They leveled their muskets against taxation without representation; today’s Tea Partiers have forgotten, or ignore, the crucial part of that equation. Representation, that’s what they wanted.

They were not well educated, for the most part, these Americans. Yet they understood the principles of democracy, for they had lived under them for years. They attended their Town Meetings, and they voted, and the vote didn’t always go the way they hoped. But they respected their neighbors’ views, and did the best they could to cooperate. They might take up arms against the King, but they wouldn’t dream of taking up arms against the man next door.

A man from the town I live in had been a peaceable inhabitant of England when he was “volunteered” to join the British army by a press gang. He came to America under protest, and finally escaped his servitude. But he came to this northern part of Massachusetts and stayed here because he sensed that this was a new kind of nation. When he heard about the battle of Concord, he took up his musket and walked to Boston, arriving just in time to fight at Bunker Hill. Later, he gave his life for his new country.

I can’t imagine that William Goff was a conservative. He knew that nations need government; he just wanted a government that served, as best it could, the people who elected them. He never expected perfection.

The founders of this country designed a system of government that gave most of the power to the majority, while protecting the minority. That shocked and terrified the monarchs of the world. Let the rabble decide what was best for them? Horrifying! Why, they might demand a living wage; protection against dishonest merchants; even water to drink that wouldn’t kill their children. They might want the slums razed! Medicine for the sick! Justice for the oppressed!

When the rest of the world’s governments were conservative, America’s was liberal radically, dramatically, unbelievably liberal. It was a government that cared about its citizens.

That’s what April 19, 1775, was all about. Think about it, and ask yourself which side of the Revolution Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would have been on.

Ray Clark lives in Gray