The governed: we withdraw our consent!

  Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal has had an insightful perspective piece up for the last couple days. What is notable about this article is that Noonan was an early Palin mocker and Obama supporter. 
  Though a former Reagan speechwriter, her world view has grown to be more like the Beltway crowd of David Frum and David Brooks, who seem to want to ensure their invitations to the DC party crowd no matter what political party is in power.... sort of a "conformative" conservative, if you will. 
  Now she seems to be changing her philosophy. Here's a snippet from her most recent piece:

But do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down? They don't act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past. I started noticing in the 1980s the growing gulf between the country's thought leaders, as they're called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we'll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views.

  Now let's step back and look at the phenomenon that has been developing across our nation in recent years, the rebellion of which Beltway conservatives are so wary.
  Setting aside the president, lots of things are agitating the populace, and it is surely true that adults are concerned that their children will not enjoy the prosperity we have had.
  On a symbolic level, we have a first lady who has taken eight vacations this summer, all on the taxpayers' dime. Her current expenditure is to Spain which will cost the taxpayers a minimum of almost 400,000 dollars. 
  Though her office protests that she is on a private vacation and will pay for her meals herself, critics (who will always criticize) aren't buying it. Just flying Air Force Two costs an enormous amount of money. The rooms at the palace where she is staying run from hundreds of dollars to $6,000 a night. 
  Do we honestly think FLOTUS will stay in a cheap room? (How would it look, after all?) And what about the 68 secret service agents who follow her everywhere, as well they should? 
  And the 40 of her closest friends who've gone with her...do you have 40 friends you would be willing to take with you on a trip to Spain? Or does she sound more like the Marie Antoinette so many are accusing her of emulating? (UPDATE: Her office said the Obamas would pay for personal expenses, but would not reveal the taxpayer cost for the government employees.)
  So why is the populace bubbling over? 
  Here's another clue. 
  Massive spending and a basic distrust of politicians and those in control over government offices.
  Take, for example, the city of Bell, Ca., which is 80% Hispanic and whose average per capita income is $24,000. They've had it. When they discovered the city manager was making almost $800,000 a year, a tea party broke out. The guilty parties were forced to resign and now investigations into how those individuals achieved those salaries are ongoing. One question everyone was asking was, "How did those salaries get that high?"
  An update on the situation. The salaries may have gotten that high through voter fraud. Read John Fund over at the WS Journal:

The explosive scandal that saw officials in the lower-income city of Bell, California (population 40,000) purged last month due to outrageous salaries and pensions may have had its roots in voter fraud.

And even left wing publications are starting to realize this was not a completely innocent act, as revealed at TPM:

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) learned that City Council officials in Bell, California were receiving ludicrously high salaries in 2006, but failed to take action, according to documents released yesterday.

  Fear of voter fraud, of our Department of Justice not enforcing the voting rights for ALL US citizens, and concern over flagrant spending (not necessarily in that order) are driving much of the anxiety citizens currently feel. 
  Fear of what is coming right around the corner is also causing sleepless nights and voters to be both eager and anxious to hit the polls in NOvember. Incidentally, the anxiety has nothing to do with racial animus, which is the last defense politicians have for inexcusable behavior and policy on their own parts.
  Spending. 
  Every day, if you pay attention to the alternative media, you know that there is concern that the stimulus money has been spent on largely useless, silly, inadequate and unnecessary projects. (Take a look here)
  When you realize that $850 billion was in circulation when Dear Leader took office and that now the government has printed somewhere in the numerous trillion dollar range, information that seems very hard to find, naturally hyper inflation is the next concern around the corner. (Think Zimbabwe)
  Read here about the printing of money. Apparently there's no shortage of jobs for money printers:

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke admitted the central bank created $1.3 trillion out of thin air to buy mortgage backed securities.  This shocking admission came from the Joint Economic Committee hearing on Capital Hill last week.  I was dumbfounded when I saw Bernanke shake his head in the affirmative as Representative Ron Paul said, “Well, where did you get the money? You created this money. So you did monetize debt, and that went into the banking system.”  I was amazed he admitted this.  I looked up the original hearing on C-Span to make sure the clip was not edited.  It was not. 

  How bad is it when CHINA warns us not to print more money? One look at our debt clock is enough to send any responsible citizen into hyperventilating. Why on earth do politicians not have the same reaction, we all want to know?
  And this is just a smattering of the concerns American citizens have today. 
  The curious detachment of the administration from incidents of great concern such at the Detroit airplane bomber, the shooting at the Army base and the oil spill cleanup is unnerving. While citizens sit in their homes agonizing over these news reports, the government that is supposed to take care of this is peopled with so many layers that no one seems to be able to fix anything. 
  And the people at the top only seem to care about parties and golfing. 
  More snooping (why on earth would you want to keep the nude xray photos from airport scanners anyway?) into email, blogs, computers, phone lines, private accounts means little privacy.
 The enormously expensive health care takeover with its tentacles reaching into everyday lives has been protested over the idea of rationing. The MSM and politicians mock citizens' concern over this repeatedly, calling the "death panels" a ridiculous notion created by a crackpot politician. 
  Yet this is the philosophy of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health advisor to the president. This is the philosophy so admired by Obama's selection to handle Medicare. This is the prevailing philosophy of socialized medicine, such as in England, where citizens are rejected for hip and knee replacements because they smoke or are overweight. Horror stories are in British newspapers daily about the effects of nationalized health care. 
  Yet our politicians persist, driving the economy into the ground, mocking critics who want them to stop abusive spending and yet give themselves all the benefits and luxuries in being in power?
  Indeed, our protestations originate in the basic American ideal that this government's power originates from the consent of the governed. It would appear, at this juncture, that the governed have withdrawn their consent. And, still, the politicians of both parties are not listening.
  Read this declaration. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

   Yes, for years we have been disposed to suffer, pursuing happiness and desiring the government to simply support our rights as citizens.
   The question is, at this point, what form the rebellion will take. 
   Currently it is demonstrated through protests, blogging, contributions to specific candidates rather than political parties...anything that requires personal involvement. We want to do something, people say. We have been silent and uninvolved for too long. We are talking amongst ourselves at the store, at the park, at the beauty parlor, at the gas station, everywhere searching for patriots of like mind.
  And we are finding each other, connecting in ways that we haven't before. Too many of us remember the way it has been to go along with the wildness of the ruling class that has developed in this country.
  There is great reason to hope that the awakened populace can really change this country for the better, not by redistributing wealth and doling out reparations, but by encouraging love of this great country, involvement in the future governance of the United States of America and rewarding the productive citizens of our country rather than penalizing them.
  One hopes the current rebellion will involve a change of office for many politicians and a fear planted in the hearts of those who take their places that they are in government as only temporary guardians of liberty, not to achieve power for themselves or one political party.

  Come what may, won't give up the ship.