Boot Bonnen

I wrote a variant of this on this blog before, but I have never put the formulation that I posted on the Boot Bonnen group in Facebook.  Given that content on Facebook may go away someday, figured I would capture it here.

I am a Texas Aggie, a descendant of Scottish cattle drivers, and I know history, so I get how revealing Dennis Bonnen’s caveman slam is about who he is. Let me explain.

There is a common refrain throughout history whereby some individuals seek to gain self esteem by lording it over others because they think themselves smarter, more sophisticated, or otherwise superior to others.

One of the dimensions the social divide takes place in is between urban “sophisticates” and rural “hicks.” It takes place between New York / Massachusetts, etc. and Texas. It takes place between D.C. and the rest of the country.

The snobbery takes place between progressives and liberty lovers. It takes place between the media and conservatives. It takes place between the young and older generations. And all of that is exploited for sales in marketing campaigns and by the entertainment industry.

Even the term Whigs and Tories in the founding days of the Republic show this divide. Whigs were what the founding fathers who fought the American Revolution considered themselves to be. About a century before the American Revolution, the liberty activists in London called themselves the Green Ribbon Club. Algernon Sidney, John Locke and his patron, Anthony Ashley Cooper (the First Earl of Shaftesbury) were part of the Green Ribbon Club, so named in the Interregnum because those who fought for liberty and to get rid of Charles I and then Cromwell, wore green ribbons on their arms to show their devotion to liberty.

The enemies of the liberty champions were devotees and sycophants to the King. Those who got access to the King, of course, were sophisticated and in the know. They, of course, were superior to and deserving of ruling over other men. It was the King’s men, the Tories, who came up with a pejorative nickname for the liberty-loving Green Ribbon Club.

The name was whigamore. A whigamore was a Scottish cattle driver. In other words to the anointed King’s sophisticates, liberty devotees were hicks, rubes, unsophisticates, Aggies.

In the vernacular of the Dennis Bonnen, liberty advocates are cavemen. To Hillary -- deplorables. And Obama – bitter clingers.