Born Free

In Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio, the captive English maid, Blonde, scornfully rejects the advances of the powerful Osmin, overseer of Pasha Selim’s harem: “Pasha here, pasha there! Girls are not good to give away! I am an Englishwoman, born free, and I defy anyone who wants to force me to do anything!” More than two centuries later, Becky Gerritson, speaking to the House Ways and Means Committee about IRS harassment of the Wetumpka, Alabama, Tea Party, picked up the baton: “I am not here as a serf or vassal. I am not begging my lords for mercy. I’m a born free American woman, wife, mother, and citizen. And I’m telling my government that you’ve forgotten your place. It’s not your responsibility to look out for my well-being and to monitor my speech. It’s not your right to assert an agenda. Your post, the post that you occupy, exists to preserve American liberty. You’ve sworn to perform that duty. And you have faltered.” And so they have. Not that IRS bigwigs like Doug Shulman and Lois Lerner really believe that they faltered. They don’t seem any more contrite about their bullying than Osmin was about his.
Read more at the Weekly Standard