Attention New York County! Over the next few weeks, new writers will be joining the local editorial board. Today, I'd like to introduce Tom Posillipo, a New York conservative. In his inaugural piece entitled, “Absent When it Matters Most,” he lambastes his peers (young progressives) who have gone missing amidst unprecedented government spending abuses. Check it out, below!

The “products of their environment” (as I affectionately call them) I'm surrounded by in New York have exhausted the last eight years of my life attempting to indoctrinate me with the following popular bumper sticker logic: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”

Of course it should be noted that four of those eight years were spent on a college campus, where that slogan was seen on many non-SUV, hybrid vehicles in the form of a decal, strategically placed next to stickers reading Kerry/ Edwards ‘04, Keep Your Rosaries off my Ovaries, and the rhythmical Bush Lied- People Died. And how could I forget the metallic Darwin fish with legs (an atheistic play on the popular “Jesus Fish”) that lay just below the trunk?

Students were arranging protests and demonstrations; dissent was for sale and they were Sotheby’s. Oak tag and fliers graced with images of President Bush were generated from their dorm room printers. On their displays, Bush sported a puzzled facial pose, or an evil, menacing grin (however he was being portrayed that day – maniacal genius versus dumbfounded jester in the White House).

Members of the progressive college movement had all of the solutions, and aside from mom and dad slaving for their tuition monies and ensuring their meal cards had a positive balance for three daily squares – they didn’t need a thing.

Protagonist: Campus Intellectuals. Plot: The search for the modern day Vietnam War movement, while enjoying and reliving the party that never ended!

Four years after graduation, here I am thinking, “Where are those astute intellectuals?” Where are the Progressives? Considering the most recent government insanity, I thought they’d be out here faster than the IRS on an Obama cabinet nominee’s tax return and more flagrant than my obvious topical humor attempt.

When the graduates become workers (not in the Trotsky sense, but in the sense of someone who actually contributes to society) only then did the questions like “What is Bush’s IQ? replace “Who is FICA?”

It was only then that some of them realized that there was no military draft, not every marriage is a gay marriage, and not everyone owns a polar bear and/or a melting ice cap.

But everyone pays taxes. Patriotism...? Where is the taxation with representation in government today and where are the Constitution's defenders? Despite the political infamy, these same Progressives who claimed to possess such noble political will remain silent. They didn’t have to wear a wig or throw a bag of tea, but I am wondering where they are when Americans need to be defending freedom in its truest sense. Considering their past rhetoric, now is their time to shine.

Politicians are selling Generation X and Y slogans, promises and future debts, and all of a sudden these same intellectuals claim it's time to “trust” the bureaucrats? Were those campus dwellers really about defining freedom and patriotism or were they just against that presidential administration, justified through their professors’ indoctrinations?

The real victims of these politicians' spending habits were absent from City Hall’s steps yesterday, only to be represented mostly by the same generation that ensured a paid tuition and a debit card in the black. Were they absent because they were embarrassed that this was the “change” they voted for? Was this the first time they disagreed with their perceived “savior”?

Somewhere, not so long ago, a bunch of hypocrites chanted “dissent is the highest form of patriotism…”