The health care bill passed. The right wing muttered threats, then showed us what they're made of. It wasn't pretty. But not to worry.
Whipped up by the denizens of Glenbeckistan, hysterical Tea Partiers loitering by the Capitol called Civil Rights hero John Lewis a nigger, and spat on another African-American Congressman. After the bill passed, bricks were sent through Democratic Party windows around the country, a barbecue gas line was cut at the home of Rep. Tom Perriello's (D-Va.) brother, and Democratic Rep. Russ Carnahan of Missouri woke up to find a coffin on his lawn.
And as John Avlon wrote in The Daily Beast, "All this follows the online exhortations of militia leader Mike Vanderboegh of Pinson, Alabama -- who wrote on his blog "Sipsy Street Irregulars" this past Friday: "if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary."
Afterward, in response to an appeal from Democratic leaders to tone down the rhetoric and denounce the threats, Rep. Eric Cantor (R.-Va.) accused Democrats of fanning the flames, and claimed that his own campaign office had been shot at (it turned out to have been a random bullet that had been fired into the air, breaking a window in a building in which Rep. Kantor has some ancillary office space.).
A few weeks earlier, David Brooks had argued in his New York Times column that the Tea Party is like the New Left of the 1960s -- idealistic and apolitical. This led Jonah Goldberg, writing in The Weekly Standard, to reject any connection between the New Left and the Tea Party --possibly in hopes of Tea Party support for Republicans this November.
But Brooks happens to be right about the majority of Tea Party members -- like the New Left in the '60s, they are largely outside electoral politics (though certainly conservative), call down a pox upon both Democrats and Republicans, see the system itself as corrupt and divorced from the concerns of average Americas, and hope -- wistfully, perhaps -- for an America in line with the ideals of the founders. This is really not such a bad thing.
However, aside from the fact that the ideas that gave birth to the Tea Party are not despicable, the Tea Party was largely organized by vastly wealthy, Far-Right ideologues like Richard Scaife (a major financier of Dick Armey's FreedomWorks and the man behind the drive to impeach Bill Clinton) and the Koch family (the money behind Americans for Prosperity, whose patriarch, Fred Koch, helped found the John Birch Society).
These are people who have demonstrated many times that as far as they're concerned, the ends justify the means; even though in politics, there are no ends -- only means. And their followers in the media and government -- that's you, Rush, and you, Rep. Cantor -- are similarly afflicted. They apparently don't care what they say or do, as long as it gets them past the next news cycle, and, with their rhetoric, have loosed a demon upon the land that they cannot control. Thus the bricks, the threats, and the sense of worse to come.
Of course, little worse will come. People who should know better may be telling their followers that the nebulous language of the Constitution's Tenth Amendment justifies nullification, and even secession; but aside from the fact that Article Six trumps the Tenth Amendment, the idea of an armed revolution from the right is as ludicrous as the prospect, 40 years ago, of one from the left.
The right may well be armed; but if it tries anything, it'll run square up against the 82nd Airborne, which, once in motion, is disinclined to humor misguided idealists. Something similar, after all, was the fate of the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Weather Underground. So, as a practical matter, the country has little to fear from these brick-throwers.
As for the Republican Congressional cohort, and their fellow travelers in the media: they've been doing us a favor. Come November, people won't forget what they've done and said -- not to mention what is yet to arise from their reckless rhetoric. And in any event, the blogosphere won't let them forget.
Meanwhile, the Tea Party will keep driving the GOP farther to the right, and the GOP will comply, hoping, like Goldberg, to co-opt them, or at least, not lose them. That will do very little to create the sort of mid-term landslide the right is expecting, and may well provoke the opposite.
If this happens, the recent outbursts will be seen, not as warning tremors, but the impotent rage of a rump GOP, rejected by the common sense of the American People -- the same impulse that elected so many Democrats in 2008.
That defeat will in turn either deliver the final coup de grace to said rump, or waken it from the delusions that have led it into the ideological wilderness. If we're lucky, that will return to the American people some semblance of a system staffed by serious people, interested in solving serious problems in a serious way.
That would be a good thing. So let's thank the denizens of Glenbeckistan for showing us what they're made of. They won't be able to escape the public record, or the judgment of history.
we shall see come november just how effective the republican manipulation of that rage has been.
As a flack for the Social Democrat Party, Reinbach creates this straw man for the purpose of attempting to replace the aura of inevitability the Social Democrat Party mistakenly hoped would prevail during discussion of the legislation with an aura of irreversibility following it’s passage. He does so in a pathetic effort to discourage numerous and inevitable repeats of the Massachusetts Massacre in November.
I prefer a calmer, longer lasting approach, converting the public's seething rage into a grim resolve to do whatever it takes, as long as it takes to restore freedom to America.
because he got it illegally.
The GOP has no intention of being civil or supporting civility or a civil discourse.
There is no need for the GOP to do so since they have said they will go home at 2pm and still collect a taxpayer salary.
McCain said he vowed no GOP co-operation the rest of the year and they will all still take their tax payer salaries.
We could pay for healthcare if we just took back the money from GOP tax payer salaries for the hours they do nothing.
Make no mistake, this is war.
But, it may help them by filling up the media with 'stuff" in order to drown out a real conversation.
It would seem with the mainstreaming of the Internet we are undergoing a new sort of enlightenment period. We have access to all of the great philosophers throughout history as well as the tools to track Washington votes and dollars. Never before can the free flow of ideas be faster and more open.
The American public is not blind to the fact that the difference between this Right and Left is looking quite small. By the old definitions of right being fascist and left being socialist, we just had a socialist president sign a fascist health care bill. Fascism and socialism are not bookends on the true debate. America was founded on a different ideal. The spectrum is between absolute liberty and absolute tyranny. The debate is over where that line is to be drawn. It is dishonest to say this bill doesn’t take liberties away from the individual.
In a true intellectual battle between lovers of liberty and devoted advocates of power, it is important to understand where you stand. I believe the majority of Americans would describe themselves as lovers of liberty, but more importantly I believe our founding document was created to protect those ideals.
The argument that there are just a few "bad apples" is silly. No one, not a GOP politician nor a Tea Party member has addressed the irony of the attacks on many of the very people that have been fighting all of their lives to increase freedoms.
Using a platitude, "Violence = bad," is not condemning any of the many physical attacks taking place.
First, it is categorically impossible to “increase freedoms†beyond compossibility. Any attempt to create any “positive freedom†diminishes freedom rather than increasing it.†Positive freedom†itself is just a 75 year old bastardization of language for the purpose of rationalizing the extortion and theft inherent in social democracy.
Second, American freedom is not up to collective determination. It is the fundamental basis on which this nation was founded and opposing it’s diminution at the hands of the rent seekers and power hungry of social democracy isn’t limited to democratic processes.
There is no push towards liberty when they already have it.
The question is the freedom or liberty since both sides have enjoyed their right to free speech.
The question is why is a group that originally claimed to be about taxes and took the name "tea party" from the Boston tea party and planned their protests around tax day become so extreme with a wide variety of disjointed messages and hateful rhetoric? Most of their signs and actions have nothing to do with taxes.
If they were concerned about taxes they did not protest the Bush tax give away to the top 2% or the huge deficit Bush left America with after inheriting a balanced budget and a surplus from Clinton.
There are no liberties being taken away, the majority of Americans understand the mandate for car insurance, mortgage insurance, and in some areas flood insurance and the GOP supported mandated health insurance under Clinton.
They can't just flip now and lie to the people just for gaining a few votes from the fringe.
I am happy tax dollars are now finding the opportunity to get back in the direction of the American people instead of the GOP wanting to give our taxes away to the top 2%
That's when they STARTED getting angry. They thought that Pres. Bush was a Regan Republican, i.e. fiscally responsible. He wasn't. Besides the billions on two wars, he created huge government entities (Homeland Security), unfunded mandates(No Child), spent billions in social programs (Rx Drug bill), and then gave billions to big corporations (TARP) and more. Pres Bush's abissmal rating wasn't just because Democrats didn't like him, smaller government, Liberty minded, fiscally responsible people didn't like him either!
When President Obama took over, he didn't slow or stop the hemoraging of the public checkbook, He aided and abeted President Bush's agenda and then multiplied it 10 fold. Are there kooks in the TEA Party movement, yes. Are there kooks on this web site, HELL YES! What's your point? Any government, Democrat or Republican controlled, MUST spend wisely and with not just next terms votes in mind, but the prosperity of our union and our childrens future in mind as well.
Listen to these people instead of how they are often portrayed. It makes for a good discussion about the solutions moving forward.
Too many people are stuck in the right left devide. It is not about DFL or GOP.
FYI - Your understanding of taxes is just so different from mine: "I am happy tax dollars are now finding the opportunity to get back in the direction of the American people". To me it is clear taxes come from the American people. Tax cuts do exactly that in my mind.
I'm afraid, very afraid, that " tie-dyed " will turn into " bleeding madras "...
It will be carefully crafted to throw enough monkey wrenches into the works of a tyrannical social dmeocratic state to bring it to it's knees and negotiate restoration of freedom to America.
you mean as the Far Right Republican party tries to make the Centrist Tea Party seem more extreme?
isn't that what the Corporations are paying the "MEDIA" to say
My take is that they can't believe they lost a Presidential election.
After all, they "won" in 2000 when their guy lost the popular vote.
How could they possibly lose to a, (whisper,) black man?
All of their bluster about small government and constitutional rights is just that, bluster.
They didn't take to the streets over Medicare D or the Patriot Act, etc., etc., etc.
So as far as I am concerned, they are poor losers who will use whatever bumper-sticker slogan they can think of to discredit President Obama.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/33866.html
Those people protesting then were much younger, subject to the military draft at 18 and unable to vote until 21, accepting of diversity in race, religion, etc, and looking to make the world a better place.
The teabagers are, as a current article on this site points out, older, on the government dole and out of work, homogeonous as it pertains to demographic make up, and concerned oinly about themselves.
I do agree that the teabaggers and GOP do not want this comparison made to the 60s New Left because it will turn off more mainstream Republicans.
Sort of how the Cheneys and their talk of DOJ lawyers aiding and abetting terrorism drew the rapid beat down by noted Republican constitutional experts.
you make me wish there was a Hufpo category for old timers like us who have a totally different perspective, based on what we've lived through, compared to the digital crowd.
Article six is relevant and the tenth amendment isn't. But when an article and an amendment come into conflict, the amendment trumps the original text. To take the most blatant example, consider the text guaranteeing slavery and the amendment forbidding it.
If the powers referred to ARE given to the government in Article Six, then Article Six does indeed trump the 10th Amendment.
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding."
That's an ace when it comes to nullification and interposition. A relevant amendment would trump it, but there's no amendment in play.