The Tea Baggers

There was a profile in the Post of one of the Tea baggers who is against, of course, health care reform.

Here are a couple of things this guy said:

"The president just about declared war against the American people last weekend," he said. And it is a war Millam intends to fight.

"I'm not ready for outright violence yet. We have to be civil for as long as we can," Millam said. But, he added, "we are watching the infrastructure of this country crumble under our feet. The government doesn't want to hear us. We have to make them listen."

Really and at what point would you be in favor of outright violence. And who exactly would that violence be directed at? And you'd justify this violence because you didn't get your way on a particular issue. Or maybe because the wrong person got elected to office.

It would never have occurred to me during the Bush presidency to contemplate violence against the government. Even when I viewed the Bush administration as gutting the Constitution and especially its evisceration of the first amendment.

People talked about bringing articles of impeachment against Bush. For me this was a non-starter. It was never going to happen and would only play into the hands of the Republicans.

The thing to do, as in all situations like this, is to work for a victory through the electoral process. And starting in 2004 the path to that victory began. It lead to the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008.

The tea baggers idea of democracy seems to be that their candidate must win otherwise the election results are some how invalid. They seem incapable of recognizing that. That sometimes in a democracy your side doesn't win. That sometimes your party or your beliefs are out in the wilderness. And that the path back to power may take some time. That it might take several elections. But that's how things work in a democracy.

But the path these people seem to be following leads anywhere but to democracy.