Tea Party Punks

‘Crazy…’ goes the old ARS song, ‘These are crazy crazy crazy, crazy times. But I just don’t understand. CRAZY! Crazy times make a crazy man.’
I admit, it was kinda fun laughing at Tea Party crazies like Christine O’Donnell, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachman, and Sarah P…..

But this is no joke, and it’s no fun. These people are actually inciting and encouraging violence against the government…….

After she won the nomination to the Tea Party / Republican Party ticket in Nevada, Sharron Angle said that if she didn't win, they may have to resort to 2nd Amendment remedies.
Former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack has said “I pray for the day that the first sheriff in this country [takes] the shot heard ‘round the world and take out some IRS agents!”
Joyce Kaufman, who will serve as chief of staff to newly-elected Congressman Allen West of Florida, has said ‘If ballots don’t work, bullets will’. (Ooops, ‘liberal’ media pressure forced her out. Still, he wanted her, and she will still be a ‘consultant'.)
Stephen Broden, running in Texas’ 30th District in this month’s U.S.House election, told a local TV reporter that an armed uprising against the federal government is “on the table.” Broden is a senior pastor with the Fair Park Bible Church and a frequent speaker at tea party rallies. At at least one such event, Broden attacked the federal government as tyrannical, telling the crowd revolution was an option.

But what tyranny (tir′ə nē, noun …very cruel and unjust use of power or authority) are they protesting? If they’re really worried about tyranny, where were they when George W. Bush was lying us into war, trashing our economy and our civil rights, and signing more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any president in U.S. history.

And what ‘judicial activism’ do they oppose? Citizens United? Bush v. Gore? How about Justice Samuel Alito mouthing ‘that’s not true’ at the State of the Union address, or now, attending conservative political fund-raising rallies?

I mean, these people are nuts. Crazy. I don’t think they were at the Rally To Restore Sanity, if you know what I mean. It’s like the punk rock backlash against classic rock back in the 70’s. Anybody could get in; you didn’t have to be talented, didn’t have to work to hone your craft, you just had to be angry and disaffected. And more or less be a loudmouth. Classic. Fun, maybe, in popular music culture; ominous in governance.

One of the great calling cards of the party is a supposed reverence for the Constitution and a return to Constitutionalism, but they consistently display a lack of understanding of what is actually in the document (vs. what they THINK is in it). O’Donnell actually didn’t seem to realize that the audience was laughing at her when she repeatedly questioned her opponent, Chris Coons, when he told her the text of the constitution prohibited government from establishing any religion. ‘'You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?'', Ms O'Donnell replied in apparent bewilderment. As a candidate, Joe Miller of Alaska argued that the federal government has overreached into areas that should be run by the states, whether that was Social Security, health care, education or resource protection. Now that he appears to be losing his senate race against a write-in Lisa Murkowski, he asks a federal court to interfere in what should be an Alaskan affair. Some say that the Tea Party only reveres the ‘original’ Constitution, and maybe the first 10 Amendments (The Bill of Rights). The ‘original’ Constitution is the one which held that slaves were 3/5s of a person, one that did not grant the vote to women. So how do they show their reverence for that original? In the last session of Congress alone, Republicans introduced 41 constitutional amendments. None, of course, about inciting revolt and armed intervention. Crazy...

Maybe instead of voting with their guns they should consider voting with their feet, and walk away. Far away.

We The People

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’….. a beautiful distillation of the American Dream and the American Promise, is it not, as penned by Thomas Jefferson at the outset of our American Journey. A journey in pursuit of the perfection of the dream and the promise. We’ve come a long way, opened a lot of doors, and secured life, liberty, and pursuit for untold millions. Who could not revel in the liberty? Who would not want to participate in the pursuit?

Millions have flocked to our shores to join in the dream, some legally, some not so much. All born on American soil, whether a child of a 10th generation American or of an illegal immigrant, are automatically granted U.S. citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, states, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Sure, we want to share the blessings with ‘… the tired, the poor,the huddled masses yearning to breathe free…’, but our porous borders allow tens of thousands to step around our official immigration policies, and new ‘citizens’, born to illegals (and often called ‘anchor babies’), help seal their parents’ resident status, legal or not. Discussion of impact aside, should we allow this bestowing of citizen rights to newborns to continue to draw illegals to our country, somehow stepping to the head of the line, or should we consider amending the 14th Amendment? Food for thought………………..