How Tea Partiers Get the Constitution Wrong

[bostondreamer]

Since winning the Republican senate primary in Delaware last month, Christine O’Donnell has not had trouble getting noticed. When the Tea Party icon admitted to “dabbl[ing] into witchcraft” as a youngster, the press went wild. When she revealed that she was “not a witch” after all, the response was rabid. O’Donnell has fudged her academic

Comments

[romp]

For the forces of orthodoxy, the election of a black, urban, liberal Democrat with a Muslim name wasn’t a panacea at all; it was a provocation.

I'm glad this is appearing in a mainstream publication like Newsweek because I could *feel* a sizeable part of the US freaking out the night Obama won. The appearance of the Tea Party felt like the other shoe dropping.

[perfectisafault]

sort of OT, but I heard that the Tea Party was reading Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals to try to get pointers on how better to organize themselves. If so, then LOL. What's next, the Tea Party reading a book by Che Guevara?

[red_pill]

no, the little red book

to the war of the flee!

[fruhlings]

lmao omg

[wrestlingdog]

I am shocked! Shocked, I say.

[hinoema]

The Tea Partiers belong to a different tradition-a tradition of divisive fundamentalism. Like other fundamentalists, they seek refuge from the complexity and confusion of modern life in the comforting embrace of an authoritarian scripture and the imagined past it supposedly represents. Like other fundamentalists, they see in their good book only what they want to see: confirmation of their preexisting beliefs. Like other fundamentalists, they don’t sweat the details, and they ignore all ambiguities. And like other fundamentalists, they make enemies or evildoers of those who disagree with their doctrine.

That says it all, really.

[bludstone]

I find that to be odd, because the central tenant is non-aggression and "let people be." You know, get the government OUT of people's lives.

How this is authoritarian is beyond me.

[hinoema]

Because they're talking about the 'Pseudo-populist Thinly Disguised Excuse for Raving Bigotry Brought To You By the Republicans' tea party, not the 'Ron Paul and His Orchestra' tea party.

[homasse]

Today, Tea Party activists gather to recite the entire document to each other.

...so I guess it's kinda like when I was singing an aria in Czech. I memorized it and I sang it, so Czech was coming out of my mouth, but I didn't have the first clue what a single damn word of it meant.

Also, the way Christine O’Donnell talked about the Constitution creeped me right the fuck on out. Yargh.