Tea Party Hooligans and Their Legacy

Once again a group of loudmouths are throwing a "tea party" to protest having to pay tax. They claim that they are American patriots, that they are responsible people, that they have family values, and that they are true America. All of their claims are lies.

With the government, it is not "pay or not pay." It is "pay now or pay later." For as long as you have military, police, roads, schools, fire departments, courts, universities, social security, and further on down the line, you will have the government. Whose bills will be footed either by you or by your children. That is the underlying reality, and no amount of dogma or shouting will change it.

Which means that not wanting to pay tax is irresponsible, short-sighted, unpatriotic, and an act of severely injuring one's children as well as one's country. And nobody who takes this stance has any business claiming to have family values, or to be American patriots, or to be responsible people. The anti-tax people got themselves a tax break by putting a $10 trillion debt on their children and grandchildren. And for that they will be hated for as long as the memory of them remains.

Because these people don't want to pay tax, America is now $10 trillion in the hole. Much of that debt is now held by such entities as the People's Republic of China, that have other agendas than generosity or American patriotism in owning that debt. The anti-tax people have vastly weakened America and made it dependent upon people whose interests are hostile to America's. And that makes them traitors to the country that they ridiculously claim to be theirs and that they ridiculously claim to love. The anti-tax people have done more to weaken America than have any number of terrorists. And that will be known as their legacy.

Many of the anti-tax people claim that they are doing what they are doing for freedom. Nothing can be further from the truth. These are the same people who believe that only one lifestyle is acceptable and who do everything that they can to destroy all other lifestyles. What they are, therefore, is this: Totalitarians. Totalitarians who want the government out of the picture so that they can perpetuate totalitarian abuses against the people in the communities in which they operate - and for the people in these communities to have no protection against them.

Whether an entity perpetuating oppression is official and unofficial, means nothing to the people whom it oppresses, any more than it matters say to the Africans whether they are being raped and murdered by a white or a black despot. Unofficial entities in America perpetrate far greater oppression and greater corruption and greater abuses than does the government. The government is subject to constitutional checks and balances and oversight by media and electorate. Unofficial entities are not. Which empowers them to do far greater wrongdoing than does the government. And that is especially the case for the kind of people who get involved in Tea Party type gatherings.

These people then ridiculously claim that they are America, and that the rest of America isn't. Meanwhile it is the rest of America that is responsible for America's real accomplishments. The Democratic coastal cities, the Democrat-initiated Democrat-staffed computer industry, the vastly Democratic science, are the true economic engines of America and the true source of what America has. Whereas the right-wing entities - Big Oil that has for thirty years lied to the people and lobbied the government to keep silent, preventing real progress in clean energy and causing the current catastrophe; the anti-government government-subsidized Big Beef that takes the land that could feed 2 billion and uses most of it to raise cattle feed so that it produces a fraction of what it should produce; the anti-government truckers who use government-built government-maintained Interstate to deliver products made by anti-government government-subsidized beef farmers to big liberal cities that are their markets; are, for the most part, parasitical. That does not mean that the Republicans don't work. It means that their economic activities are to a great extent against national interest and are dependent upon the very things that they want gone. Without the government Interstate, government beef subsidies, government science, and government silencing the truth about global warming for 30 years, none of these entities would be economically viable. And these entities depend fully upon the very government that they want gone.

Not wanting to pay tax is hypocrisy, irresponsibility, short-sightedness, and an act of injuring one's country as well as one's children. And I say this as somebody who's been in the high-income tax bracket and never had qualms about paying high-income bracket tax. The Tea Party people are not America; they are the worst elements in America. And their myopia, their irresponsibility, and the damage they've done to America and their children, will be remembered for generations to come.