An Army of Dicks

Former Texas congressman turned right-wing activist, lobbyist and now through his “FreedomWorks” organization, major funder of the insurgent Tea Party movement, Dick Armey whips up a crowd of disenfranchised rubes at CPAC with an antagonistic speech railing against President Obama.

To all of these people that vehemently resent so-called “big government” I have a simple proposal: immediately stop utilizing any and all government programs.

Quit driving on our public highways and roads for starters. Turn off your municipal water supply and drill your own well to obtain water. Turn off all the power to your house because that likely comes from a crown corporation or has financial linkages to the nefarious government. Cease and desist from using the Internet, because that was developed by the government. Oh, and stop watching TV because we own the airwaves and simply lease them to private broadcasters. If you need medical treatment, go to a private clinic or fly to the USA (although that might be difficult as the airports themselves are run by quasi-private agencies). If your home is broken into, call Brinks or some private security firm to come to the rescue. Likewise, if your house catches on fire or better yet, grab a hose and put it out yourself. Oh wait… you can’t do that because the water is supplied by the government.

I’m being facetious, of course, but you get the idea. Hey, I’m not a fan of “big government” or bureaucracy either, but the fact of the matter is that despite all of its flaws, it provides the infrastructure that enables our quality of life to exist. Simply calling for an end to government “interference” is ridiculous unless such demands are backed up with solid, comprehensive and practical proposals for alternative methods of public service delivery.

As for the nub of Armey’s grievance about “income redistribution” — well, what’s so wrong with that? In countries such as the USA, Canada and the UK where the economic divide between the rich and the poor is now so abject as to be completely ludicrous and the “middle-class” is rapidly becoming an endangered species, is it really such an abhorrent idea to “spread the wealth”? And think about that for a bit… substitute the expression “spread the wealth” for “income redistribution” and see if the arguments maintain the same validity.

Fringey McFringersons

Rachel Maddow provides a brief history of “right-wing paranoid extremism” in America from Depression era demagogues like Father Coughlin to present day rabble-rousers such as FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey and World Nut Daily’s Joe Serra, suggesting that there’s a case to be made that reactionary political movements not only predictably “rise to meet the challenge of effective, relatively popular Democratic presidents” but are now “sort of a way of life for some conservative activists.”

Citing the ultimate disgrace and marginalization of Coughlin and kooky groups like the John Birch Society (that William F. Buckley sensibly exiled from mainstream conservatism in the late 60s) Maddow seems fairly confident that historical precedent isn’t on the side of today’s “Fringey McFringersons” that once rabidly opposed Clinton and are now channeling the same kind of virulent paranoia and hatred towards President Obama. One certainly hopes so…

The Million Moron March

An estimated 1-2 million angry white people gathered in Washington today to protest… stuff.

Update: Missed it by that much, as Maxwell Smart used to say. ABC was falsely credited with estimating the size of the 9/12 Tea Party in Washington as 1 million to 1.5 million by Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks. Michelle Malkin then cavalierly rounded this number up to 2 million. ABC News had actually gauged the crowd at between 60-70,000. Not to suggest that these Teabaggers routinely engage in wild exaggerations or grotesque untruths…

Mark Kleiman has an especially funny take on the attendance controversy, also drawing a similar conclusion — “they’re no more careful, and therefore no more to be believed, when it comes to statements about, for example, the content of health care reform.”

Teabagging Day!

Oh goody. The wingnuts and free-range loons are going to be out in force today (“Tax Day” for the 17% of Americans that haven’t already filed their income taxes) protesting all of the “reckless government spending” — something they were quite happily oblivious to for the past decade or more, apparently. Anyway, a couple of views on the protests from the left:

Howard Dean — as usual, the voice of reason. Go figure. I know that pseudo-cons will likely never be capable of getting their heads around that idea, but contrary to the ridiculous caricatures of him conjured up by the right-wing during the 2004 election, the guy is a very sensible and moderate fiscal conservative — always was, and still is.