Send Lawyers, Guns and Money...

In this country you have the right to carry a firearm, but just because you carry a firearm doesn't mean you are smarter than the people who happen to be unarmed and think you are an idiot. In this country you have the right to be stupid as long as it doesn't interfere with the rest of us. While I recognize your right to be stupid, I also understand that your stupidity is more dangerous. Now you can shoot people you disagree with.

God knows we are a nation of ignorant people, and the tea parties that are cropping up across America are the closest things we have to parades celebrating sheer stupidity. You get the tree of liberty quotes. The verbal jabs about Obama being equal to Hitler. You get the take-back-my-country histrionics. Comparing Obama to Hitler is wrong on so many levels it's difficult to know where to start in refuting it. Obama isn't rounding up homosexuals, intellectuals (elites), minorities and Jews. Obama isn't blaming the economic down turn on illegals (outsiders), and he's thoughtful and inclusive in a way Hitler was incapable of being. What seems to be happening is this: the far right wants to encourage the overthrow of a democratically elected president because he's trying to pass legislation they aren't happy with. Instead of raising their voices in respectful dissent and making their case to the American people, they've jumped ahead to fomenting armed insurrection. The far right has become the party with a new motto. The end justifies the means. When, at a town hall the other day, a WWII veteran said to Chuck Grassley, "The president of the United States, that's who you should be concerned about. Because he's acting like a little Hitler," said Tom Eisenhower, a World War II veteran. "I'd take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me," Grassley did not call this veteran out for his comments. Grassley shows the same lack of moral character as any who appeased Hitler. When these false and hysterical comparisons go unchallenged, they diminish the evil committed by Hitler, they help dehumanize Obama to those on the right, and they dangerously ramp up the kind of anger and derision that produces tragic outcomes in this country.

There's been a nasty undercurrent of racism in much of the criticism leveled at Obama and what he is trying to accomplish. Men gather with guns strapped to their legs and rifles thrown over their shoulders. They carry ominous signs. They speak in veiled threats. They are stirred up by the rhetoric of politicians and pundits and are heartened by their silence when they speak openly of violent revolution. In the contested election between Bush and Gore, one could argue that democrats had every right to take to the streets in protest of a deeply flawed election. There was plenty of ugliness after the Supreme Court's decision to install Bush as our president, but no one threatened revolution. Democrats took their lumps, voiced their dissent, and came back to power with the vote. It's the way the system works.

Right now fear has hold over many Americans and they are allowing themselves to believe some preposterous things, to allow some preposterous things. They see ominous motives behind every government action. They need to take a deep breath. They need to calm their crazy neighbors. They need to recognize the moderate voices among their own members. They need to recognize that the right to carry a gun does not give them the right to deny others the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness no matter how disgruntled they are. There are no Hitlers in the White House, but we do have fascists among us and we need to challenge them. Democrat or Republican, we need to call them out.