Now there's something to ponder. Which does Jesus like less? Cap-in-trade, or Glenn Beck. I don't know, you don't know, and Glenn Beck surely doesn't know. But he believes he does.
Dana Milbank thinks the Republican Party's demise is dated 5/8/10. From his column to god's ear.That was the day, as is now well known, that Sen. Robert Bennett, who took the conservative position 84 percent of the time over his career, was deemed not conservative enough by fellow Utah Republicans and booted out of the primary.
Less well known, but equally ominous, is what happened that same day, 2,500 miles east in Maine. There, the state Republican Party chucked its platform -- a sensible New England mix of free-market economics and conservation -- and adopted a manifesto of insanity: abolishing the Federal Reserve, calling global warming a "myth," sealing the border, and, as a final plank, fighting "efforts to create a one world government."
One world government? Do our friends Down East fear an invasion from the Canadian maritime provinces? A Viking flotilla coming from Iceland under cover of volcanic ash?
I was pondering this mystery while on the elliptical machine this week and watching Glenn Beck (I find he increases my heart rate), when I heard him inform his viewers that "they" -- President Obama and friends -- "are creating a global governance structure."
"Social and ecological justice and all of this bullcrap," Beck told his viewers, "is man's work for a global government." Beck -- who is second in popularity only to Sarah Palin among the type of Tea Party activists who hijacked the Maine GOP -- tossed out phrases such as "global standards" and "global bank tax" -- all part of a conspiracy by the "global government people." He further provided the news that "Jesus doesn't want a cap-and-trade system."
Seriously, for a moment. We're going to have to address the paranoia about a global takeover at some point -- probably in easy-to-comprehend, Dick-and-Jane language -- for the Tea Party. It's not a hard concept to absorb. The tough part is tearing them away from an image of America as remaining permanently in the 19th century.
No member of the Tea Party was alive in the 19th century but it doesn't stop them from living there in their fantasies. They have failed to grasp the fact that it took longer to get from central Ohio to central Indiana in 1810 than it takes to get from New York to London in 2010. New York to LA was longer than Peoria to Bombay. Like it or not, some of the Tea Party's closest neighbors these days live in China.
They don't like it at all. As Milbank makes clear, the Tea Party's code requires that they remain stuck in a world of "hate thy neighbor..."
The Maine Republicans a week ago rejected a platform proclaiming that "we believe that the proper role of government is to help provide for those who can not help themselves"; that "we believe in ensuring that our children have access to the best educational opportunities"; and that "every person's dignity, freedom, liberty, ability and responsibility must be honored."
