They claim to be about "getting the government off of our backs." The problem here is that the Tea Party seems to be salivating at the opportunity to enact on the state level laws that prohibit equal rights for gays, women and even racial minorities. Listen past the opening salvos about big government and you realize that what the tea baggers really want is to replace federal government authority with state government authority. Their central assumption is that states have inherent rights but individuals do not.

Witness their reactions to last week's court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act as applied to Massachusetts:

A spokeswoman for one of the biggest Tea Party umbrella organizations, Tea Party Patriots, said that social questions were not part of their mission.

“As far as an assertion of states’ rights goes, I believe it’s a good thing,” said Shelby Blakely, executive director of The New Patriot Journal, the group’s online publication. “The Constitution does not allow federal regulation of gay marriage just as it doesn’t allow for federal regulation of health care.”

“But I don’t want to come off saying I support gay marriage,” she added.

No of course not. In fact, the social gains of the past 50 years seem to be in the crosshairs of tea baggers from Rand Paul to Sarah Palin to Sharron Angle.

And then there's tea bagger heaven: Arizona, where "papers please" is not a line from a Nazi in a World War 2 movie but rather a populist mantra.

This is not libertarian. This is authoritarian.

Let's look at a definition of Libertarianism:

Libertarians believe that individuals should have complete freedom of action, provided their actions do not infringe on the freedom of others.

—Encyclopedia Brittanica

Libertarianism describes a range of political beliefs that advocate the maximization of an individual's ability to think and act with few constraints from large social structures, such as government,[1][2][3] and the minimization or even abolition of the state.

—Wikipedia

An advocate of the doctrine of free will

—Mirriam-Webster ("libertarian")

The Tea Party, with it's stated goal of establishing greater authority to state governments, is not libertarian. In fact, when you look at the code words, off-the-record remarks, and actions of Tea Party leaders and supporters, it becomes clear that the Tea Party is actually about authoritarianism. To the Tea Party, the federal government's oppression is that it prevents them from oppressing gays, oppressing women (especially with regard to healthcare), and oppressing racial minorities.

And yet the Beltway crowd seems to buy into the claim that the Tea Party is libertarian.

E.J. Dione seems to think the Tea Party makes the common mistake:

The rise of the tea party movement is a throwback to an old form of libertarianism that sees most of the domestic policies that government has undertaken since the New Deal as unconstitutional. It typically perceives the most dangerous threats to freedom as the design of well-educated elitists out of touch with “American values.”

In a fascinating article analyzing the Tea Party — and the prevalence of women tea baggers — Ruth Rosen identifies some disturbing characteristics:

One important difference, however, is race. At Tea Party rallies you don’t see faces with dark complexions. Another important distinction is that men and women are drawn to this sprawling movement for a variety of overlapping but possibly different reasons. Both men and women seem to embrace an incoherent “ideology” which calls for freedom from government, no taxes, and an inchoate desire to “take back America,” which means restoring the nation to some moment when the country was white and “safe.”

She goes on to note how the conservative brand of "feminism" isn't quite the feminism that states that "Feminism is the radical idea that women are people." On the contrary:

Here is a great irony. Since 1980, when the backlash began attacking the women’s movement, young secular American women have resisted calling themselves feminists because the religious right-wing had so successfully created an unattractive image of a feminist as a hairy, man-hating, lesbian who spouted equality, but really wanted to kill babies. Now, Palin is forcing liberal feminists to debate whether these Christian feminists are diluting feminism or legitimizing it by making it possible to say that one is a feminist.

When I read what women write on Christian women’s web sites, I hear an echo from the late nineteenth century when female reformers sought to protect the family from “worldly dangers.” Frances Willard, leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, urged millions of women to enter the public sphere in order to protect their families, to address the decadent consequences and casualties of capitalism, to win suffrage, and to fight for prohibition, all in the name of protecting the purity of their homes and families.

For many contemporary evangelical Christian women, their motivations are similar. They want to enter the public sphere or even run for office to eliminate abortion, protect marriage, contain sexual relations, oppose gay marriage and clean up the mess made by the sexual revolution. [Emphasis added.]

This doesn't sound like liberty. It sounds like vesting greater freedom to state governments so they can oppress entire classes of people with impunity.

Am I wrong? If so, I'd love to see some proof.

In general, I'm politically right of center when it comes to fiscal issues. Obviously, after the catastrophic banking crisis of 2008, when we saw up close that the virtues of the invisible hand of the market come with a price: markets crash and revivals can be long in coming and very painful to wait for. The cost to our society has been very dear so far, and is looking to get worse before we see a meaningful upturn. Sometimes letting the market just do its thing can simply be too devastating to bear. Yet when things are going well, it's generally good to just stay out of the way of what the market does well. In other words, the cycles of markets are too turbulent to just let them run wild, but it's mainly the lows that we have to worry about.

I look at it like floating in a pool. Just let the buoyancy happen. But if you start to go under, do something about it.

Last night I caught Paul Krugman's appearance on Charlie Rose, where he talked about the price we're paying for fiscal austerity. His main point was that austerity now only shrinks the economy, and that the Fed is already as low as it can be on interest rates so there's really nothing more they can do to stimulate private sector growth to compensate for cuts in government economic activity. Krugman says we need another stimulus now to get the economy moving again. In the two previous major economic slowdowns, the emergence from the doldrums came, in the 1880s, from the railroad boom and, in the Great Depression, from World War 2. In the first case, technological innovation and a new industrial market led to economic expansion. In the latter case, the massive government spending on the war effort kicked the market into gear. Krugman asserts that now we're at a moment in time where we need one or the other to get us out of this mess, or we risk falling into deflation and rising unemployment.

In other words, we're sinking below the surface and we need either a boogie board or we better start activity swimming to get our heads above water.

To me it seems obvious that a national effort pushing development of alternative energies and energy-efficient technologies could prove to be the technological innovation that leads to new industrial markets. America could even become a manufacturing nation again, an exporter of goods.

In the meantime, though, we need some kind of spending to invest in our infrastructure — fix our crumbling bridges, our pothole-filled roads, our collapsing schools; build up our information infrastructure before we end up being on par with the third world — do things that put people to work improving our commons that is beyond the purview of any single corporation and bet on the future potential of this country.

The Republicans, however, and not a few conservative Democrats, are in a psychological brain-lock triggered, I believe, in no small part by their own buyer's remorse: After racking up trillions of dollars of national debt under the Bush Administration, and setting the stage for the bank meltdown that cost us trillions more in not just bailout funds but also lost economic growth and activity, the GOP has suddenly glommed onto the idea that they need to stop spending. Their anuses have puckered tightly shut and they'll be damned if they unclench.

And this anal retentive fear of spending is exacerbated by the right-wing's culture of bedwetting fear, which is showing itself in conservative attacks on immigrants, on equal rights for gays, on equal rights for blacks (because of course the Civil Rights legislations of the 1960s are problematic, says tea bagger candidate Rand Paul and others), and so on.

So the panic-stricken conservatives are blocking even aid to the unemployed — as if unemployed works who are looking for work but cannot find it were the real problem of our economy. Like nervous children who never learned how to swim, the right wing leaders are locking onto us all, frozen in fear, dragging us all down under water.

Yet the Republicans declare that such panic is virtuous.

Changing metaphors for a moment, let's look at our economy as a house. In general, you want to run your house in sound fiscal order. But sometimes you just have to spend. You have to spend if the roof is leaking. You have to spend if the water main breaks. You have to spend if the electrical wiring shorts out. You can't just say, "Well we spent too much on the credit cards throwing parties, so now we refuse to fix the broken water heater." (Maybe you shouldn't have spent so much on your war parties in the first place, Senator Mitch McConnell!)

Now is not the time to give in to conservatives' panic. We are not a country that displays its best out of fear. When we face the challenges head-on and mobilize our resources, we tend to triumph. When we react in fear and trepidation, we tend to make mistakes that cost us for years, even decades.

Yes, we need to get a handle on our long-term national debt. It's fucking frightening how big it has gotten in the last 10 years. But now's not the time. First we have to prime the economic engine again, and kick things into gear, get people working. Working people spend. Working people feel better about themselves. A working nation is empowered.

Then, when the economy is humming along again (which, by the by, also means government revenues are rising again), that's when we cut spending. Let's fix the house first, then worry about the monthly budget. Let's swim now, while we can, before we drown.

Consider the remarks of John McCain:

"We feel very strongly that it needs to be condition- based, because if you tell the enemy when you are leaving, then obviously it has an adverse effect on your ability to succeed. So that is a major concern. And there's still a great deal of ambiguity about that issue."

...During yesterday's press conference, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) backed up McCain's assertions.

But let's consider this: Since 1945, Congress has failed to declare war on anyone or anything. Instead, they have left all war-making authority to the President. Why? You tell me. Mostly political cowardice, I'd wager.

So it's easy for these old wise men to kibbitz and criticize, but if they want to set conditions on the war — and especially since they aren't trying to stop an undeclared war — maybe they should get Congress to declare the fucking thing and then they can review to their hearts' content.

Until then, it's all posturing. Right or wrong, it's posturing.

If Arizona hasn't gone and done it again. According to Time Magazine,

Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona ...

Arizona is a beautiful place with an expansive countryside -- crowned by the Grand Canyon -- with so many friendly and kind people. How is it then that the state manages to come off looking so odd-ball?

According to the Time article, some Arizona legislators want to withhold birth certificates of children born in Arizona, to parents who are not U.S. citizens.

The United States is a country which confers citizenship to anyone born in the country -- the so-called "natural born." Hence, to prove citizenship, someone born in the United States needs only to show a birth certificate to prove they are an American. Those not born in the United States need to get naturalization papers to provide this proof.

Under this theory, if a child is by definition an American citizen by virtue of being born within the United States, then it follows children born of non-citizens are citizens of the United States. Some think that this is a loophole, and now the Arizona legislature is attempting to plug the loophole by withholding citizenship from these children by not supplying a birth certificate.

Does withholding or otherwise manipulating a birth certificate invalidate citizenship? Possibly not.

The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution states, in part:

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The 14th Amendment was in large part meant to deal with emancipated slaves, who were native-born, but not full citizens prior to their emancipation. After emancipation, former slaves were in limbo and some people questioned the status of former slaves, as citizens. The 14th Amendment helps to clarify their status as full citizens, despite the circumstances of their birth in servitude.

Some southern revisionist may say that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were foisted on the secessionist states by scalawags and carpetbaggers ... and there are those who say the votes weren't quite right for ratification of the 14th. Certainly the 14th amendment has been applied in any number of instances in the 132 years since its enactment, not to mention some degree of consternation because it has the "equal protection" language in it.

Now the 14th is under attack by Arizona Republican and state Senator Russell Pearce. He is the man behind a move to strip persons born in the United States of the citizenship protected under the 14th. Of course, it is not phrased that way. It is couched in terms that those born in the United States, who fall under the proposed law, would not be given their birth documents. More benign sounding, as if the State of Arizona has the right to decide who and who is not a citizen of the United States.

But the 14th is very clear that people born in the United States are citizens, without the permission or acquiescence of any State government. At the moment of their birth, these newborns are United States citizens, birth certificate, or not. The intent of the legislation seems to be that by withholding the birth certification, the citizenship of these newborns can be reversed. But notice that Section 1 of the 14th Amendment says nothing about birth certificates. Given the world on 1868, when people were born at home, birth certificates were not de rigueur.

Even 68 years later, in 1936 to be exact, birth records were not that important, as we read in a Washington Post article about Arizona Senator John McCain's birth records.

Curiously enough, there is no record of McCain's birth in the Panama Canal Zone Health Department's bound birth registers, which are publicly available at the National Archives in College Park. A search of the "Child Born Abroad" records of the U.S. consular service for August 1936 included many U.S. citizens born in the Canal Zone but did not turn up any mention of John McCain.

The lack of such birth records does not make McCain any less a "native born" citizen.

Possible discrepancies in the bureaucratic paperwork are of little concern to Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor who looked into [whether McCain was a "natural born" American] . . . . Tribe said it would be "astonishing if the recordkeeping practices of Canal Zone [officials] could have any bearing on eligibility for the U.S. presidency."

Perhaps the same can be said of Arizona's pending legislation. It holds no force. It carries no sway. The matter of who is a citizen falls to the Federal Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of Justice, not any state.

Nevertheless Arizona state Senator Pearce argues in the Time article,

the 14th Amendment has been "hijacked" by illegal immigrants. "They use it as a wedge," Pearce says. "This is an orchestrated effort by them to come here and have children to gain access to the great welfare state we've created." Pearce says he is aware of the constitutional issues involved with the bill and vows to introduce it nevertheless. "We will write it right."

Citing the popularity of such a bill, the article goes on,

He and other Republicans in the red state Arizona point to popular sympathy: 58% of Americans polled by Rasmussen think illegal immigrants whose children are born here should not receive citizenship; support for that stance is 76% among Republicans.

Of course, the reason the founders wanted a Bill of Rights was precisely to protect against majorities, 58% or otherwise, riding roughshod over people -- newly-born citizens, included.

And now for the second round of birth-certificate-driven, odd-ball, politics. In a New York Channel 2 story we read,

The Arizona House has approved a bill that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate if he hopes to be on the state's ballot for a re-election bid.

The report goes onto say that the State of Hawaii has passed legislation to deal with a flood of inquires about the President's birth certificate. The birth certificate has already been shown, and doing so time and again is a waste of taxpayer money.

Perhaps the Arizona law will snare some of the people going across the boarder of one of the 13 other states that share the boarder with Canada, but I doubt that that is the real reason for all the Arizona brouhaha. The irony, if it can be called that, is how far people will go to erect fences and walls and how much birth certificates matter when the individual is darker-skinned.

Read further in the Washington Post article concerning Arizona Senator, John McCain's natural-born status,

The key constitutional issue is whether the Canal Zone was part of the United States .... the sovereignty question is "more complex" than Olson and Tribe concede. People born in some U.S. territories, such as American Samoa, are not recognized as citizens of the United States. According to a State Department manual, U.S. military installations abroad cannot be considered "part of the United States" and "A child born on the premises of such a facility is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and does not acquire U.S. citizenship by reason of birth." Tribe said the manual is an "opinion" with no legal status.

According to the Washington Post, other lighter-skinned folks, besides McCain, have run for President without there being such angst,

Vice President Charles Curtis, who served under President Herbert Hoover and was born in the territory of Kansas in 1860, a year before it became a state. The 12th Amendment requires that vice presidents possess the same qualifications as presidents.

Several prominent politicians have run for the presidency without having been born in the United States, including Barry Goldwater, who was born in the territory of Arizona in 1909, three years before it became a state. Mitt Romney's father, George Romney, ran in 1968, even though he was born in Mexico. Since neither Goldwater nor Romney won the presidency, the "natural born" clause was never tested.

Looking back at the 14th Amendment, Section 3, it appears that we are a forgiving people -- even able to seat those, right after reconstruction, who took up arms against the United States. And during that same time, blacks were unseated and through adroit legislation, were disenfranchised. Rewriting reconstruction as a time of Northern excess and oppression of Southern citizens, does not always square with history -- see "The Era of Reconstruction," 1865-1877 by Kenneth M. Stampp. What actually happened was that after defeat, the southern states passed legislation that favored the white man and removed the darker-skinned people from power. We may be seeing another round of carefully crafted legislation that takes away people's rights. Same-old, same-old?

It is doubtful the Arizona legislation will be upheld, but then again you never know with members of a Supreme Court who look to 18th century "intent" to apply to 21st century circumstances. So the battle goes on.

And yet there is cause for hope. What some might call the most Secess' states of all, first-to-secede South Carolina, has led the way by nominating Nikki Haley, an Indian-American for governor in Tuesday's primary.

Having won re-election in the midst of a Civil War, Lincoln said in his second inaugural

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

It has been 135 years since Lincoln called on the citizens to bind up the nation's wounds and that we find "lasting peace among ourselves." That time may be here. Maybe now is the time to really start that healing and put all the birth-certificate-driven politics behind us.

Rush Limbaugh might have popularized the term "borked," meaning someone denied their fair due. On the May 21, 2010, Real Time broadcast, Bill Maher suggests the bad blood and anger between the parties can in large part be traced to the denial of confirmation to Ronald Regan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

Maher, who was high school age at the time of Watergate, might have missed the big reason Bork did not get confirmed.

There were unanswered questions about the Watergate break in, and prior to congressional hearings, Special Watergate Prosecutor, Archibald Cox, put a bur under Nixon's saddle, so much so that Nixon wanted Cox fired, which he could do as the investigation was being conducted under the authority of the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson. So Nixon told Richardson that Cox had to go, but Richardson refused and offered his resignation rather than go through with it.

Nixon accepted the resignation, to put it politely, and ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus refused and resigned. Finally Nixon went to Robert Bork, the Solicitor General, who complied.

These were not Democrats that bucked Nixon; these were the President's men.

If anything, Bork was borked when he followed orders. Perhaps if he had been the Attorney General at the outset and fired Cox, it would have been unpopular, but it might have been forgotten, but given Richardson's and Ruckelshaus' stance, made Bork look anything but sterling.

But I say that the bad blood goes further back -- it helps to be old enough to remember the 1960s as something first-person, rather than something in a history book.

The real problem is that the 1960 election was stolen by the Democrats when the Chicago machine under John Daley manufactured enough votes to tip the state and give John F. Kennedy the White House. Nixon did not contest it, later accusation of Nixon being a "crybaby," notwithstanding.

The idea of dirty tricks really harks back to the dirtiest of tricks in those Chicago election returns. The dogged examinations of chads in Florida is a legacy of that election as is much of the Republican distrust of the Democrats ... and if they stole the 2000 election, at worst it was only getting even; at best it was a preemptive move to keep the Democrats from pulling another 1960.

Bork was borked when he fired Cox.

The bad blood goes back quit a way, and from those wounds and bitterness, much of what we see in politics today, at least in part flows back to the election of 1960.