Tea Party More Than a Temper Tantrum

Another brilliant – and frightening – column from Leonard Pitts, Jr in the Miami Herald.

Here is a brief excerpt and a link to the full column:

 

Then you realize it was not so long ago that a man blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City out of anti-government sentiment not so different from that espoused by the tea party. And you remember how that tragedy exposed an entire network of armed anti-government zealots gathering in the woods. And you read where the Southern Poverty Law Center says the number of radical anti-government groups spiked to 824 in 2010, a 61 percent increase over just the previous year.

And you wonder.

This is not a prediction, only a speculation — and a suggestion that those of us who have regarded the craziness of recent years as an aberration, a temporary temper tantrum from people who feel threatened and dislocated, may have been entirely too sanguine. In less than 20 years, the locus of radical anti-government extremism has moved from remote woods to Capitol Hill.

How should the rest of us respond? That’s a question we urgently need to answer. They say they’ve come to take “their” country back.

Maybe it’s time we took them at their word.

Full Column:   Tea party more than a temper tantrum – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.