Scratching TPers

Observers of the turmoil in the Middle East are both excited and wary. These are populist uprisings, but will they result in new militant Muslim regimes?

Observers of the turmoil in the Midwest are equally excited and wary. Will this populist uprising have any effect on the new militant Republican regimes?

People rebel when their leadership doesn’t reflect their wishes. Public servants in Wisconsin feel their state’s new leadership has betrayed democracy – the voice of the people as expressed through collective bargaining. Citizens of some Middle Eastern countries obviously feel their leadership has been oppressive; the question is, what do they see as the remedy – democracy or sharia?

This leads me back to my main argument with the teabaggers. Granted, I was put out with their hypocrisy from the start: accusing Obama of dictatorial leanings when they’d previously given a pass to W and his abuses of power. And in their opposition to overhauling health insurance, let’s not forget the “keep your government hands off my Medicare” mentality. But, open-minded guy that I am, I’m willing to concede that their advocacy of “fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets,” as expressed in their recent gathering in Phoenix, is worthy of intelligent debate. And if this crowd has its way, I’m up for a laugh; the proof will be in the pudding. But is this all they want?

What really bothers me is that teabaggers are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Scratch a TPer and you’re more than likely to find a social conservative.

In America’s rebellion scenario, social conservatives see liberal leaders as a threat to the bedrock of the family as challenged by gays and abortionists. It’s clear that the religious right’s remedy is an American version of sharia, since they unabashedly invoke “God’s law”; given the chance, they’d restore prayer to public schools and display the Ten Commandments in every courthouse (along with sending gays to the back of the bus and extending voting rights to fetuses). And true to conservatives’ black-and-white thinking, anything liberal – including labor unions – is lumped in with that which must be opposed.

Why are social and fiscal conservatives so often one and the same? I suspect it’s largely a Calvinist thing, morality and frugality going hand-in-hand. But when it comes to activism, it’s also a reaction to their feeling that government is telling them what they can and can’t do. What they don’t see is that government telling them they can’t impose their religious beliefs on society safeguards the liberty they purport to defend. They think they’ve been robbed of the freedom to practice their religion, when what they really lost is the freedom to ram it down everyone else’s throat.

While we can’t be sure whether Middle Eastern protesters want to create new Islamic republics in the Iranian mold, we know exactly what American demonstrators have in mind. Union members are looking for justice (remember that concept?); those opposing them are looking, deep down, for their own form of sharia.

So when teabaggers come to power, it’s their hidden agenda I fear the most.