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Georgia Tea Party Solution to Terrorism – Don’t Build Stuff

By: Hrafnkell HaraldssonSep. 20th, 2011more from Hrafnkell Haraldsson

The Georgia Tea Party isn’t long on brains. Not a news flash where any Tea Party group is concerned, I know, but bear with me. The logic seems to be this: if we don’t have anything to destroy, they won’t attack us. When in an episode of MASH it was explained that the North Koreans and Chinese were attacking because they wanted our flush toilets, it was funny. Frank Burns, after all, was an idiot and it was well understood that he was an idiot.

I think you see where I’m going with this. But even Frank Burns wasn’t this stupid. The obvious solution from a Tea Party perspective would be to get rid of our flush toilets. And that’s exactly the tactic the Georgia Tea Party is suggesting in the case of a light rail project.

Mother Jones reports that “The citizens of Cobb County, Georgia, are currently mulling a proposal that would increase property taxes for 10 years in order to fund a new light-rail line between Atlanta to its suburbs.” As they write, it’s a fairly simple proposal. It also makes all kinds of sense.

But not to the Georgia Tea Party – of course. And not just because of their opposition – already noted in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida – to mass transit projects, though there is that too.

No, J.D. Van Brink, the group’s mastermind (one shudders to think of the intellectual incapacity of his underlings), opposes the project on the grounds that it creates a target rich environment for terrorists:

If anyone doesn’t believe me—England and Spain. Now, if we have a more decentralized mass-transit system using buses, if the terrorists blow up a single bus, we can work around that. When they blow up a rail, that just brings the system to a grinding halt. So how much security are we going to have on this rail system, and how much will it cost?

Oh gods, he didn’t just say that, did he? Wow, maybe we should just stop building cool stuff right now. In fact, maybe we should tear down all the cool stuff we already have so the terrorists won’t have anything to attack.

Where does thinking like this come from? I hate to suggest anything but I suspect Van Brink does his best thinking in the bathroom.

As Mother Jones observes, “Van Brink is arguing that because terrorists fantasize about blowing up American infrastructure, we should avoid spending any money on infrastructure.” We know the Tea Party doesn’t like government spending, including especially infrastructure projects, but isn’t this more than just a little crazy?

Doesn’t it stand to reason that if we don’t have light rail our most technologically advanced transit system is the Interstate System and airports? Doesn’t that mean that terrorist attacks will have to be directed at our Interstate System and airports instead? I mean, without light rail, that’s where everybody is going to be. By application of Van Brink’s logic, we should therefore cease spending for those things as well. And when that’s gone, what? Dirt paths? Hand carts?

Look! Here comes the UPS man with his ox-cart. Of course, we can’t make even dirt roads for him because somebody might want to blow it up.

This all reads like a twisted version of Field of Dreams: don’t build it and they won’t come.

In other words, I guess, let’s destroy our country FOR them. This is nihilism in action, folks. It becomes more evident every day that the Tea Party is the enemy of any rational human being. Human beings are social animals, community-builders. The Tea Party is a community destroyer.

The Georgia Tea Party says in its mission statement that their goal is,

To impact public policy by teaching all who seek to learn the principles and spirit of individual liberty and constitutionally-limited self-government.

Apparently, also to force people to walk to work. Or put another way, individual liberty means the public can’t have anything if somebody might want to blow it up. Taken to its extreme, this means no libraries, no bridges, no interstates, no stoplights, no roads – pretty much no “everything”. Nihilism. Followed by anarchy.

It’s scorched earth thinking. Destroy everything the enemy might want. Leave nothing for them. It’s never been more evident that the Tea Party has no ideas, and has never had an idea. It wants to destroy, not build. It is not offering us a solution except self-destruction. I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in destroying our country so there is nothing for the enemy to attack.

Georgia Tea Party Solution to Terrorism – Don’t Build Stuff was written by Hrafnkell Haraldsson for PoliticusUSA.
© PoliticusUSA, Sep. 20th, 2011. All Rights Reserved

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