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Juice Boxes, Not Tea Bags

By David Corn | April 16, 2009 10:24 AM

I purposefully did not pay much attention to the so-called tea parties of protest held yesterday by right-wingers upset by President Barack Obama. This was an event ginned up by a few conservative commentators and given undue coverage by an overly excited Fox News. Why bother with it?

But on Wednesday, as I left the daily press briefing at the White House, I had to pass by two hundred or so soggy teabaggers. And what I saw convinced me that many of them were--oh, how to put this politely--too dumb to know to come in from out of the rain. How could I tell? The signs they carried. The messages painted on the placards included, "Taxes are theft"; "It's my money"; "Give me my money back"; "Say No To Taxes"; and the like. There also were numerous signs blasting Obama as a socialist. (By the way, unless you want to dismantle Medicare, you, too, are a socialist.)

These people were not protesting particular policies of Obama; they were decrying the foundation of the American political system: citizens pay taxes that cover the costs of government services. How many of the conservative talking heads and political leaders who hailed the tax day protests would agree that there should be notaxes? In this nation, adults debate tax rates and the proper use of tax funds and even the form of taxation implemented by the government--not whether or not there should be taxes.

The folks in the rain outside the White House were marginal government-haters. Some had been bussed in from who-knows-where--maybe from ultra-libertarian survivalist compounds in rural West Virginia. As I gazed at them, I couldn't help thinking:

Next time, you're in a car crash and you're taken to the emergency room at a hospital, imagine the doctors there saying, "Before we operate and save your life, you first have to pay us $43,000, because that's what we estimate it's going to cost. And in our full-free-market economy, we only deliver services to people who can pay the full costs--up-front.....What, you don't have the money? And no insurance card? Sorry."

There are people who do not want to live within a community of citizens, where taxes are collected and used (we hope) to serve and protect that community. (Try testing all your food for carcinogenic substances on your own at home!) To them, we can only say: tough luck. The battle has been lost. This is a country where we collectively decide how to manage our resources. We hold elections to determine how much to tax and how to use the tax money collected. A protest against the very notion of taxes is akin to a childish rant. These people ought to be brandishing juice boxes, not tea bags.

SOURCE: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/