Cohen Rants About the Tea Party — Our Civilization is at Risk

Richard Cohen’s column today, “Green with Tea Party Envy,” starts off comparing the lack of passion and purpose of President Obama with the Tea Party activists. And he paints a reasonable contrast.

But then Cohen veers off into what liberals like Cohen would refer to as “hate speech.” Here are some examples:

The odd thing about the Tea Party is that it uses Washington to attack Washington. This is a version of Hannah Arendt’s observation that totalitarian movements use democratic institutions to destroy democracy. (This is what Islamic radicals will do in Egypt.)

So the Tea Party activists — a grassroots somewhat amorphous movement with no clear undisputed leadership is a totalitarian movement that can be compared with Islamic radicals.

Odd, because dictionary definitions of totalitarianism seem to describe the opposite of the limited government philosophy of many Tea Party supporters.

Of or relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.

But that’s not enough for Cohen. Just a couple of sentences later he opines:

Its followers have only 60 seats in the 435-member House, but in a textbook application of political power they were able to use parliamentary rules to drive the congressional agenda. As we have known since Lenin’s day, a determined minority is hands down better than an irresolute majority.

Okay — so the Tea Party movement is both totalitarian and Marxist Communist.

Faced with this, Cohen sinks into his despairing coda — because of the Tea Party, the end of the world as we know it is near:

The Tea Party has recklessly diminished the power and reach of the United States. It has shrunk the government and will, if it can, further deprive it of revenue. The domestic economy will suffer and the gap between rich and poor, the educated and the indolently schooled, will continue to widen. International relations will lack a dominant power able to enforce the rule of law, and the bad guys will be freer to be as bad as they want. Maybe the deficit will be brought under control, but nothing else will. I worry — and I envy (but will not forgive) those who don’t.

One can only wonder what Cohen reads to “research” his columns — even the Daily Kos has more informed political analysis.