Okay, I had to work last night, so I missed the Rachel Maddow show. No problem, I usually just watch it online when I get home. I did so this morning; I wasn't expecting this little segment of horror:
Hopefully, this scares the hell out of you; I know it does me. State Senator (and Governor hopeful) Randy Brogdon is self-identified as a Tea Party member. And though you probably just watched the clip, I want to repeat his quote from the AP story: The founding fathers "were not referring to a turkey shoot or a quail hunt. They really weren't even talking about us having the ability to protect ourselves against each other. The Second Amendment deals directly with the right of an individual to keep and bear arms to protect themselves from an overreaching federal government."
Now, I have never even pretended to be a Constitutional scholar. I have, however, read the document and all it's amendments. So in the interest of fair and balanced reporting, here is the text, in full, of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Okay, even an incredibly liberal reading of the Second Amendment can't come close to what Sen. Brogdon is claiming the founding fathers meant. The militias referred there were to PROTECT the state, not raise arms against it. That's what "being necessary to the security of a free state" means! Does having government regulated health care reform somehow threaten our national security?
So, if this is a forward movement of the Tea Party, can we expect more of the same? And speaking of Tea Party, their matriarch, Sarah Palin herself, had this to say when she was running for Vice President alongside John McCain in 2008:
Okay, so health care reform is fine and dandy when REPUBLICANS propose it, but let that upstart socialist/corporatist Obama do it and now it's cause to take up arms against an "overreaching federal government." I get it now.
I have a funny feeling that, had this happened during the Bush/Cheney years, people would have no problem calling Brogdan "insane" or even "seditious." I have no problem doing either now. This is planned sedition, plainly and blatantly. If the FBI is not investigating him and all those in the Oklahoma government that support him, they should be ashamed. And I'm absolutely ecstatic that the first of the many more to come midterm elections went solidly Democrat. Here's hoping that the Tea Party movement being associated with Republicans moves more people to the Democrats as the only sane choices in the upcoming elections.
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