In human history, it’s never been easier to get — and stay — well informed. Folks just have to take some responsibility. If they don’t, the result can be a dysfunctional democracy.

It’s impolitic to say this but not all pastimes and passions are equal. And the next time you bemoan the state of the economy or your due taxes or your summons to jury duty or the latest idiocy out of Washington — just pause for a moment and think about how much time you spend reading gossip columns, or devouring “reality” TV, or watching one overgrown overdosed tribe of jocks beat up on a different overgrown overdosed tribe of jocks. Is it really true that you don’t have the time to keep informed?  Or is it that you just don’t want to invest that time?

And if it’s the latter, do you really deserve the vote you’re accorded by virtue of your citizenship in an advanced democracy?

(Also hosted at Political Correction, in case the original gets “disappeared”, and reproduced below the fold here — although apparently it;s already been edited.)

I don’t really know really even to begin to comment on this “letter” from Tea Party Express chairman Mark Williams.  It takes something really, um, special to answer charges of racism by claiming that the N.A.A.C.P. is the one whose racist. But the letter per se — a mock letter from N.2A.A.C.P. president Benjamin Jealous, in which the mock-Jealous writes to Abraham Lincoln to request the repeal of the 13th and 14th amendments.  (Aside: What is it with these Tea Party fanatics and amendment repeal?)

Now, the truly Crowning Moment of Jerkitude comes in signing the letter with “Tom’s nephew”.  It takes a certain gumption — but not the good kind — to label a civil rights leader with “Uncle Tom”.

Quoted verbatim:

NAACP Resolution: Colored People change minds about emancipation

Thursday 7/15: Scroll down for update video

Astonishing.

In every one of the dozens of interviews that I have done regarding the anti-Tea Party resolution passed by the NAACP I have brought up the absurdity of a group that calls blacks “Colored People” hurling charges of racism. Whats more, each interviewer has defended that phrase and expressed surprise that I would consider that phrase to be racist!

Apparently Colored People are an entirely new race of people and one to which the title applies. Here NAACP President Precious Ben Jealous explains to President Abraham Lincoln the reasons for the resolution in this newly discovered letter :

Dear Mr. Lincoln

We Colored People have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the ‘tea party movement’.

The tea party position to “end the bailouts” for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn’t that what we want all Colored People to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us Colored People! Of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that should be granted the right to disperse the funds.

And the ridiculous idea of “reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government.” What kind of world would we have is I ever to control and be responsible for my life own? As Colored People we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions and if you do not agree than there is not enough Colored in your People, as we labeled Ken Gladney [source]

The racist tea parties also demand that the government “stop the out of control spending.” Again, they directly target Colored People. That means we Colored People would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government “stop raising our taxes.” That is outrageous! Totally racist! The tea party expects Colored People to be productive members of society, especially when our mission is to convince them that progress is impossible for them based on the color of their skin?

Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by someone else. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we say that belong.

Sincerely

Ben Jealous, Tom’s Nephew National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Head Colored Person

“The Invisible Bond Vigilantes Continue Their Invisible Attack”

Could we call this the phantom menace? 

Now, after the police dogs, night-sticks and fire-hoses have been beaten back, Rand Paul wants to reopen the question, while, to be sure, claiming that he would have had the “courage to march with Martin Luther King.” This is a common strain of courage. It chiefly shines through in men born 50 years too late. Presently among the crowd, they are distinguished at that decisive moment when queried about wars they won’t have to fight, in times they will never live. These men populate our history books. They are all on the wrong side.

Devastating.

An editorial cartoon responding to the Arizona immigration law

From the cartoonist Lee Judge ( http://media.kansascity.com/images/cartoons/judge/04-2010/judge_04272010_700.jpg)

They made it up.

Really.  It came from nowhere.  In fact, the IRS will add few or no agents, and perhaps hardly any staff at all.  There’s a really nice dissection of this ludicrous claim over at factcheck.org.  Basically, the number was invented based on a bad estimate, inflated through dubious assumptions, and then just hand-waved into fact.

Just remember, the next time someone quotes to you some scary scary provision of the ACA: There’s a non-negligible chance that they are lying or repeating a lie.

You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

And that is the actual greatest threat to the Republic today: The noisy whiners who don’t know anything factual and are proud of it.  How does an Enlightenment democracy function, when one side denies the value of both logic and evidence?

As a lifelong Democrat, I am flabbergasted. I was certain they’d find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and fumble on the proverbial one-yard line. I’m glad to be disappointed, but this long, ugly process has exposed disturbing trends in this nation. It’s still possible that this will be the high-water mark of a great republic.

Though their target is incorrect, the Tea Partiers ironically have a point: the Republic does face a crisis. It’s not driven by phantasmical jackbooted insurance inspectors breaking into homes and dragging Grandma off to mythical death panels. It stems from the unholy matrimony among a slick ideological establishment; sensationalist, irresponsible, and manipulative 24 hour “news” media; and an angry, incoherent, willfully-ignorant populace. Though these people claim to revere the Founders, they in fact stand opposed to the core of Enlightenment democracy that was bequeathed to us: an informed and educated citizenry engaged in reasoned debate — with passion, to be sure, but never abandoning reason and never so cocksure as to assume that opponents must be enemies.

Considering that the Tea Partiers have labeled rule by majority vote “tyranny”, it’s hard to see how anything resembling the United States of America could survive their rage.  Their unifying feature is anger and it will burn everything it can reach.  And the Republican Party stands on the sideline and feeds it, a mixture of cynical arsonist and maniacal six-year-old.

How can a deliberative legislature — how can a functioning democracy — endure when one side has abandoned argument and evidence?  When one side decides that anything their opponents say must be untrue?  If one side locks itself in its own fantasy world and declares invalid any source that might challenge its funhouse-mirror self-reality?

• Ezra Klein takes it down analytically.
• Jonathan Chait takes it apart with the devastating mockery it so richly deserves.

The health care debate has revealed not only how dysfunctional our national politics is.  It’s exposed how vapid and worthless the self-appointed pundits and intelligentsia have become.

(I also have to say how taken aback I am at how nakedly the professional punditry is willing to scoff at such a radical principle as “rule by simple majority”, which Brooks derides in no uncertain terms.  Isn’t rule of the majority more or less what we mean by democracy?)