Back in the heyday of apartheid my friend Karl Beck said that the Afrikaaners (those white South Africans of Dutch origin who thought up apartheid) would all wake up some day and just go crazy. Mobs of them would appear on the streets mumbling and drooling. And Africans would get to see what they had for some time known: The insane had been running the asylum. We are now actually seeing a parade of people who seem just to have awakened to idiocy right here in the good old USA. They gather at tea parties. Not real tea parties but the ones that make them feel like they?re protesting taxes on the importation of tea imposed by a monarch who thinks he has every right to impose them. Of course, as we now know, the best response to the tea tax was coffee. These days a monarch could probably impose a tea tax without anyone on this side of the Atlantic noticing. A chai tax would be a different matter.

Those who gather at these tea parties don?t have much to do. There are no bales of tea to throw into Boston Harbor. Perhaps it is for this reason that they hold their parties in daylight. I?ve also noticed that not a lot of them dress up as Native Americans. I think that?s what they did at the original Boston Tea Party in order to confuse the enemy. It?s difficult to imagine that anyone would have been fooled. But I suppose someone may have thought that the Native Americans felt that if they could cut off the tea supply perhaps all of the Europeans who had invaded their land might just go back to Europe to drink tea. It?s the sort of analysis tea party people indulge. It makes sense if you assume a lot of things that are either highly improbable or ridiculous. It?s the kind of analysis that begins: If the sun fails to rise tomorrow?.

The tea partiers are charming in the utterly unaffected vehemence with which they announce the most nonsensical opinions. It is an object lesson for the proposition that freedom of speech can and often does include freedom from fact, logic and even reality. In that particular marketplace of ideas clashes would have to continue for more years than most of us are allotted for anything to emerge that would bear repeating. To borrow from Barney Frank, arguing points with that crowd would leave you feeling like your opponent was the entire contents of a furniture store. (To clarify this reference see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlZiWK2Iy8.) Lewis Carroll would have found them a welcome addition. But enough. It is not necessary to describe tea partiers. You must merely listen. I just recommend that you watch a video or tv broadcast to keep glass between you and the menagerie.

To see for yourself try the following ? and don?t worry, you will have glass to shield you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y.

It may be difficult imagine that these folks have an intellectual wing. Indeed, they would probably be the first to reject the notion preferring instead to think that they had some very smart people on their side. In that crowd ?intellectual? is a bit of a pansy word and connotes someone whose penchant for thinking has placed him or her beyond the grasp of hard, them-vs-us reality. Their really smart guy is a character named Glen Beck who has skyrocketed to notoriety on the basis of such insightful meanderings as the following: (Once again, you will have glass to protect you.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szlLM5lCNJg.

Stalwarts such as Sen. Lindsay Graham and Rep. John Boehner assure us that the tea partiers are not motivated by racial undercurrents. They are simply expressing pent up anger over the growth of government. And the penting up must be pretty serious by now. Public schools, colleges and universities. Land grants. A standing army. Bank deposit insurance. Minimum wage. Drug laws. Social security. Aid to families with dependent children. Medicare. The interstate highway system. Emergency management programs. Disaster assistance. Headstart programs. Car safety standards. Unemployment insurance. The Civil Rights Act. Retirement Insurance. Well, you catch my drift. Funny how they had to wait until now. I guess you never can tell about some people. You just never know what?s going to set them off. Right?