Please, just leave - Right-wing crackpots plot to abandon the union

By MIKE MILIARD
thephoenix.com
March 19, 2009

"What kind of revolution appeals most to you?" read the now-deleted poll question on Sean Hannity's message board: "Military Coup, Armed Rebellion, or War for Secession?"

The next four to eight years are gonna be some fun!

Barely two months into the Obama administration, wing-nuts across the land are frothing at the mouth, talking feverishly of secession, violent revolution, tax revolt, "going Galt," and national divorce. It would be hilarious if it weren't so creepy.

We all had a good laugh this past December when Igor Panarin, dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats, predicted that the financial crisis would eventually lead to widespread unrest, martial law, and, by 2010, a civil war in the US — the end result of which would be a motley collection of rump states like "Atlantic America" and the "Texas Republic," that then glom onto countries such as Canada and Mexico. It's an absurd idea.

Or is it? Perusing some of the sheer insanity spewed on rightist blogs, message boards, and comment threads — the pitchfork-shaking anger directed at this so-called socialist government — one has to wonder just what's percolating in this country. Maybe the big break-up is coming sooner than we think? ...

ut protests do only so much. More and more, it seems, nothing less than outright secession will satisfy some of these cranks. The right-wing Web is all atwitter over a recent open letter, spreading from blog to blog like a hanta virus, by one "John J. Wall, Law Student and an American." In it, Wall puts it plainly: he wants a divorce.

"Let's just end it on friendly terms," he writes. "We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. . . . Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA, and the military." (What they'll do with all the guns he doesn't say.)

Ironically, when not busy fomenting revolution or concocting a plan to carve up the continental US, conservatives act a lot like the "hippies" that Wall went on to lambaste in his letter — thumbing their nose at authority and threatening to drop out of society.

It was reported on military.com last month that a soldier, First Lieutenant Scott Easterling, who is stationed in Iraq, has balked at following orders: "Until Mr. Obama releases a 'vault copy' of his original birth certificate for public review," he declared, "I will consider him neither my commander in chief nor my president, but rather, a usurper to the office — an impostor."

And the latest bit of in(s)anity making the rounds in conservative circles in is the notion of "going Galt," in which angry rich people protest Obama's fiscal policies by following the lead of John Galt —übermensch protagonist of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged — and removing their ostensibly valuable productivity from society. ...

http://thephoenix.com/Providence/News/78501-Please-just-leave/