Insanity, on the Republican Party's institutional

I took the Washington Post out of its little plastic bag this morning and saw the following headline: Tax Cuts Lost Spot on GOP Agenda. Apparently, five or six of the few remaining level-heads in the Republican Party have come to realize that continuous tax cutting combined with war-time spending and entitlement creation is a recipe for fiscal disaster. These few, brave souls are beginning to argue that taxes might have to be raised to bring our defecits back into the zone of manageability. To most rational observers, I suspect, this seems like a reasonable and appropriate course of action.

The problem as I see it, however, is that the Republican Party leadership and their radical foot soldiers are neither rational nor reasonable. Thus, we get quotes like the following from Grover Norquist:

"The spenders are fighting back. The deficit is the word they use because they think it sounds more acceptable than saying they want to spend more money."

Basically, Mr. Norquist is saying that these Republicans' concern for paying down our burgeoning deficits is really just a cover for increased government spending.

Hello? Aren't these deficits the results of government spending? Hey asshole, the spending already occurred. I'm sorry if you're a selfish, evil prick who doesn't want to pay for YOUR President's missteps and blunders, but I'll be goddamned if my kids are going to be forced to pick up your slack.

What Norquist and his ilk apparently fail to recognize is that the United States exists within a larger global financial system. Just like people or families can go bankrupt, so can countries. And just like the members of a bankrupt family suffer, so do the citizens of a bankrupt country. Norquist and friends might want to "starve the beast", end taxation, and ruin government, but if they do it's going to occur on the backs of people like you and me. They can declare that deficit payments equal spending and taxation equals rape and whatever other idiocies they want to spout, but that won't make our national debts suddenly disappear.

I hope, for the sake of the child my wife and I are going to raise, that the American people finally see these folks for the nihilists and radicals they really are.