On this Tax Day, I would feel remiss if I did not mention that yesterday in Boston the Tea Party and Sarah Palin made an appearance.  Thousands attended the rally and it spoke to a large cross-section of the community.  You would be hard pressed to find any right-thinking American who did not believe we were over-taxed and that the Government is being reckless with our tax dollars.  As a good idea spirals into a movement, we are slowly becoming aware of the fact that vitriol and hate will be used to dismiss and diminish any enemy of Big Government.

I’m going to lay off the media and focus on the liberal on the street.  The one who reads Daily Kos, sees MSNBC as “middle of the road”, and refers to Pat Leahy as “my personal hero”.  I’ve come to expect a certain level of intolerance from this person.  I know that all arguments will begin with insults that hit below the belt and just keep going from there.  It’s probably the reason I say out of political discussions, the fact that you cannot reason with the unreasonable.  The one insult I heard multiple times yesterday is the one I cannot stand – “tea-bagger”.

This insult just irks me.  I see two main problems with it.  One, if you are a liberal using this term, you are already starting out with an insult.  The only people who will listen to you at this point are the people who already agree with you.  Conservatives and independents are going to be turned off to your message as you cannot form a cohesive message without descending into vulgarity.  You need to swing people to your point of view, not cackle to a bunch of like-minded individuals.

Two, by using the term, you are also degrading one of the seminal moments in our nation’s history.  Are the men who boarded those three ships in Boston Harbor in 1773 also “tea-baggers”?  How about Mohandas Gandhi who invoked the Boston Tea Party in his fight against salt tax?  Is he a “tea-bagger”?

If the Tea Party is so disagreeable to you, why not agree against the main points of the Tea Party movement?  Argue against lower taxes, smaller government, and less government spending.  The name calling only makes you sound bitter and angry.

As a resident of Massachusetts (living in Barney Frank’s district!), it’s kind of lonely being conservative in one of the bluest of the blue states.  It’s common place to see the Obama pins or the 01.20.09 bumper stickers.  It’s like being a stranger in a strange land, yet you get used to it in time.

It shocked me this morning, while waiting for the horribly inefficient commuter rail, to see a man wearing a McCain/Palin t-shirt.  I gave him a nod and continued my trek to my normal waiting spot.  It’s when the two catty shrews in front of me caught my attention.

They were shocked, shocked I say, that he was wearing such a shirt.  They then jumped on the local report that Sarah Palin may be moving to nearby Rhode Island.  Two things in their conversation shocked me.

One, they felt she might be moving to Rhode Island to get back into politics.  On its face and after thought, this is a completely idiotic notion.  Why would a conservative woman move to a blue state and run for Congress?  It was laughable.

Two, one shrew felt that she wouldn’t last a day in the state, as people would be gunning for her for “what she had done”.  My thought was what exactly had she done that was so reprehensible?  My only thought was that she dared oppose the Messiah on his ascension to the throne.

Why is it that all these months later, must the liberals still bitterly complain?  Worse, they won the election!  This wasn’t like the idiots who still today complain about the “rigged elections” of 2000 and 2004.  These are people who hold a grudge against Palin because she dared be conservative, a woman, and challenge their self-appointed hero.

Obviously they have an issue with any principled conservative who happens to challenge their world view.  But why are they still mad?  I mean, Obama won.  Most of us know that he is mucking it up royally, but they still look upon him through rose colored glasses.  Shouldn’t they just be happy?  Or are they only happy when they are angry?  Maybe they just don’t have any other mindset.