Perhaps Ms Bachmann should go for broke and and set out all the other "tyrannies" Republicans have complained of: the "tyranny" of Medicare (Reagan, and most recently Armey); public education (countless Republicans); financial regulation (jaw dropping in the present context), Social Security and even the federal highway system (most recent credit to Mr Buchannan on these).
Coupled with denuding the federal government of income by limiting the taxes payable by the affluent, they appear to have an interesting vision: a return to a nation of limited vision and capacity, limited concern for the welfare of our fellow citizens, but unbridled freedom for (a) greed and the "winner take all" system that tends to produce (and is producing in stark income inequality terms today) and (b) paradoxically (how will this work in the banana republic they imagine?) the exertion of military might across the world.
I hold them only partially responsible, however, for the dangerous nonsense they emit. The fact is that they are in a position to demagogue only because American voters elected them, and appear set to elect more of them, almost always contrary to their own financial interests. Until we are more informed and active as citizens of this democracy, until we do whatever is necessary to restrain the influence of concentrated financial interests in elections, until we ensure elections are more representative and our representatives more effective, we will continue to see this, and suffer from it.
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