All, right, deficits are bad. No argument about that from me. Taxes can damage the economy. Again, I agree wholeheartedly. Now, Tea Party, tell me how you’re going to rein in deficits and cut taxes without bringing on a catastrophe to make the events of the 1930s seem like the “Not All That Bad Depression.”

The Tea Party is too little, too late. Yes, we fear deficits, but what politician is going to vote to dismantle entitlement programs? How are we going to get rid of entrenched politicians when the interest groups backing them have put so much money into discrediting their opponents? And how do we know if the replacements the Tea Party puts forward are mentally sound?

In War, Politics, and Insanity, C.S. Bluemel put forward the idea that many of the world’s politicians, particularly the populist ones, are certifiably insane. They grew up with hard lives and became rebellious mavericks – psychotic mavericks. The book was written in 1949, so the author was thinking of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, not Palin. The comparison still applies. The danger of populism is that it attracts leaders just like the common man that believe in themselves to the point of megalomania. My final question for the Tea Party is this: beyond your economic solution, how will you keep your movement from producing an American dictator?