seriously texas?

Had to share this op-ed column from the NY Times, about those tea parties (which I might have delicately and very politely touched on in an earlier post) and the Texas governor's talk of secession. Because there are people out there who applaud this kind of talk, who think it's patriotic to openly consider breaking off from one's country and abandoning one's citizenship and homeland. And that confuses and saddens me, because it's one thing to disagree with a leader and it's another thing to take that disagreement and bitterness and anger and turn it into something ugly and cowardly, something fueled by this mob mentality and a tide of complete and unnecessary hysteria. And what saddens me even more are the people, the leaders, who egg this kind of feeling on. So governor of Texas, in true Colbertian fashion, I'm putting you on notice. And I could not explain why in any better words than this column by Gail Collins does. Here's a taste of it and the link to read the whole thing.

"And what about my country, right or wrong? Weren’t there complaints, some from Texan quarters, during the last election that Barack Obama seemed insufficiently up front about his love of country? Isn’t threatening to dissolve the union over the stimulus package a little less American than failure to wear a flag pin?

Remember the time when Michelle Obama said, in a moment she spent an entire campaign trying to take back, that 2008 was the first time she could remember ever feeling really proud of her country? Can you imagine how the conservative base would have reacted if she said that it was the first time she didn’t feel like renouncing her citizenship?

And how, by the way, can you stand at a rally waving the American flag while yelling “Secede”? It’s like an employer handing out “worker of the week” certificates to employees who just learned that he was moving the plant to Mexico."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/opinion/18collins.html