Fahreed Zakaria: The Tea Party's un-American behavior

[Swede]

Wolf Blitzer: You're getting some feedback on that, some reaction. "Un- American"?

Fareed Zakaria: I'll explain why.

First, understand how unprecedented it was. The debt ceiling has been raised 78 times since 1960. It has never been used this way, essentially as blackmail. The Democrats did not use it during the Vietnam War. It was not used this way during civil rights legislation.

So nobody has ever held a country hostage and said, 'If you don't pass our policies, we'll blow up the economy, we'll blow up the credibility of the United States.'

The reason I say it's un-American, Wolf, is because the American system - unlike European parliamentary systems - is built on shared powers and overlapping authority. No one is in control in America.

There's the president, there's the Senate, there's the House of Representatives, the state governments. And the founding fathers designed it that way because they wanted there to be an effort to create policies through compromise, through consensus.

So if you take the position that it's your way or the highway, that you will literally not give an inch, what you're doing is really against the spirit of the American republic - against the spirit of what the founding fathers wanted.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/05/zakaria-the-tea-partys-un-american-behavior/?iref=obinsite

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. Tea Baggers don't understand the role of government,

and do not understand how demanding wrong solutions at the worst possible time, could cause serious damage globally.

it is far worse than un-American. It is stupid, quite possibly evil.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. They aren't very smart

God help us if more of them are elected. Wake up USA!

[no_hypocrisy]

3. It's more than the Tea Baggers not understanding the role of government.

That would be a waste of time. They want to remake the government in the form that they think benefits their interests. In other words, no longer a democracy or a republic, but an entity serving a certain few.

[babylonsister]

5. There's so much irony in this; their interests wouldn't be

benefited (at least for most of them); that's where the idiocy comes in.

[Skip_In_Boulder]

4. What can you say

Megalomaniacs are by their very nature not open to compromise.

[animato]

6. I think Americans do not appreciate what they've got:

"'the American system - unlike European parliamentary systems - is built on shared powers and overlapping authority"

[dawg]

9. I don't know about that.

Our system allows divided government, which enables political parties to escape the blame for their failed policies. They just blame the other branch of government if their party doesn't control it. The vast majority of the public is not well enough informed to determine who is correct.

And now, a new exploit has been devised. Our divided government can be held hostage by whichever party is the more ruthless. We are seeing the weakness of our system.

Under a parliamentary system, Boehner would have been PM since 2010. All this would be on him and his party, and the public would know exactly who to blame.

[butterfly77]

7. K&R..

[FourScore]

8. Yep. n/t

[donheld]

10. k & R