When the Anti-Government Fringe Runs Government

When I lived in Israel I was amazed to learn that their parliament (the Knesset) included religious Jews who always voted against legislation that would favor Israel. This was because these elected officials believed that the nation of Israel had no right to exist until the Messiah returned, and thus they were bent on destroying it. This of course seemed to me to be a bad way to run a country.

More recently I'm troubled by the anti-government Tea Baggers. They are angry, and they keep saying they want their country back from an imaginary big government socialist plutocracy. Sure, there are many Republicans who for years performed poorly on purpose to argue that government is never the answer. This is best exemplified for us in the Gulf Coast with FEMA, the apex of government incompetence. Clearly the Tea Baggers don't want to destroy the United States, and with unemployment being so high and foreign policy so unethical I'm angry as well. But I'm a big fan of roads, the post office, and public education, and these things need taxes. I also would only vote for a candidate who has a clear plan of how to better govern, not one bent on doing away with government. That would be anarchy, which sounds appealing at first to my punk rock roots, but I tasted anarchy in the days after the levees failed, and it sucked.