lib-er-tar-ian - Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch

lib¿er¿tar¿ian - washingtonpost.com

Yet Paul's success has mostly left the mainstream media and pundits flustered, if not openly hostile. The Associated Press recently treated the Paul phenomenon like an alien life form: "The Texas libertarian's rise in the polls and in fundraising proves that a small but passionate number of Americans can be drawn to an advocate of unorthodox proposals." Republican pollster Frank Luntz has denounced Paul's supporters as "the equivalent of crabgrass . . . not the grass you want, and it spreads faster than the real stuff." And conservative syndicated columnist Mona Charen said out loud what many campaign reporters have no doubt been thinking all along: "He might make a dandy new leader for the Branch Davidians."

When conservatives feel comfortable mocking the victims gunned down by Clinton-era attorney general Janet Reno's FBI in Waco, Tex., in 1993, it suggests that a complacent and increasingly authoritarian establishment feels threatened.
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Is it a coincidence that the first prominent political leader to say something about secession, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, is from the state where Federal officials attached the Branch Davidian compound in Waco sixteen years earlier?

But I'm not sure Charen's comment indicates that "a complacent and increasingly authoritarian establishment feels threatened." It could just mean that it's complacent and increasingly authoritarian, and leave it at that. Certainly the Obama administration, in the afterglow of its health care victory, doesn't act threatened. People are angry, thought, and the Democrats who brought this bill on us may look back on the consequences of this provocation with astonishment. This is one disunited country now. I don't feel like there's any turning back now. Civil conflict is coming, and we don't know where it will end.