An anti-sedition law would fit the bill nicely, but, unlike most all other countries, the US doesn't have anti-sedition laws. We tried it once, with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, and the results were pretty ugly. The experience seems to have cured us of the desire for ananti-sedition law, at least for the couple of centuries since.

I sure do feel the siren call of simply passing a law to make the assholes STFU. But then I think about the implications of our lack of a law against sedition. What it means is nothing less than a perfect commitment to self-government: We're "allowed" to commit national suicide, by making stupid decisions, and by letting demagogues tear us apart.

Winston Churchill uttered a lot of pithy observations about America. Apropos: Americans will always do the right thing, but only after exhausting every other possibility.

The chilling implication is that we're still here because of an unbroken streak of good luck. We've always managed to blunder into the right answer before the problem killed us.

So far. But there's no guarantee that the next stupid decision won't be our last one. And I look at the teahadists and I see the barbarians opening the gates from the inside.

And that has to be okay with me. Because it's our right, as Americans, to destroy our own country. If we couldn't, it wouldn't really be our country and we wouldn't really be governing ourselves.