The aim of the Tea Party is to do to this country exactly what their apologists here are trying to do to this forum: turn it into an arena where only their voices are heard and only their grim vision is possible. It is a vision of moral decay, spiritual devastation, and intellectual desolation.

There is an awful sense of deja vu here for me, I've been here before. I came of age in the early sixties rural Southern United States, the world-view and mindset viewed so nostalgically by these throwbacks. It was a universe of hatred and suspicion, conformity, closed-mindedness, jingoism, cultural chauvinism, racism, homophobia, misogyny and xenophobia, all wrapped in a thin veneer of Confederate pornography and legitimized by a cloak of phony patriotism, ersatz family values, and so-called Anglo-Saxon work ethic. I didn't need the Beats or Beatles to tell me this, I knew it instinctively as soon as I became aware of the world outside my house. There was something profoundly toxic in that environment, but there was hope, and a new world seemed to be dawning.

The Civil Rights movement changed all that, and everything we've seen since, all this talk of conservatism, Libertarianism, and all the euphemisms and misdirections like "States Rights", "Strict Constructionism", "Small Government", "free enterprise" and all the rest are a reaction to those days and a smokescreen to cover the real agenda, which is to turn the world back into 1950. There is an unholy trinity of racism, fascism and religious fundamentalism at the core of all this; a real Axis of Evil.

The rallying cry used to be anti-communism, but now that they are no longer available as punching bags, the new scapegoat is the Eternal Liberal. And yes, it is strictly analogous to the Nazi use of the Eternal Jew in spite of the slippery protestations and smug denials of its most insidious practitioners. Robert, I don't trust them either. It walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck, and it smells just as bad. You don't have to be Jewish to say "never again".

You see, they have to have a scapegoat, there will always be a scapegoat. They must have one. Every foul tyranny the world has ever seen has had theirs, and this one is no exception: if you haven't got a plan, find yourself a villain. And a villain is anyone who doesn't march in lock step to their shrill and strident anthem of hate.

Hopefully, I'll live long enough to see my country rid itself of this toxic plague once and for all, but if it can't, I hope I don't live long enough to see it fully succumb to this foul malignancy. Either way, life is too short to have to stay and watch it take root here. The Zone is no longer Habitable; you need to wear a mask to avoid the stench.

All I ask, Robert, is don't let this board become open to the public. You saw what they did to the old Zone, they want to do it here too. Cauterize the wound now, as long as this forum is closed, they can only infect each another.