What Would Linclon Say About Extortion?

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Krugman posted comments by Reagan when he was faced with a debt ceiling battle with Congress. Now we get another Republican that was faced with a similar request for ransom. I didn't realize that extortion was so common in our political system. It goes all the way back to Lincoln who found that many could not abide the election of a Republican. Some of our problems today are similar to Lincoln's. Many cannot abide the election of black president. Some southerners would rather secede from the Union than be governed by a black president. They also drink a lot of tea while proclaiming that they are not racist.

If we look at the tea partiers in the US they share many of the concerns that we are seeing in Europe. There is a small, but committed, political force in many European countries that prefer nationalism to political union. Many would like to secede from the European Union. Like the Norwegian assassin, they rebel against multiculturalism and they fear the incursion of Islam which they associate with a detested liberalism. Fortunately, this is a small segment of the polity in Europe. Unfortunately, this group is being funded and organized in the US in order to achieve the objectives of those in the far right of the GOP which it was unable to accomplish without populist support. They may well be creating a monster that they will be unable to control. The western political system is starting to look more like Europe in the 1930's. Only this time the country at risk is the most powerful nation in the history of the planet.