The latest example of a harebrained, anti- and un-American idea from the Tea Parties comes via email from Judson Phillips of the Teaparty Nation group:

...Illinois and California are poised to become America’s Greece. Both have out of control spending problems. They have raised taxes and regulations to the point where businesses and the wealthy are fleeing those states as fast as they can.

...We need to break up both California and Illinois into smaller states.

Why not? There is no such thing as too big to fail, and it applies to states as well.

These states do not work. And since an American state cannot declare bankruptcy, there has to be another option.

...Conservatives in those states need to demand that they be allowed to form new states that are not tied down with massive debt that the failed states have created.

California and Illinois cannot be allowed to continue to spin into bankruptcy. Breaking them up is the only option.

It is either that, or we will see Greece here in America.

1. At least as of 2005, California was sending the federal government billions more than it was receiving back. California was and might still be subsidizing states both "blue" and "red". Maybe a "red" state like Alabama (receiving $1.66 from the federal government for every dollar sent to the federal government in 2005 and with similar figures since 1981) should pay back some of the money they received from California first.

2. As detailed here many, many times, fiscal conservatives have a neat trick: blaming others for the problems they helped cause. See the Fiscal Con page for several examples, of which Phillips' email is just one. While Teaparty Nation has been somewhat on the right side of immigration, they and the Tea Partiers in general are useful idiots for those on the complete wrong side of the issue: the Koch family, FreedomWorks, Grover Norquist, and libertarians. And, the Teapartiers simply lack the smarts and sanity to realize that and to oppose illegal immigration supporters correctly (whether those supporters are rightwing or leftwing).

3. This email is yet another example of how the Teapartiers are not at all the "patriots" they claim to be. Patriots don't turn their backs on their fellow citizens in time of need, yet that's something the Teapartiers have repeatedly done. Teapartiers are separatists in the political sense (not in the cultural or racial sense). They want their own "Teaparty Nation", for real. They aren't willing to accept the fact that the majority of Americans disagree with them: they don't accept that those who disagree are just as American as them. They imply they're the only real patriots in the U.S., when they're the fastest group to cut and run when the going gets tough. Their ideas are anti- and un-American at their core.