Their buffet model

Bravo, Leonard Boasberg ("Tea Partiers Should Join the ACLU," May 9 Forum)! For months I've been attempting to assemble a coherent response to the tea partiers' senseless exhortations of wanting their country "back" and their bemoaning of the Obama administration's contempt for the Constitution. I couldn't come close to the succinct logic and the simple command of irrefutable facts that Mr. Boasberg lays forth.

The tea party's whole "platform" dematerializes when focused through the prism of truth, and what remains isn't pretty. Racist? Well, one does wonder where all the seething anger was as W. and his crew ran roughshod over the Bill of Rights and ran the country further into the ground. Are they just hopelessly partisan, willing to see the country fail rather than give President Barack Obama anything even closely resembling a break or benefit of the doubt? Misguided? Just plain ignorant? I believe the answer is some or all of the above.

They favor the buffet model of the Constitution: picking and choosing those parts they like, particularly those parts which they feel validate their (or should I say Fox News'?) twisted, reality-challenged narrative of the evil Kenyan Muslim, Comrade Obama himself.

Although it is nonpartisan and the staunchest defender of the letter of the Constitution, the ACLU is like a dirty word to them, perceived as a liberal, leftist organization. It should be clear that the U.S. Constitution really doesn't matter all that much to the tea party crowd; it is being used as a pretext to unleash their pent-up rage.

We -- the working poor and the middle class -- have a whole scroll of reality-based things to be completely outraged about. The problem with the tea partiers is that 1) they are deeply confused as to whom should be the object of their ire, and 2) they are apparently unable to see that they are being expertly manipulated into this misplaced fury.

MATT GETNER
Warren, Pa.