A Million Texans in Tinfoil Cowboy Hats

So, I've asked my readers a couple of times now if anyone knows what sort of 'tyrrany' the teabaggers and wingnuts have been complaining about specifically. Finally, thanks to a blog post over at Think Progress, I get a few answers. Apparently they define tyrrany as:

• Social Security
• Medicare
• The federal highway system
• Federal currency
• Not being on the gold standard
• Enforcing the 1st Amendment's Establishment Clause
• Health care reform
• Federal education spending
• Almost all federal spending

So finally we have something like a list of complaints. These 'tenthers' are employing the narrowest possible reading of the Commerce and Welfare clauses, one that has been supported by almost no legal scholar. On the other hand, the use the broadest possible reading of the Tenth Amendment to claim that the Constitution gives Texas the right to secede if it feels like it.

The part that really gets under my skin is the fact that there's nothing new on this list. Nothing that has been enacted more recently than Medicare back in the 1960s. Suddenly and with vigor a movement arises to oppose... changes that have been in effect for decades.

Are we really supposed to believe that these secessionists actually give a shit about the constitutionality of Social Security? Is any reasonable person fooled by this so-called list of grievances to think that this movement is anything other than a bunch of racists pissed off that they lost the election to a black dude?