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The National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA), a benevolent organization of millions, offering smiles, hearty handshakes, personal bartenders and easy slaps on the back, is asking a simple question of those who push fear before reason, a grimace instead of a smile.
What are you so worried about?
The simple question goes a bit further as we shall see.
Michelle Bachmann, that irrepressible Minnesota Congresswoman, leader of the Tea Party Caucus, said it best in a news story marking the end of her tenure in the House of Representatives. She was quoted from a speech she gave at the Heritage Foundation.  
“In the last few years, it was the Tea Party, the squeaky little voice of the Tea Party that said, ‘I will, I will stand up, I’ll defend these great enshrined American values.’ They’ve been the last line of defense to stand in the way of an ever-expanding government that taxes us too much, that regulates us too much, that spends too much and is trying to extinguish one liberty of the American people after another.”
That part, “…trying to extinguish one liberty of the American people after another” has NUFA followers puzzled.
I won’t go into the billionaires who support, on a grassroots level, mind you, the squeaky little voice of the Tea Party. Nor will I ask about great enshrined American values.
It’s a simple question about liberty that I’m interested.
Which liberty after another has been extinguished? Which freedom lost? Please name one, please. Yes, yes, we know that you can’t have a submachine gun or build a bomb in the workshop. But other than that, what personal liberty or freedom has been removed? Whenever the question has been asked of those who espouse such rhetoric the question is followed by sputtering and the flailing of hands but the essential question goes unanswered.   
Name the freedom lost.
That’s what NUFA is trying to get at with that simple question. That little statement so common from the followers of the New Conservative Neanderthal Party (NCNP), formerly the Republicans, folks who are always training their watchful eyes on perceived creeping socialism when they have little knowledge of the concept in the first place.
 I ask another question. This is a fun one, with so much of the ancestry of this area woven into the Scandinavian past. You so smart Mr. or Mrs. Tea Party, what kind of government do they have in Sweden?
Socialist, will be the answer.
Okay, we’ll look the other way at the parliamentary democracy in place over there and ask another question. What kind of economy do they have in Sweden?
Socialist will be the answer.
Okay, we’ll look the other way at the free market economy in place over there as well.
Since there is little understanding about the various political and economic theories other than to equate anything social to socialist, community to communist, we’d better just go back to that question about which personal liberties or freedoms have been lost at the hands of an oppressive elected government.
I will direct the question to Michelle Bachmann. Soon she’ll be a retired Congresswoman and will have more time to think about the great questions of the world rather than dealing with legislative gridlock.
Please, Mrs. Bachmann, please tell me which liberties we’ve lost at the hands of an oppressive elected government. I wanted to ask you that several years ago but was denied when the aide I was dealing with thought I might want to make fun of you and then write about it.
All I wanted was to sit down and talk about our philosophies and how we see the world. I guaranteed the aide that I wouldn’t write a thing, it would be a private meeting between two people caught up in the whirlwind of a democracy. As a journalist I never went back on my word, ever. If during our meeting time I might ask a stupid question or two regarding rhetorical statements about lost liberty and creeping socialism I may point out the inaccuracies of such statements but not without trying to understand why someone might feel that way in the first place.
That’s what NUFA is all about. We’re friendly sorts and the best thing we can do sometimes is just help clear the air.
 
Forrest Johnson has been writing for over 20 years and was editor of the Lake County Chronicle in Two Harbors.