If you read one article today, spend 15 minutes with this report from the NYT re: the so-called “Tea Party” and (loosely) associated groups.

Though fueled by the rhetoric of Glenn Beck and others, many members of this movement do not articulate their gripes within a Democrat v. Republican matrix. The article contends that the most radical elements within the movement express not only ire for our current President but strong suspicions of the immediately prior President. In some quarters, they’re as upset with the Patriot Act as they are with efforts to reform health care …

In New Mexico, Mary Johnson, recording secretary of the Las Cruces Tea Party steering committee, described why she fears the government. She pointed out how much easier it is since Sept. 11 for the government to tap telephones and scour e-mail, bank accounts and library records. “Twenty years ago that would have been a paranoid statement,” Ms. Johnson said. “It’s not anymore.”

Maybe the article is an over-reaction. Maybe I’m over-reacting to an over-reaction. Regardless, it seems you’d have to be more-than-slightly medicated to not find lines like these, from the article’s conclusion, chilling …

Mrs. Stout said she has begun to contemplate the possibility of “another civil war.” It is her deepest fear, she said. Yet she believes the stakes are that high. Basic freedoms are threatened, she said. Economic collapse, food shortages and civil unrest all seem imminent.

“I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country,” Mrs. Stout said.

She paused, considering her next words.

“Peaceful means,” she continued, “are the best way of going about it. But sometimes you are not given a choice.”