This is an answer to an op-ed piece by Lincoln Mitchell of Columbia University in Thursday’s, April 16, 2009 Huffington Post.

Republicans are at fault – they were wrong in assuming even if a liberal Democrat were elected president he would understand enough about economics to know you cannot spend and spend until even China won’t lend to you. To his credit, Bill Clinton attempted to balance the budget, but despite his rhetoric President Obama will never balance anything.

Debt will stack up so high in ten years we will be paying over $800 billion a year just in interest, according to conservative estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). We can’t pay it back, but our grandchildren will be shackled with trillions of dollars in debt. It was estimated that if they are 20-30 years old now, each will be tapped for $114,000 to $140,000 to get out from under.

Obama may have read about the days when blacks were slaves. I would remind you that the actual first slaves in America and Australia were white – they were prisoners shipped from England to colony tobacco fields. But Obama would make of our grandchildren slaves. Imagine, a black president cracking his whip on his white slaves -- our children or grandchildren -- in the twenty-first century. It is well on its way to happening.

We have trouble believing that you, Professor Mitchell, or President Obama are good with numbers. He will discover that it will take more than what you described as a “minor tax increase” to repay the estimated $10 trillion budget deficit that he will leave us.

The tea parties on May 15th, tax day, weren’t about problems between the two parties. We conservatives believe we’ve been hosed by both parties and the only remedy, short of secession, is term limits and a revolution at the ballot boxes come 2012. When that happens it will shake the country more than a growing desire in the South today to leave the liberal union Obama has created.

You are correct in saying the issues dividing Republicans and Democrats today are relatively mild, mainstream partisan issues, obviously not at all comparable to those which divided our country on the eve of the Civil War. “Democrats and Republicans are fighting over a few percentage points in the tax rate for the richest Americans, increased domestic spending, and greater environmental, financial and other regulation. This is, frankly, ordinary and not all that interesting partisan fare which, in many respects, was not too different during the administrations of Roosevelt, Reagan, Clinton or many other presidents. That is why these threats and rhetoric are so concerning. Nobody really threatens secession over a mild increase in the tax rate or over a spending plan. Nobody really calls for revolution because the government is trying to spend too much on infrastructure.”

Lincoln Mitchell, you keep saying “a mild increase in the tax rate” and an argument over “a spending plan” … on infrastructure. Most conservatives are states’ rights advocates and Constitutional advocates. We believe states rights are being grabbed. The Federal government has only those rights the states gave them and no more. A new national train system is a flawed idea at best and not the province of government at worst. We don’t need it, we can’t afford it, it won’t solve anything and will be under-utilized as was AmTrac.

Why then are Republicans willing to talk about revolution, secession and other ideas that would destabilize our country and our democracy? Your words: “Perhaps the demonstrators and, more significantly their leaders, feel that for some existential, and undoubtedly irrational, reason the Obama presidency is a profound threat to their worldview, values and vision of the US. If that is the case we can only hope that these people remain on the margins.”

Governor Perry is hardly “on the margins.” But he isn’t alone. There are 58 million people in America who didn’t vote for Obama. These people believe Obama's policies are a threat to the American way of life.

· We believe in capitalism and free enterprise (we shouldn’t bail out banks, insurers, Wall Street, automakers or anyone else.)

· Ninety percent taxing of Washington-approved bonuses is outrageous, a bad precedent; but it’s what Obama is eventually going to expect of most of the taxpaying public. When only 50 percent of us pay taxes, it will take enormous funds to repay Obama’s staggering debt. Even a small increase was unjustified before the Obama spending binge. Obama’s big spending may make it look more justified, but when national government gets so big that it must take more than a quarter of our money, this is confiscatory because most of us also have state, gas, and local taxes to pay.

· The coming rise in electric and gas amd oil heating costs for our homes this winter is like a new tax, not at all necessary to either make us energy- independent or green. America has the world’s largest supply of coal. It is outrageous that we import any coal, but we do. It is outrageous that we can’t install new oilrigs and drill for new oil. It is outrageous that we cannot build nuclear power plants until we meet 40 percent of our energy requirements, as does France.

· Obama’s worldview is to criticize Americans and bow to Saudi kings. He does this because his past is mixed up with 20 years of listening to anti-American rhetoric in Rev. Wright’s church, a close association with terrorists like Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayers, a sweetheart house purchase from known gangster felon Tony Rezko, and early and close ties to Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s communist mentor.

· If Obama were half the man he emulates, Abe Lincoln, he would long ago have disquieted any belief that he was not born in America by presenting his “real” and original birth certificate to the public. The computer copy he allegedly produced was a fraud, we didn’t have computer birth certificates when he was born.

· Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has publicly apologized to some of those “radical rightwing conservatives” she slandered, our war vets. There was no violence in the tea parties attended by half a million people last night. I am not a rightwing extremist, and neither were any of those in the audience in the numerous cities across the nation where these tea parties took place. The only radicals that I know are far left liberals in Washington and a certain Columbia University assistant professor, you sir.

You say Obama has a worldview representing “a huge plurality of Americans.” Might I remind you that 58 million Americans voted against him. And Obama’s 64 million – with an approval rating quickly tanking -- is by no means a "huge plurality."