Sir,

I, too, am a disabled veteran of the armed forces, though I see no need to make ostentatious mention of that in public. For it has been my observation that when a man prefaces his remarks this way, bullshit inevitably follows. It is a cheap way of reclaiming the authority one no longer possesses.

We took the same oath, you and I. We both claim to uphold it today, though we differ in execution: I serve my community by cleaning up roadside litter; you fight the “indoctrination” of your children by public schools. Question: do you mean this kind of indoctrination?

Texas high school students would learn about such significant individuals and milestones of conservative politics as Newt Gingrich and the rise of the Moral Majority — but nothing about liberals — under the first draft of new standards for public school history textbooks.

The right-wing narrative holds that liberalism has no constructive role in the American story. Such framing has been applied to liberals before…in Nazi Germany.

Surely you know this, Mr. Hedrick, since you are the expert in all things Nazi. Surely you are aware that Hitler used the “brownshirts,” an astroturf movement, to shut down debate in Germany. So who is shouting in that video? Democracy is a conversation, not a bellicose rant.

While copying your video code from YouTube, Mr. Hedrick, I saw the following note. Why do you open this paragraph like court testimony? And why do you claim to speak for a “silent majority” when a clear majority wants reform?

I, David William Hedrick, a member of the silent majority, decided that I was not going to be silent anymore. So, I let U.S. Congressman Brian Baird have it. I was one questioner out of 38, that was called at random from an audience that started at 3,000 earlier in the evening. Not expecting to be called on, I quickly scratched what I wanted to say on a borrowed piece of paper and with a pen that I borrowed from someone else in the audience minutes before I spoke. So much for the planned talking points of the right wing conspiracy.

Perhaps you’re not a paid spokesman for the “right wing conspiracy,” Mr. Hedrick, but you’ve clearly internalized the right wing gasbaggery issuing from the Glenn Beck doom bunker. For instance, you have willingly swallowed a nonsensical meme about German fascism.

The Nazis were “socialists” in the way that North Korea is a “Democratic People’s Republic” — which is to say they weren’t. Nazi Germany was a corporatist state and their auto industry was a legal monopoly — there is no analogue in the bailout of General Motors.

Of all the unfathomable nonsense you spewed, it was when you screamed “don’t touch my health care!” at Baird that I finally understood your problem: you suffer from paranoia, Mr. Hedrick. You are convinced that “THEY” are out to get you.

But the truth is, nobody wants to take away your health care in the first place. Your mind is trapped in a never-ending Samsara of Wacky™ that transforms this non-taking-away of your health care into a threat to take it away. Black becomes white, and up becomes down.

Indeed, your Crazy™ asserts itself most boldly in your demand that Baird “keep” his oath to the Constitution. As far as I can tell, Baird is, in fact, upholding that oath, while your vehemence strikes me as fearful; you are afraid.

Of what? What are we supposed to be protecting ourselves from?