Or: why I am not a tea-partier:

The kid holding it, according to the reader who took this picture, was maybe 16. Obama is a communist and a fascist and a traitor! Then this:

The above protestor is comparing an attempt to privately ensure millions of people currently uninsured is the equivalent of this:

Action T4 (German: Aktion T4) was a program, also called Euthanasia Program, in Nazi Germany spanning October 1939 until August 1941, during which physicians killed 70,273 people specified in Hitler's secret memo of September 1, 1939 as suffering patients "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination", but described in a denunciation of the program by Cardinal Galen as long-term inmates of mental asylums "who may appear incurable".

This is as sick as those who called Bush a Nazi before the Iraq war. But unlike the Iraq war, the proposal for universal healthcare was a big issue in the last election, was widely debated, and the winners of that election are fulfilling a clear pledge. So what we have here is unhinged hysteria. I certainly think pent-up anger at Bush (which partisanship and religious devotion meant they could never vent) is a part of this; but the fact of a non-white, non-Southern effective president should not be discounted.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.