If you haven't read John Amato and Dave Neiwert's book Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove The American Right Insane, now might be a good time to pick it up and read it.

If you think they went insane in 2008, just wait for it. In a race to see how deeply they can marginalize themselves, you have the Heritage Foundation making scary ads where sweat breaks out on the narrator's lip as he declares the Randian wingnuts "in a war to save this nation's future" and calls all good soldiers to report immediately to the front. It's intended to raise the hackles on the back of your neck and make everyone skeered about what the scary radical in the White House will do next.

You know, like protect Social Security and Medicare, while fully implementing Obamacare. Skeery, skeery things, all.

But that's mild, compared to the ragequitting former Ron Paul aide Eric Dondero, who has declared his own personal war on anyone who dared to stand for Obama and his values. In the span of one blog post, he informs readers that he's done with electoral politics and is now going to promote "outright revolt."

I give him very small credit for doing so in non-violent ways unlike some of his compatriots, but still, this is insane. Here are some of his ideas:

Time to tell any Democrats you know to f*ck off and die

Express your hatred, shame, and outright disgust with anyone you know who voted Democrat

Boycott Business who accept Welfare payments

In his own words:

I strongly urge all other libertarians to do the same. Are you married to someone who voted for Obama, have a girlfriend who voted 'O'. Divorce them. Break up with them without haste. Vow not to attend family functions, Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas for example, if there will be any family members in attendance who are Democrats. [...] All family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt.

This is the equivalent of holding one's breath until one turns blue while stomping feet and screaming "I hate you!" at the top of one's lungs. It's uniquely Randian in its selfishness and hate. It's bad enough that even one person would be serious about doing it, but encouraging your friends and family to do so too, or disowning them for disagreeing about political issues? That's someone who really needs to drop the Peter Pan act and grow up.

Yes. Grow up. Thinking people don't rage about things like this, and they certainly don't call for a hate war on people who disagree with them. That's middle school crap, folks. It's not what adults do.

After Proposition 8 passed in California in 2008, there was a great deal of anger and hurt among its advocates (as you might imagine). After their initial disappointment passed and anger was expressed in private venues, they chose a strategy that paid off for them in 2012. They chose to educate people. They chose to help people understand that same sex marriage did not threaten them or cause harm to their own marriage.

By making their message attractive instead of angry and hateful, they were able to move people past their fears and you saw the results in Maine, Maryland and Washington this week. They won it!

Every single time one of these Randian teenagers starts throwing their selfish tantrums they do more harm to their movement than anything else. They tell observers that whatever else they might believe, to participate with them, one must become a hate-filled troll who resorts to leaving dog piles on neighbors' lawns, disowning family, and calling for outright revolution.

This is not who we are, but it is who they are. This is the libertarian mindset, laid bare. It is xenophobic (note reference to anti-Islam beliefs), it is selfish, and above all, it's immature.