The Curious Paradox of the Teabaggers and the 17th Amendment

Reading this post got me thinking about a growing and strange evolution of inconsistent causes with the teabagger movement on the fringe of the right wing.  The article discusses the growing push among the teabaggers to repeal the 17th Amendment to the Constitution.  Ironically enough, given the populist stance of the teabaggers and their appeal to the power of the people, repealing the 17th would place less power in the hands of the people and create more government, at the local level.

The 17th was implemented in order to give the people the power to elect their representatives to the Senate directly, rather than waiting for their state legislatures to act.  Historically, some states would go without Senate representation for a few years at a time, as the state's legislature would bicker within itself or have some hair up its ass in conflict with the Federal government.  This deprived the people of that state with equitable representation in the Congress.

The enactment of the 17th stabilized Senate elections, and granted the people the power to elect their Congressional delegation directly, rather than waiting for their legislators to make up their minds.  It was a very populist amendment, very "power to the people", yet the teabaggers are increasingly behind repealing it.

This is strange paradox actually reveals the underlying position of the teabaggers: it's not "big government" they oppose, but "big Federal government".  They oppose that which isn't their state government, which is presumably made up of "their kind of people".  They appear to desire the US be broken up into a series of state fiefdoms, with each US state empowered almost to nation-state levels.  They claim the Federal government would serve as some kind of unifying body, to keep the states from wandering too far afield, but would they really oppose secessionist states?

Would the government the teabaggers envision (a sort of weird libertarian minor government) have prevented the southern state secession?  Would that government have been capable of mobilizing the nation into World War II?  Would that government have even been capable of withstanding external threats long prior in order to eventually facilitate such things as our highway system, Internet, and numerous other modern advantages which make our way of life possible?

My guess is no, but I further posit that the teabaggers and similarly minded people don't really think about that.  They have developed a knee-jerk reaction against all things Federal government.  They complain of "big government" without quantifying what "big" means (hint: it doesn't involve defense spending).  They decry the reach of the Federal government into their lives while supporting repeal of the very amendment which took government control out of their lives and gave back to their single votes.

If I thought they were aware of this big picture enough to simply be disingenuous, I would call them hypocrites.  But I honestly, truly do not believe they are aware or are thinking about it.  Instead, through the lenses of ideological opposition to centralized authority for no good reason, they are simply what they have always been: a group of clueless populists voting against their own self-interests.

Biting off their nose to spite their face.