Some weeks ago I wrote an article titled Ethics, Torture, Utilitarianism & Law. In it I used the trolley problem and the hidden bomb and terrorist torture problem to challenge my readers. If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day but if you teach him to fish you make him independent and self-sustaining, by being able to feed himself. The trolley problem was the brain child of Philippa Foot, who died this month at a ripe old age. Today’s Financial Times has a column about the Tea Party by Edward Luce, their Washington Bureau chief. He is a very perceptive analyst and in his tenure as their New Delhi bureau chief, wrote a good analytical book about India, titled “In spite of the Gods”. Incidentally he is married to a woman of Indian origin, so one can’t dismiss his criticisms as David Milliband rants for a lost empire.

It is possible that his article may have been a Rorshach test on me, but I have always believed that the Tea Partiers were Republican Vampires transformed from bats to werewolves. Most of them are ignorant, undereducated persons, who have either suffered a lot because of the economic downturn, or elderly persons who are unwilling to suffer any cuts in their Medicare entitlements because of the new healthcare bill, or well off persons incensed at the reduction in income likely to occur because of higher taxes and mandatory health insurance coverage they will have to provide for their employees. The group has received financial support from corporations and Chamber of Commerce members and verbal incitement from trashy bimbos, shorn of sanity, bent on a train wreck, to the cheer of an army of dicks.

Inane statements like the US government should (be more like Islam) unify church and state despite the unequivocal words of the First Amendment or questioning the right of a Muslim to be elected to the House or Senate, clearly show that quite a few of the tea party are ignorant of the Constitution and confuse it with Constipation and are possibly racists or xenophobes. Others have challenged the healthcare law by stating that the Constitution does not mention anything about healthcare. Some want to abolish or privatize Social Security and eliminate unemployment benefits and the Department of Education while continuing wars and increasing defense spending. They want tax cuts and a balanced budget but are unwilling to give up any benefits they currently receive. In other words they resent the benefits of others. 

The Republican Party, which thrives on waving the red pennants of welfare, abortion, gay rights and exploitation of welfare by non-whites, to incite the bull headed poor and uneducated whites to vote against their interests, while blinded by anger, prejudice and ignorance, has metamorphosed into the cockroach of the Tea Party to fool those voters again and to escape the blame for their profligate spending and absent regulation, which led to the financial catastrophe and their subsequent bailout of the bankers and abandonment of the homeowners, done with the collusion of their Democrat colleagues and their corrupt leaders like Dud and Crank.

Here is a test for the readers to assess themselves and their Tea Party Quotient. You are a physician managing five patients desperately in need of transplants (two need a kidney, one a lung, one a liver and one a heart). All these patients are good people known to you and are pillars of your society. An unconscious unknown patient is brought to your hospital and while being treated, you notice that he is a compatible organ donor for all your five patients.

1. If you avoid extraordinary efforts, the patient will be brain dead and become an organ donor and his death would save five nice persons. What should you do and why?
    
2. The potential donor is a former convicted crook and still indulges in his criminal life style ranging from a) selling drugs, b) robbing banks or c) robbing, raping and murdering his victims. What should you do and why for conditions 2a, 2b and 2c.
    
3. a) Those needing transplants are white and the potential donor is black or b) the recipients are black and the potential donor white. What should you do for (a) and (b) and why?
    
4. The comatose potential donor was in a car accident and his brain scan shows severe brain injury with slim if any chance of recovery and an independent life. He will be bedridden in a nursing home. Should you harvest his organs and let him die and thus save five of your patients?

Remember that the etymological derivation of ethics is from the Greek ethicos meaning character and that of justice from the Latin justitia meaning equity. See how our cultural biases and inner fears contaminate our language because to do the right thing, one has to be “FAIR” and colloquial English has a phrase praising right behavior –“That was really WHITE, of you” and if you behave badly it is a –“BLACK deed and you are a BLACKguard” 

To end this article on a funny note, Don’t forget that the Boston Tea Party was the act of a bunch of cowards. They were white men of British extraction who resented paying higher taxes to sustain the wars of Great Britain, but lacking courage, they disguised themselves as Red Indians to avoid being punished for their criminal behavior. Thus history repeats itself, before as a tragedy and this time as a farce by the Republicans.
 
Since the Tea Party does not know the difference between the Constitution and its (mental) Constipation, I can imagine their leader and spokesman approaching a physician and with a few words of hubris, mimicking an American Indian of the eighteenth century with limited English, and saying “Big Tea Party, no shit”. The kindly doctor misunderstands and prescribes a mild laxative. The next day the crowing leader enters the doctor’s office and crows triumphantly the same words - Big Tea Party, no shit. We now come to November 2nd and the doctor having tried everything else prescribes croton oil, one of the severest laxatives. On Wednesday morning while the doctor is scanning the election results, an orphan of the Tea Party walks in looking dejected and the doctor queries him. The despondent kid utters, “Big SHIT, no Tea Party.

Finally a riddle for you to solve – Gujarati with English translation
 
Konay Bhagvaa paheria ----- Who wore the saffron of renunciation?
Konay sevy aag -------- Who set himself on fire?
Konay karvat mukaviyo ---- Who had his head sawed off?
Kai Rani nay kaaj ---- For the sake of which queen? 

For this polyandrous queen and her consorts have ruined and polluted India.

Now let us see if the readers want to be interactive and voice their points of view.