BJ Clinton joins in the fray to try to demonize the tea party movement

BLANKLEY: There Bill Clinton goes again

Beware the unforeseen consequences of charging sedition

Former President Bill Clinton last week inadvertently demonstrated Karl Marx's shrewd observation, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." The historical event in question is the attempt to deter by smearing a broad-based, popular, American anti-high-tax, anti-big-central government movement as likely to induce seditious violence against the government.

The historic example of this calumny was Alexander Hamilton's slander against Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's emerging Republican/Democratic Party. The first repetition, as tragedy, was Bill Clinton's attack on the Republican Contract With America rhetoric following the Oklahoma bombing in 1995 - which resulted in deflecting the upward progress of conservatism from the summer of 1995 onward.

The second repetition - this time as farce - occurred last week as, once again, Mr. Clinton went back to his once-trusty playbook and implied that this time, the Tea Party rhetoric might result in political violence.