By Jeff Jacoby
The fire hall next to my in-laws’ house in northern New York State has a siren that can be heard for miles. “Loud” doesn’t begin to describe the sound: a shrill, relentless, piercing wail that is impossible to ignore — and can be extremely upsetting for anyone who isn’t used to it. There’s good reason for that. None of the rural towns in the area has a professional fire department, so when a fire breaks out, the siren is needed to summon volunteers. The urgent blast of that siren used to terrify my younger son, who would hide under a bed when it sounded, and angrily tell us afterward how much he hated it.
In the recent clamor over the federal debt ceiling and the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of US Treasury bonds, the Tea Party has been that fire hall siren. And a lot of liberals have been angrily telling us how much they hate it.
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