I’m sorry, but this is just a plain lie:

House Minority Leader John Boehner addressed the tea party crowd on Capitol Hill today, telling them that health care reform is “the greatest threat to freedom” he’s seen as a congressman.

“This bill is the greatest threat to freedom that I’ve seen in the 19 years I’ve been in Washington,” he said.

TPM asks:

Which freedom?

“The freedom to buy health insurance on your own,” and choose your own doctor, he said.

Garbage.

This is actually the topic of the print edition, this yammering about how health care reform usurps our freedoms! and when you try to figure out which specific freedoms are being usurped… you come up empty.

Does Boehner think that those who have health insurance and are required to see a doctor in-network now have the right to choose their own doctor? Sure - so long as it’s in network, or you want to foot the entirety of the bill yourself.

Do these people not know how employer-based health insurance works?

People can buy health insurance on their own now, Mr. Boehner. And that’s the crux of the problem, because unless they’re lucky enough to have employer-based health care, too often that insurance they’re “free” to buy, they can’t afford.

The teabaggers keep invoking “freedom” but this doesn’t have a damned thing to do with freedom. Which actual freedoms are being infringed - the right of free speech, the right to assemble, the right to a speedy trial? Which one? None of them.

Instead, the teabag crowd has a paralyzing/infuriated fear of change, and they’re interpreting that fear as an assault on Teh Freedom! My side lost and now reforms are going to be enacted that I don’t like = tyranny.

You might have more luck trying to reason with an actual teabag.