Elephant's Foot

Have you followed the “Piecemakers” saga? The Piecemakers are a 26-member commune—led by the 85-year-old Marie Kolasinski—that operates a daffy “quilts & sandwiches” tearoom in Costa Mesa.

These Piecemakers seem to be wacked-out fundamentalist Christians. But they're a little different. They view themselves as oppressed Libertarians, fighting a ruthless and meddling government.

I’m not sure whether to root for them or not.

I read about them on Tuesday, in the LA Times: Defiant Orange County sect leader says county is 'wrestling with God':

The group, made up of mostly elderly women, runs a homey store on Adams Avenue that features handmade quilts, craft supplies and a small tearoom that serves sandwiches, soups and sweets.

For some years, the group has barred county health inspectors from its facility, citing freedom of religion as justification.

After a final failed attempt to inspect the store in October 2005, [a] county investigator … obtained a warrant and entered the site with … Costa Mesa police….

[In court,] Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Steiner played several videotapes of the incident, which showed defiant Piecemakers spewing profanities and Kolasinski demanding, "Give me liberty or give me death."

… She said she and her religious followers would make every effort to keep their store clean of "the devil" — the government — which tries to lord it over them "with a big hatchet."

"They've got so many laws, I'm afraid to put my foot out the door," she said.

…It wasn't the first time the group had run into trouble with the government. In 1997, Piecemakers were prosecuted for putting on the musical "Big River" in their parking lot without a city permit.

Prosecuted for an unauthorized musical? That tears it. I’m rootin’ for ‘em!

Evidently, the county has been circling the Troublemakers for years. The DA's office even ran an "underground" investigation on them, sending in spies, testing cookies, bugging soup.

As the Register’s Frank Mickadeit explained yesterday (Guilty as sin), the Piecemakers’ trial went badly for them, and so, once again, Meddlesome Big Government is about to grind its big stupid toe into our heroes' backs. Mickadeit wasn’t terribly sympathetic:

I think I know the moment I went from thinking of … Marie Kolasinski and her band as an affable group of quilt-making, pie-baking, health permit-faking Jesus people to viewing them as foul-mouthed, one-good-bender-away-from-a-Kool-Aid-party sectarians who wrap their hatred of government in the cloak of their Savior.

It was the moment I saw a video at the Piecemakers' trial this week in which Kolasinski cursed health inspectors who had done nothing more than ask to inspect her Costa Mesa café. She dropped F-bombs on them like they'd asked to crucify our Lord. At least three other followers continued the F-bomb barrage, with the occasional taking in vain of His name. Not exactly the way Jesus reacted when they came for him at Gethsemane – an allusion Kolasinski later made on the stand.

"You've got quite a mouth on you," I told her during a break.

"You'd have quite a mouth on you too if you had a pistol shoved up your ***," she replied.

Mickadeit notes that there is no evidence of police pistol-shovage. On the other hand, no doubt the cops had pistols, and, as we all know (unless we’re not paying attention), in Orange County, people sometimes get shot and killed by police just for being weird, and these people qualify.

Orange County is a special place in so many ways. It’s pretty conservative, but there’s an undeniable element of Libertarianism to be found here.

Occasionally, our own trustee Don Wagner outs himself as a Libertarian. In the OC, it's not hard to find people who talk the Libertarian talk.

Though I don’t agree with the Libertarian vision, I think I understand it, and I understand its allure. It does not surprise me that some find it utterly compelling and worth fighting for--and even worth defiantly living by. This Kolasinski person may well be sincere about her Libertarianism. And now the government is stomping its Elephant’s Foot upon her.

It’s so easy to view Kolasinski as ridiculous. But it doesn’t take much thought or imagination to view her otherwise.

I sympathize, and I’m not even a Libertarian. Where are the Libertarians? Where’s the outcry?

Orange County, you disappoint me.

(For a mildly sympathetic editorial, see last year’s Piecemakers know no peace.)

P.S.: I went to the website for the Prometheus Institute, OC's Libertarian think tank, and searched under both "Piecemakers" and "Kolasinksi." Nothing came up.