Without a hint of awareness of any contradiction, the Tea Party Express and headliner Sarah Palin recently gathered on the Boston Common, one of the oldest government-maintained spaces in America -- to denounce government.
They vented anger about a government doing too much. A strange complaint from self-styled patriots, given the crises this nation is still facing:
Two wars. Foreclosures rampant. Unemployment spiked to nearly 10%. Millions more underemployed. Small business owners afraid to invest more. Small banks failing, and large banks consolidating power. And much of it flowing from the embrace-the-free-market policies of the conservative coalition in charge since 2000, while many Tea Partyers were apparently tranquil.
So what does a grass roots movement which claims the mantle of the Revolutionary builders of our country have to say about solutions? Do nothing!
No, worse yet: undo whatever change has begun to bring the economy back to health. Stop investing in jobs. Stop investing in education. Stop providing help to those who have become victims of one of the greatest financial thefts in American history. And most of all, let those without health insurance go bankrupt.
Why? Because helping the country requires asking them to sacrifice something personally. And from their rhetoric, Tea Party activists apparently don't believe in sacrifice for the common good.
Not so the real, original Boston tea party patriots. They took personal risks to secure liberty, but they also launched independence by declaring "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."
There is little praise for mutual pledging in today's Tea Party movement. Instead of seeing America as a nation that is in this together, they choose to rail against infringements upon their personal right to be indifferent to the suffering of others.
Already on average better off than most Americans, they have constructed a wonderfully self-serving vision of America where government programs that benefit them equate with freedom, but anything that benefits others is tyranny. Hands off their Medicare!
Tea Party pretenders also claim to revere the Constitution above all else. Under our Constitution, we hold free and fair presidential elections every four years. No serious person disputes that Barack Obama won the last election by a large margin, and voters gave Democrats large majorities in Congress. Yet do they respect this mandate of the people?
No. From Inauguration Day on, they have disrespected the President. And in doing so they have disrespected tens of millions of citizens who voted for him, and the very basis of a democracy -- that elections matter.
So it is no surprise that the keynote speaker at a Tea Party convention says, to applause: "People who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House." Words of respect for democracy, or the whine of a sore loser?
At bottom, the Tea Party leaders seems to speak themes better suited to those who in reality want a "me" party. No "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" socialist nonsense for them. Far better to dress up your rejection of responsibility to your fellow Americans in language of patriotism and righteous outrage.
Yearn as they might, however, theirs is not a movement that harkens back to the Founding Fathers. It is a movement espousing self-interest, denial of liberties to others, and a good side to greed.
That's not what Sam Adams and company stood up for when they denounced taxation without representation. Modern-day Tea Partiers seem instead to be fighting for representation without responsibility.
What happens when the government runs out of rich people to tax? What happens when people refuse to cooperate (the Middle East)? It is illogical to try to hold the entire world to the ideals of non-violent resolution, as it can be concluded from all of human history that humans are a competitive race. In actuality, the very best in humans comes out when competition is at it's highest. Whether it be scientific minds competing for grant money or athlete's vying for first place, if every man and woman constantly worked to be the best at whatever they do, then new heights can be reached as everyone is working to be better than the best. If everyone cooperates, it gives an excuse to rely on someone else, thus making the populous (personally) weaker. The world would only have to be equal to your neighbor, and would never have to achieve or be exceptional because that wouldn't be a value.
The Tea Baggers are libertarians gone wild. Every libertarian I've ever talked to fits the above description. They have no concept of the common good.
Competition leads to viewing others as foes, therefore to hate.
Repubs hate Russians like Red Sox fans hate the Yankees, it goes with competing.
Repub = competition good, cooperation bad.
Dem = competition good, cooperation necessary.
In this and many other contexts, it has always seemed to me that "conservatives" and Republicans are much more prone to believe, and imply when they speak, that we always have to choose one or the other, that if you want the one you can't have the other, if you want the other then you must not want the one, etc. "Liberals" and Democrats do a better job, in my experience, of acknowledging and understanding that we need both, and that we can have both.
Whether it's competition-vs-cooperation, liberty-vs-security, religion-vs-science, life-vs-choice, social-justice-vs-personal-responsibility, etc., I've always gotten the sense not that conservatives like/want one and liberals like/want the other. Conservatives want one and not the other, and liberals want both.
I know this is not -always- true, and that not every single individual conservative (or liberal) on the planet fits this description, so let's dispense with the accusations that I'm saying any such thing. This is a general observation about long-running patterns of very public behavior.
That world view applies to the economy, the role of government, the world.
Competition: conservative, capitalist, Ayn Rand, flat taxes, might-makes-right, military bully, male
Cooperation: liberal, socialist, tax-the-rich, cooperation rather than war, female
That's a gross overview, but the point is: we don't understand each other because we do not have a common world-view. We don't even agree of what the purpose of government is, and probably never will.
You can look at the economy as a competition between nations or corporations.
Or as cooperation, each country or business doing what it does best, for the common good.
There's no right or wrong; both philosophies work. That's what makes it so frustrating :-)
They'd get a lot from studying Buddhism or Native American philosophy. It sure couldn't hurt 'cause they know they're not going to Christian "Heaven." If they thought they were going to be, some day, flying around in paradise, they wouldn't be so scared and they wouldn't mind paying their taxes.
That is what the Tea Party is. A Me Party? If you meant that as an insult, you failed. A clever, yet Freudian, slip of the goals of those on the left.
"Nor does it want a government that involved in the minutia of the individual."
Hmmm...so are most TP folks pro-choice? Pro gay-marriage?
"They are wanting freedom and liberty, not enslavement and tyranny."
Uh, what freedoms have TP folks lost under this administration? And fear of the *possibility* of *maybe* one day losing *some* freedoms doesn't count in the real world.
This country already has socialistic aspects to it...and has for quite some time. Our police, fire department, public schools, EMT's, our roads, infrastructure, is all a result of "socialism"...people pooling their monies together for a common good. Our government is a hybrid one...built on both capitalism and socialism. If you want to ensure that it doesn't become a 100% socialist nation, that's fine...I'd actually agree with that, and I'm a "far lefty". But 100% capitalism is not good either...and I personally think our country is best served somewhere in the middle.
Some of the Socialistic entities you mentioned are not socialistic, they are social. The police and military are valid government functions, as they are established to protect individual rights. Just because the government does something, does not mean it should be doing that something. The roads were built by mixing the idea of 'the common elfare' and military spending.
Yes, we have ended up in a mixed economy, thanks to the likes of Wilson and FDR. And we are seeing the result of that. Whenever you mix evil and good, evil always wins the lion share. And yes, I am referring to Socialism as evil, as it enslaves the individual. To his neighbor, and to his State. It robs freedom, as the person has to think about his actions in context, not of his own benefit, but the benefit of others. A system of enslavement and theft mixed with a system of freedom results in enslavement and theft. As we are witnessing today.
The violations are those of the 4th, 5th, 10th, and 13th Amendments. And the assault continues against the 1st and 2nd Amendments, as well as the gross violation of Article 1, Sec 8.
Why do they seem not to know?
The actual Party is getting candidates into elections as Tea Party member and they have a serious platform, that is pro-active.
http://firesneverextinguished.blogspot.com/2010/04/high-noon-is-too-late-for-tea-seeking.html
it shows how a lot of what the tea party does is fight to uphold the benefits of white privilege in our society, and also how to split the tea party by forcing them into situations where they are forced to confront this fact. it is a really excellent article.
fight the banks not each other!
resembles a Tea Party gathering
spouting nothing
but hot bluster.
What would a tea party be
Without a few crackpots
Like Mike Huckabee,
Michele Bachmann,
Sarah Palin, and
Rick Santelli
…
blowhards
having spouted
nothing
but hot steam.
Except the Volcano does not pay
itself a $100,000 a pop
from your pocket
like Palin does.
Palin/Bachman 2012!!
Hmmmmmmmm......could that be because of the possibility that most of these tea baggers might also OWN STOCK in Halliburton or at least one of these other major well-connected military contractors?
Lockheed Martin
General Electric
General Dynamics
Honeywell
Boeing
United Technologies
Northrop Grumman
Dyncorp
Remember what is written in the Bible: NO ONE CAN SERVE TWO MASTERS. That is, it is IMPOSSIBLE to serve both your fellow countrymen and BIG $$$$.