Jonah Goldberg's recent comments in the LA Times on the Tea Party gathering in Cincinnati focus on an important fact about this "movement," the fiscal fury toward both Obama and Bush over deficits. If we're seeing a "delayed backlash" against Bush in the rants and ravings of these "patriots," praise the Lord.
But there's something disturbing about their monomania over taxes and government power. They take their name from angry citizens who challenged plutocratic privilege at the nation's inception. But they reside in a different galaxy from them. Are they the products of the textbook-poor school system the Obama team is now chartering out of existence for failing to educate? The cream of this crowd has no excuse. They're educated professionals who've unfortunately armed themselves with a selective history.
While the politely progressive left documents and documents injustices like those that irked the founders, the far right resorts to flights of fancy that ironically are getting serious attention. The party's puppeteers seem to take their talking points from Fox News (63% claim that's where they get their info), passing them down for the rest to memorize. We can just imagine the prepping. "If they ask that, say this..."
This party has about as much to do with the original as marijuana to real tea for the toking roadies of the Beat 50s.
David Brooks aptly remarked on the NewsHour last week that many are flocking to the far right because the moderates in control are failing to take firm stances on the issues at a moment when we must. A system that mostly offers what Arianna Huffington calls "suboptimal" compromises, hardly real solutions, invites stalemates that breed extremes. At least the left hasn't devolved into free-wheeling weathermen. But ironically the mass of tea partyers do need and seem to have gotten direction from professional readers of the prevailing climate.
The partyers rightly redux "taxation without representation." But their rhetoric is full of juvenile generalities. Will we get freedom, their perennial buzzword, from getting guv-off-our-backs? Let's beam back before 1913 when the barons ruled in pensionless wage slavery and then we'll be free!
One of Obama's flaws is the failure to get folks feeling their fates are more fairly accounted for in the federal revenue stream. The system has been so voided of fairness that the notion of progressive taxation sounds alien. We're feeling the effects of changes ushered in by Reagan and deepened under Bush that have shifted the burden onto the lower tiers without a bump in representation. Piecemeal "fixes" go mostly unnoticed, and the mere talk of raising taxes quickly registers on the radar as Big Brother at the door. It's interesting that taxes for many in the middle range have come down. But a few crumbs of savings barely cancel ATM fees.
We need an ethical template for taxation that allows the under-represented to see how it all works, especially who's undertaxed. If Fox would spend more time on homeland tax havens and offshore tax-free patriotism, perhaps the picture would adjust. Many partyers are against the bailouts too, as small business owners in areas victimized by the boom-bust cycle. But there aren't enough details in their ditties to find the devil. The extent to which the freedom-taking is shared by government and corporations against less endowed individuals is not graspable through their talking points.
In the responses at the tax day gathering in West LA, corporations were conveniently absent. Government was the cause of everything from the mortgage crisis to global warming. The public factor hasn't a prayer. These cheerleaders-for-no want to strip government down to a skeletal frame that will never interfere with their desire to be unburdened of unfair taxation and survive, but also to take care of number one and simply get more! Let the Europeans, whom the partyers say get nothing for their high taxes anyway, talk of the subtleties of freedom for the whole. But the latter will only come from stripping away the government that makes the playing field more unlevel, the subsidies for the already endowed and special interest tax breaks, and its replacement with a responsible alternative.
A fair society is a contract that strips and clothes to create freedom for the maximal number, as the founding fathers knew well, evident in their support for a public role in producing a more diverse and equitable press. The partyers' wide sweep threatens to undo this contract.
So will their ideas surge the momentum to reoccupy the Sudetenlands? Perhaps not. But bannered by the free market they might lead at least to the confiscation of Social Security's hinterlands.
They were shouting, "Don't you take the country's fair share out of my pocket!" -- meanwhile standing on public property maintained by public employees; protected from harm by local, state, and federal law enforcement; secure against foreign invasion by the U.S. armed forces; free from disease thanks to NIH and CDC; publicized on airwaves regulated by the FCC; and able to leave wherever they came from to get here thanks to myriad local, state, and federal entities and employees.
OK, Buck, I challenge you to respond to my response to your challenge! Here it is:
It was written that "If Fox would spend more time on homeland tax havens and offshore tax-free patriotism, perhaps the picture would adjust."
Is that UNTRUE, Buck? Does Fox EVER explain the impact of tax havens and other tax breaks and escapes for the rich to its audience? Does it? And would providing that kind of background information (or at least some honest guest willing to include it in their statements--and not be cut off by a rude host) help or hinder the debate, hmmmm? Answer me that, please, Buckieboy.
Oh, and while you are at it, was Warren Buffet lying when he said, "My secretary pays more taxes than I do?" Wanna try 'splainin' that one while you trip over your words there aren't any supportable assertions in this article?
Hmmmm?
Choose.
I challenge any reader to support any assertion in the article. It's junk. Fit only for the Star Magazine.
It underscores the urgent need for more grounding in mathematics and science at least through high school.
Why aren't any Tea Party Candidates ever mentioned on ANY TV News?
now UNTRACEABLE?
how many fake/fantasy districts did his TARP 'create jobs in'?
Red/Blue is ONE corporate party with two faces
Now, they call themselves the Tea Party. They used to be proud republicans back when they were running everything and before they were forced to admit that they messed everything up. The Teaparty isn't a movement, it's an inherent character flaw.
They planned the bus tours, designed the logo, setup to take donations from members who joined, and got Fox on board to advertise, promote and sponsor events.
This was never a "grassroots" movement. It was never about taxes. It was never about the deficit.
If they were truly concerned then they never stood up during the Bush administration in protest.
The fact their membership numbers show they are composed of primarily wealthy older white males and the total group is only about 18% of the population the GOP is now starting to distance itself.
The poll results showing that only about 25% of Americans support the "tea party" is also another reason the GOP is stepping back from the "tea party".
The GOP needs the votes of the 82% of Americans who don't belong to the "tea party" and the 75% who don't support them.
It was an ill conceived idea by the GOP and it has backfired since the racism shown in the signs from extremists who have joined the group as well as "tea party" locals picking their own candidates running in contrast to the GOP.
Most are driven by fear and anger . Fear of what may happen; anger with what has happened.
The only way to assuage that fear and anger are decent results.
Br assured of this: very few of them will ever vote Democratic.
The only thing they all can agree on is to hate those they do not like (anyone can feel free to fill in who that might be).
Although I think the overall analysis of the tea party Movement is inaccurate, your last statement fits the liberals to a "T" as well. You folks really are getting holier than thou.
But I do stand by my overall analysis of the movement. Just like the GOP, the Tea Party's "small government" anti-tax rhetoric is empty. They are only agianst things the government does when it's done by Democrats. The GOP can do anything they want to and Tea Baggers are fine with it.
Hence this simple configuration: Tea Party = GOP.