Since the inception of Tea Party movement, pundits -- including yours truly -- have been trying to deconstruct the foreign policy direction of what is a coalition of many local and national groups that seem to share a commitment to libertarian economic policy agenda.
Indeed, a recent study prepared by the Cato Institute refutes the popular notion that the movement is dominated by social-cultural conservatives. As David Kirby and Emily Ekins point out, "Libertarian attitudes are fueling roughly half the tea party activists" who believe that "'the less government the better' and don't see a role for government in promoting 'traditional values.'" This is a big reason "why the movement has largely focused on economic matters, resisting attempts to add social issues to its agenda," the two analysts note.
"Tea party libertarians are somewhat younger, better educated and almost twice as likely to 'never' go to church than tea party conservatives," Kirby and Ekins write. "On the issues, tea party libertarians are less concerned than conservatives about the moral direction of the country, gay marriage, immigration, job outsourcing and abortion," they conclude.
That split between libertarian and conservative tea partiers has been noted by other observers who have described it as a division between two camps: The conservatives who support former Alaska Governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and the libertarians who back Representative from Texas and former presidential candidate Ron Paul.
Interestingly enough, the main ideological split between Palin and Paul has less to with the social-conservative agenda and more with the direction of American foreign policy. "As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad,' Paul posted recently on ForeignPolicy.com Tea partiers cannot talk about fiscal responsibility and about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending while giving a green light to "spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world" and "without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. " Tea partiers cannot pat themselves on the back "for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined, " he stressed.
Not surprisingly, Paul like other libertarian figures and organizations, including the Cato Institute opposed the Iraq War and a possible war with Iran and has called for military disengagement from Afghanistan. On the other hand, Palin has been repeating the neoconservative foreign policy mantra since the day she was selected as John McCain's running mate: America needs to spread freedom worldwide, to stay the course in Iraq, to use military power against Iran, to get tough with Russia, and to give to the Generals in the Pentagon all the money they want. Moreover, Palin and former Arkansas Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, another favorite of the conservative wing of the Tea Party movement also echo in their rhetoric about the Middle East and Israel certain messianic overtones that seem to envision a long and costly civilizational struggle with Islam at home and abroad that would not only consume enormous military and economic resources but would also strengthen the power of the federal government.
During the election campaign most of the Republican candidates, and especially those backed by the Tea Party movement refrained from endorsing any coherent foreign policy agenda along the lines of the positions advocated by either Paul or Palin. If anything, their responses to questions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and about U.S. role in the world in general were at times very confused.. When pressed for her position on Iraq and Afghanistan, the former Republican Senate candidate from Nevada Sharon Angle explained that "You know, the two wars that we are in right now are exactly what we are in." And here is what Ken Buck, the former Republican Senate candidate from Colorado had to say about Afghanistan. "The first thing I think we need to do is to make sure that Afghanistan is not a safe haven for terrorists," Buck stated during a debate. "And when I say safe haven, I'm not talking about that there isn't a possibility of a terrorist in Afghanistan. I'm saying that when you look at other countries similarly situated -- Somalia, Yemen, other countries -- that Afghanistan is at least as safe as those countries," he explained.
The problem is that the focus of many of these and other Tea Party candidates that were elected (or not) to Congress has been almost entirely on the economy and that they are either uninterested in, or not knowledgeable enough about Afghanistan, Iraq and other U.S. military interventions that are consuming such a huge part of the federal budget. Under these circumstances, the foreign policy agenda of the Congressional Republicans could end-up being dominated by those Republicans that are very interested in, and knowledgeable about the issues, that receive their talking points on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Russia from interest groups, think tanks and media organizations that support a costly military interventionist policies around the world, and that are inclined to exploit the Palin's jingoistic rhetoric to rally the Republican troops behind their policies.
The danger is that the tendency of those Republican Tea Party members of Congress who are less inclined to focus on foreign policy issues would be to yield to the guidance and pressure coming from the leading Republican foreign-policy activists and "Palinites" who will probably try to integrate their militaristic and interventionist approach into the grand anti-Obama narrative which depicts the president as "un-American," weak and defeatist in his dealing with Iran and Islamofascism and an enemy of the Jewish State.
Let's hope that libertarians and conservative who understand the relationship between U.S. interventionist policies and the rising U.S. federal deficits will succeed in neutralizing this danger by explaining to the new generation of Republican lawmakers that any effort to reduce the power of the federal government will have to include major cuts in military spending. And that will require the rejection of the policies that rationalize these expenditures.
Follow Leon T. Hadar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/leonhadar
Raimondo now says Rand Paul is much closer to the 'Libertarian' views of his father Ron Paul.
If what I may call the Ron (and Rand) Paul wing of the Tea Party can turn the energies of the Tea Party unto the destruction of the Neocons and the rest of warmongering Pro-Israelis and titular members of the Knesset like Lindsey Graham or McCain - that would be a fantastic development
//...kudos to Rand Paul, whom I seem to have seriously misjudged. I guess that meeting with Bill Kristol and the neocons didn’t mean what I feared it meant. His remarks not only validate his anti-interventionist credentials, but they also show what a good politician he is becoming: in these war-weary days, you can’t say “bring the troops home” often enough. I’m glad to admit I was wrong about Rand Paul because I can breathe a lot easier, now, knowing he’s going to be a credit to the libertarian movement and his father’s legacy. //
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/11/07/lindsey-grahams-desperation/
So, how about going back to an agenda of defining yourself:
You say I'm a big spending Democrat - well, let's talk about that. I do want to spend big. I want to spend on fixing and replacing damaged roads and unstable bridges in the United States; I want to spend on repairing and replacing worn out gas lines so they won't rupture and blow up houses; I want to spend on schools in the USA with leaky roofs and broken windows so that our children can have an environment that is conducive to learning and that breeds hope rather than despair; I want to invest in new technologies here in this country that lead to energy independence.
You bet -- I want to spend big.
Now, some things I don't want to spend on like the Republicans do and have --- replacing roads, infrastructure, schools, hospitals, technology in Iraq and Afghanistan that we blew to kingdom come and now feel an obligation to replace. Don't blow up countries and you don't have to replace their stuff.
Now we have someone suggesting we give even more away to Iran.
Let's stop spending big overseas and start spending big at home for us and our kids.””
Step one:
Get a majority of the citizens to vote "YES" on a referendum to completely reboot the economy. Forgive all debts (even our nation's sovereign debt to China). Let all the commercial banks fail, with all their ponzi schemes and shell games of hiding loan assets and liabilities in undecipherable derivatives that are packaged and traded between financial institutions until they have lost all meaning. Due to fractional reserve banking, the banks don't have the citizens' deposits anyway, but they do have computerized records of the amount of those deposits. Transfer that data to a citizen-owned nonprofit bank so that those few citizens and businesses that have money in their checking and savings accounts don't lose it.
To keep the economy running in light of the failure of the commercial banking industry, start a citizen owned nonprofit bank democratically controlled, one person, one non-transferable voting share. Pure democracy - a nonprofit banking system equally owned by all, except with the legal freedom to create capital. Screw the Federal Reserve. This is more democratic. Do it all on the internet, skip the brick and mortal retail operations and paper currency and run it virtually.
http://define.com
However, most people in the U.S. tend not to think globally, and are kind of programmed to be very nationalistic. So for that reason, when introducing a concept or suggestion like this it seems to be a mental stepping stone or bridge to put in the context of something that they could vote on as a national majority.
Obviously, this would be Earth-changing, and it would require a lot of serious public discussion and tons of input from scientific experts, social scientists, economists, political leaders, etc. We'd probably have to discuss it for years, slowly get people to understand the process and prepare for the change, manage the funds so that people still had their retirement incomes, checking and savings, and ability to pay all the remaining monthly bills that are part of life.
Somehow, though, to even get the conversation going and the discussion to be taken seriously, we have to have some kind of initial catalysts to get people on the same page.
The problem I'm having is I had already given up serious anti-interventionism from RAND Paul - which side off the river is RAND Paul on? - so far I've been extremely disappointed that he does not seem to share his dad's Liberatarian anti-interventionist ideology
Leon discerns an fascinating split within the Tea Party in terms of 'foreign policy' - which really boils down fundamentally to a split between the thinking on Israel and the ‘Long War Against Islam' ginned up by the Neocons. So there's Neocon Wing of the Tea Party and the RON Paul Libertarian Wing
The Neocons hijacked the Republican Party and are now (particularly Charles Krauthammer/Sarah Palin/Kristol) trying to hijack the Tea Party 'foreign policy' as well - and they are succeeding wildly
Palin's Neocon Wing, with it's Judeofacist handlers like William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, has thus far dominated the Tea Party ideology as far as I see - if RON Paul is fighting to recapture the anti-interventionist ''libertarian wing' within the movement, to take it back from the hated Neocons, I wish him all the success in the world
If the Tea Party could just be turned against the Neocons and purge the Republican Party of the William Kristols, Krauthammer, and Sarah Palin and overthrow this Pro-Israel Neocon Coup that is running our foreign policy … well THAT would really be something spectacular
//Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) probably surprised some Republicans Sunday when he said he would be willing to cut military spending.//
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/rand-paul-gop-military-spending-cuts/
(1) disarmament;
(2) the hindrance of nuclear proliferation; and,
(3) the ease of access to those nations who want to use nuclear technology for civilian means exclusively.
The IAEA, the only agency in charge of monitoring N-programs for the UN, has stated that Iran is and continues to be the most monitored program ever and that THERE EXISTS NO ACTUAL EVIDENCE that Iran is deviating from civilian enrichment.
Look at the number of foreclosures; they're huge and getting worse. The longer we have high unemployment, the more it feeds the foreclosures and generates instability. Unemployment hasn't improved; a combination of make-work government jobs and useless spending on DoD and DHS make-work jobs keeps us treading water on the employment front. Our infrastructure is collapsing/has collapsed, and there's almost nothing being done to restore it. We are being out-competed by China, India, South Korea, and other countries, and given the quality of our education system, we will be even further behind competitively.
Many Americans are hanging on by their fingernails, and many are on chronic government life support. We are extremely vulnerable to even a minor shock. Remember what happened when gas hit $4 a gallon in 2008. The USA was almost brought to its knees. Further saber-rattling statements like those of Lindsay Graham could send the price of crude oil sky-rocketing, and return us to the problems of 2008. While some of the posters may still be working and can fantasize about future collapse, for many of the posters the collapse has arrived.
Tp backers should begin to realize they provided the Trojan Horse to usher in these war mongors who want to finish what Goerge Bush began!
Are you to stand for this? Forget they promised jobs and economy first_they want war and to finish off this country financially once and for all.
Those things are hardly exclusive to Libertarians. The majority of Americans want less government, and Republican conservatives, with regard to "promoting traditional values," only want to reinstate what the government had no right to interfere with in the first place; like "God" in the public square. Beyond that, they want the government the hell out of their personal lives as much as Libertarians do.
Few consider that Mideast will invariably hit an IronWall when new Teabaggers take their seats in Congress. Bohner in his recent campaigning of a controvertial protoNAZI candidate gave a foretaste as he said privately: "I don't care what Cantor thinks."
America spending $tillions fighting neocons' "WWIV" against Islam&lavishly supporting Israel with $billions are first issues the Teabaggers will scream about. Their arguments are very presuasive for they claim-- as did binLaden-- that as the FAR ENEMY America can escape being terrorism target by leaving Jihadis alone to fight their Muslim NEAR ENEMIES. It will indeed be a bloodbath.
Let's recall that in 1973 Israel threatened Nixon with nuking Egypt if he didn't massively resupplyIsrael massively with weapons. So Nixon had to send weapons promised South Vietnam per ParisAccord. This provoked Hanoi's 1974 invasion, violating ParisAccord. Back then CongressionalDemocrats&Republicans were dedicated ColdWarInterventionists and Israel&Arabs were seen as ColdWar allies. Now Teabaggers in Senate will argue for ISOLATIONISM on grounds that we can't afford interventionism. They want UStroops out of EurAsia and Mideast and want end to lavish foreignaid to Israel.
This antiIsrael tone will be opposed by Zionists which will take scab off Teabaggers' antiSemitic character. Neocons' play of race card againstObama will suffer from RepublicanTeabaggerIsolationists.