Tea Party

[dairygirl4u2c]

[quote]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/opinion/05brooks.html
The Wal-Mart Hippies

About 40 years ago, a social movement arose to destroy the establishment. The people we loosely call the New Left wanted to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.


Today, another social movement has arisen. The people we loosely call the Tea Partiers also want to destroy the establishment. They also want to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.

There are many differences between the New Left and the Tea Partiers. One was on the left, the other is on the right. One was bohemian, the other is bourgeois. One was motivated by war, and the other is motivated by runaway federal spending. One went to Woodstock, the other is more likely to go to Wal-Mart.

But the similarities are more striking than the differences. To start with, the Tea Partiers have adopted the tactics of the New Left. They go in for street theater, mass rallies, marches and extreme statements that are designed to shock polite society out of its stupor. This mimicry is no accident. Johnsonville brat Armey, one of the spokesmen for the Tea Party movement, recently praised the methods of Saul Alinsky, the leading tactician of the New Left.

These days the same people who are buying Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals” on Amazon.com are, according to the company’s software, also buying books like “Liberal Fascism,” “Rules for Conservative Radicals,” “Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left,” and “The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party.” Those last two books were written by David Horowitz, who was a leading New Left polemicist in the 1960s and is now a leading polemicist on the right.

But the core commonality is this: Members of both movements believe in what you might call mass innocence. Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures. “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains,” is how Rousseau put it.

Because of this assumption, members of both movements go in big for conspiracy theories. The ’60s left developed elaborate theories of how world history was being manipulated by shadowy corporatist/imperialist networks — theories that live on in the works of Noam Chomsky. In its short life, the Tea Party movement has developed a dizzying array of conspiracy theories involving the Fed, the F.B.I., the big banks and corporations and black helicopters.

Because of this assumption, members of the Tea Party right, like the members of the New Left, spend a lot of time worrying about being co-opted. They worry that the corrupt forces of the establishment are perpetually trying to infiltrate the purity of their ranks.

Because of this assumption, members of both movements have a problem with authority. Both have a mostly negative agenda: destroy the corrupt structures; defeat the establishment. Like the New Left, the Tea Party movement has no clear set of plans for what to do beyond the golden moment of personal liberation, when the federal leviathan is brought low.

Recently a piece in Salon astutely compared Glenn Beck to Abbie Hoffman. In it, Michael Lind pointed out that the conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s built a counter-establishment — a network of think tanks, activist groups, academic associations and political leaders who would form conservative cadres, promoting conservative ideas and policies.

But the Tea Partiers are closer to the New Left. They don’t seek to form a counter-establishment because they don’t believe in establishments or in authority structures. They believe in the spontaneous uprising of participatory democracy. They believe in mass action and the politics of barricades, not in structure and organization. As one activist put it recently on a Tea Party blog: “We reject the idea that the Tea Party Movement is ‘led’ by anyone other than the millions of average citizens who make it up.”

For this reason, both the New Left and the Tea Party movement are radically anticonservative. Conservatism is built on the idea of original sin — on the assumption of human fallibility and uncertainty. To remedy our fallen condition, conservatives believe in civilization — in social structures, permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages and structure individual longings.

That idea was rejected in the 1960s by people who put their faith in unrestrained passion and zealotry. The New Left then, like the Tea Partiers now, had a legitimate point about the failure of the ruling class. But they ruined it through their own imprudence, self-righteousness and naïve radicalism. The Tea Partiers will not take over the G.O.P., but it seems as though the ’60s political style will always be with us — first on the left, now the right. [/quote]

[Nihil Obstat]

Sorry, I'm just on the way out the door. I'll read this when I get a chance.

[dairygirl4u2c]

[quote]It must be tough to be David Brooks.

First, as an editorialist, every week he is required to write an opinion piece whether or not he is inspired to do so.

Second, as a conservative, he must constantly twist facts and logic to reassure/justify to himself and/or other conservatives that it is OK to support free markets, war, corporatism, polluters and the very wealthy and to oppress the poor and middle class, work against peace and environmental and economic policies that would sustain and support all the worlds inhabitants.

Brooks is a cynical man -- grasping for straws -- as he tries to compare a true grassroots movement made up of college students, environmentalists, peace-nicks, women, Gays, Blacks and other minorities, with a few corporate sponsored rallies full of old, white, ignorant and angry wing-nuts who are lied to and manipulated into decrying policies that would improve their lives as well as the lives of their children and grandchildren.

Tough stuff.[/quote]

the comments are fun to read too:

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/opinion/05brooks.html?permid=255

i liked the ignorant old white folks point, versus a bunch of grassroots minority etc. im bias against the teabaggers, even if i might be willing to support them more than a bunch of hippies. im bias from the general tones and rhetoric i hear etc.
it's funny that's why this poster likes to say brooks is wrong, vis a vis how other conservatives here say he's wrong for saying they're not the same.

and the 'corporate sponsered' poitn in taht quote above is interesting, called 'astroturfing'. '
"On April 9, 2009, the liberal blog Think Progress claimed that most of the 2009 protests were conservative lobbyist-created "astroturf" projects and not spontaneous grassroots protests. They argued that the protests were nationally coordinated and organized by conservative lobbyist organizations Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks.[156] The story was picked up in a New York Times op-ed column by liberal economist Paul Krugman, writing that "the tea parties don't represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They're AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey."[113] On April 15, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi agreed, saying "it's not really a grassroots movement. It's astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class."[157] On the same day, liberal MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow commented, saying that "corporate-funded PR shops and lobbying groups have done a lot of the organizing and promotion for these events. That's controversial because it's astroturfing. It's disguising a formal top-down organized paid for things as if it's some spontaneous grassroots event."[158]"

Edited April 2, 2010 by dairygirl4u2c

[Ed Normile]

You guys remember Ross Perot? He acquired the largest chunk of voters ever by a third party candidate during his run for president, he was the reason Presient Bill Clinton was elected over incumbent President Bush Sr.

ed

[Semper Catholic]

Tea Party=Code Pink

Both groups are tremendously uneducated about the topics they so fervently protest about

[Resurrexi]

[quote name='Semper Catholic' date='03 April 2010 - 09:43 AM' timestamp='1270305821' post='2086003']
Tea Party=Code Pink

Both groups are tremendously uneducated about the topics they so fervently protest about
[/quote]

Unsubstantiated generalization.

[Winchester]

"Uneducated" is typically substituted for: "Doesn't agree with me." See also: "ignorant" and "bigot".

[Jesus_lol]

[quote name='Winchester' date='03 April 2010 - 09:51 AM' timestamp='1270313501' post='2086111']
"Uneducated" is typically substituted for: "Doesn't agree with me." See also: "ignorant" and "bigot".
[/quote]

that knife cuts both ways, most threads here complaining about the persecution/slander of catholics use the same words.

i find the hippie comparison to be fairly apt. all about the big picture, and "doing stuff" but no real gameplan.

[Ed Normile]

[quote name='Jesus_lol' date='03 April 2010 - 01:19 PM' timestamp='1270318750' post='2086154']
that knife cuts both ways, most threads here complaining about the persecution/slander of catholics use the same words.

i find the hippie comparison to be fairly apt. all about the big picture, and "doing stuff" but no real gameplan.
[/quote]


Actually my experience with the tea parties, I have never been to one as I have to work for a living, but I have watched and listened as two came together, the first one in Mason Ohio and the one in Orlando Florida as I travel south for employment during the harsh weather of the winter months. They are indeed started by grassroot movements. they raise monies from donations of individuals, they do not lobby politicians, they are usually blocked regularly by many politiciains, from both parties. They started out as a rumor circulated and spread through flyers, in Ohio they made it on to the Bill Cunningham radio show, a second level conservative talk show host on the WLW radio station, he is nowhere as big as Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh, he is not nationally carried, in Orlando they spread much the same way, eventually reaching the Bud Hedinger radio show, another local talent. I passed the one in Mason Ohio, the roads were congested, the parking area was the grounds of the former Voice of America freedom radio towers, now a public park which easily holds around five to six thousand cars as it is mostly grass and some pavilions and some swings for the kids. The independent news stated there were 12 to fifteen thousand people estimated to have attended, the liberal prime time news station and the cincinnatti enquirer, a liberal rag stated that "hundreds" of people showed up. Both events attracted local politicians who were in agreement with the premise of the movement, smaller government and less taxes to allow the free system of economy to work as it has in the past under John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagen, both Presidents cut taxes and the economy flourished, jobs were created and monies flowed into the government coffers as people and industry no longer felt as if they were losing more than they made to unfair taxes. Big businesses, which hire many people and provide great benefits, such as retirement plans, and yes Virginia, even paid healthcare ! hired workers and these workers paid taxes, small businesses were actually able to exist not being burdened by unfair taxes and from the profits they garnered the tax dollars flew into washington and funded many good projects, as well as some bad ones. It always amazes me how the liberals link tax cuts to being a bad thing invented by the republican right when the first time this model was tried and succeeded, it was implemented by a liberal, namely J.F.K. !

ed

[Winchester]

[quote name='Jesus_lol' date='03 April 2010 - 02:19 PM' timestamp='1270318750' post='2086154']
that knife cuts both ways, most threads here complaining about the persecution/slander of catholics use the same words.[/quote]
Which is why I phrased it as I did. Everyone uses the terms. This is the problem with widespread literacy.

[quote]
i find the hippie comparison to be fairly apt. all about the big picture, and "doing stuff" but no real gameplan.
[/quote]
I'll hazard your familiarity with tea party gatherings is mostly from news media. They could give two turds about truth. I can't wait until they get what they want. I want to be there the first time a reporter is executed by the State.

I know that's evil.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Winchester' date='03 April 2010 - 02:19 PM' timestamp='1270325953' post='2086239']
I want to be there the first time a reporter is executed by the State.[/quote]
Alas, that day is approaching.

[Winchester]

[quote name='Apotheoun' date='03 April 2010 - 07:08 PM' timestamp='1270336119' post='2086350']
Alas, that day is approaching.
[/quote]
I reckon the first ones will be ones I'd rather like, come to think of it.

[Sternhauser]

[img]http://www.libertystickers.com/static/images/productimage-picture-im-going-to-be-in-the-concentration-camp-477.gif[/img]

~Sternhauser

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='Sternhauser' date='04 April 2010 - 09:31 AM' timestamp='1270384276' post='2086517']
[img]http://www.libertystickers.com/static/images/productimage-picture-im-going-to-be-in-the-concentration-camp-477.gif[/img]

~Sternhauser
[/quote]

Maybe this will include me, since I am a writer after all haha. Though we will have to see if I can get the 'favorite' tacked on there eventually as well.

[Semper Catholic]

LOL I love how the Chicken Little's switch from party to party depending on who is in control.

I remember all the democrats complaining about the gorvernment take over during the NSA/phone taps/google stuff etc.

Now conservatives are tooting that same horn.

Oh and writers always overestimate their importance. Sorry you guys aren't significant enough to be of any real threat to the government, especially now that "everyone" is a writer with blogs and such.