The "Extremists" Known as the Tea Party

Here's a funny article from Robert McCartney on the Tea Party. He went to a rally and was surprised that he found no racists since liberals have painted the Tea Party as the second coming of the KKK. The people he interviewed thought government was too big and wanted to work within the system to reduce its size. This is why the Tea Party is doomed as a political movement; as long as the majority of Tea Partiers believe freedom can be advanced through the democratic process, they will only be grist for the State's mill. However, I do believe that some of these people are opposed to the State itself and they can be radicalized.

 

Here are some excerpts followed by my commentary.

Based on what I saw and heard, tea party members are not seething, ready-to-explode racists, as some liberal commentators have caricatured them.

Some are extremists and bigots, sure. The crowd was almost entirely white. I differ strenuously with the protesters on about 95 percent of the issues.

This is a poorly written paragraph. I'll give McCartney the benefit of the doubt here, but he implies that if a crowd gathers on the mall that is almost entirely white, it is guaranteed to have extremists and bigots. But since this refers to white people, it's OK. Had the writer been present at the the Million Man March and wrote "Some are irresponsible and have criminal backgrounds, sure. The crowd was almost entirely black," he would have been burned in effigy.

Although shrinking government is their primary goal, many conceded that the country should keep Medicare and even Social Security. None was clamoring for civil disobedience, much less armed revolt.

These are two of the most expensive entitlement programs and both are already broke. Yet these particular Tea Partiers want to shrink the Federal Government. Economics FAIL!

I found that I agreed heartily with the tea partiers on what is perhaps their single biggest concern: that America's swelling government debt seriously threatens our long-term prosperity.

I part ways with the tea party on how to solve the problem. They want only to slash government. I'd be willing to raise taxes as part of the deal.

You can't be serious about slashing government spending while wanting to keep Medicare and Social Security. Again, major FAIL!

But those are conventional disagreements that citizens can have in a civil way. Judging by some portrayals of the tea party, one would think it posed a threat to the community.

I hate that liberals like to frame these political debates as "conventional disagreements that citizens can have in a civil way." As if getting together to decide how of my property should be distributed among others folk who did not earn it and to decide how much of my freedom I am allowed to retain for the public good counts as conventional disagreement. This is like saying that if slaves had some input on who their masters would be, then chattel slavery would have been fine because the slaves had a voice.

At one end of the spectrum, a purist libertarian wanted to abolish public schools.

Oh no. Not the public schools! How will children become indoctrinated educated?

At the other, a 24-year-old Internet marketing company owner with a spiked mohawk hairstyle strongly opposed the health-care bill but noted, "I love Medicare. That takes care of my grandparents."

Another philosophically inconsistent and economically ignorant Tea Partier.

Many expressed nuanced positions.

Any time a liberal says this, you know whatever follows will be bad.

When I asked him why he was there, Robert Cressy, 67, a Rockville investment executive, launched into a detailed, numbers-packed analysis of federal debt-growth forecasts.

 

We are going toward bankruptcy," Cressy said. "We are on the road to be Greece and California."

Nevertheless, he said he supported the initial bank bailouts, despite their high cost, because they were necessary to stabilize the financial system.

See, I was right.

Some participants had far-out views. I heard proposals to repeal the progressive income tax, abolish the Federal Reserve Board and privatize the U.S. Postal Service.

If McCartney thinks these views are far-out, then he would think Trevor and I took the short-bus to school and write our arguments in crayon on construction paper. Some people simply have an unshakable faith in the State.

I find it hard to believe that so many liberals are demonizing the Tea Party as extremist when it appears that many of them, if not most, still love the State or at the very least accept its legitimacy and want to work within the system. Several of the Tea Partiers mentioned in this article simply want to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic while the boat is sinking. Someone who complains that government spending is too high and that the US Government has too much debt, but wants to keep the two most expensive entitlement programs in place cannot be taken seriously as an intellectual opponent of the State. But in the minds of totalitarian liberals, anyone who opposes Barack the Holy One and any of his works is a heretic, an enemy of the State, and deserves to be locked up. Liberals only care about polite discussion when they are out of power; when their man is in control, they have no problem silencing anyone who disagrees with them. I'm pretty sure that if Barack Obama suddenly decided that assuming dictatorial powers was the only way to get his agenda through, most liberals would say, "It's about time. Show these conservatives who's boss." But such a act would not be considered extreme by liberals; this is merely getting things done. The banality of evil at work.

The folks who expressed the "far-out views" like abolishing the IRS and the Federal Reserve Bank along with the "pure libertarian" who wants to abolish public schools could potentially be radicalized. There are also some disaffected Democrats joining Tea Party. I think that some of these people could also be radicalized because they have been able to see past their own liberal blind spots and critique Obama. I find this promising since so many other liberals refuse to speak ill of Obama even though he is continuing and advancing many of the same policies that liberals objected to when Bush was in office. The rest of the Tea Party are big-government Republicans who are just mad that big government now funds liberal pet-projects rather than conservative ones.

Comments

[Emily]

Excellent work. I almost laughed out loud when I read, "At one end of the spectrum, a purist libertarian wanted to abolish public schools."

GASP. OH NOES!

And then, "I heard proposals to repeal the progressive income tax, abolish the Federal Reserve Board and privatize the U.S. Postal Service."

That just goes to show how huge the gap is between the Establishment government/media and the freedom movement simmering among the regular people. It sounds like the writer can barely believe such people even EXIST who want to privatize the post office and get rid of the income tax. What planet does he live on?

You guys keep up the good work. I strongly believe that spreading the word and not backing down from our views is the only way to bring about true change.