Posted on 04/11/2009 3:21:50 AM PDT by Zakeet
I spent the better part of an hour earlier today scanning the various sites and blogs to try and understand what specifically the Fox-Pajamas tea parties are about. Having absorbed about as much of the literature as I can, I have to say I'm still befuddled.
Option 1: It's a protest of the bank bailouts orchestrated by Bush and now Obama. But surely these tea-partiers understand what would happen if we didn't bail the banks out. Are they advocating letting major banks fail? Or are they advocating a Krugman-style government take-over? No idea.
Option 2: It's a protest against tax hikes. But there have barely been any!
[Snip]
Option 3: It's a protest against illegal immigration. Ok, so why the tea? Weren't all the original tea-partiers illegal immigrants?
Option 4: It's a protest against government debt. Yay! I will leave aside the somewhat awkward fact that Fox News and Pajamas Media barely covered the massive debt racked up by the Republicans during a period of economic growth.
[Snip]
What it looks like to me is some kind of amorphous, generalized rage on the part of those who were used to running the country and now don't feel part of the culture at all. But the only word for that is: tantrum.
These are not tea-parties. They are tea-tantrums. And the adolescent, unserious hysteria is a function not of a movement regrouping and refinding itself. It's a function of a movement's intellectual collapse and a party's fast-accelerating nervous breakdown.
(Excerpt) Read more at andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com ...
SO....the Oligargch’s response to this will be to pretend its a “non-issue” ...which it is if you’re a (D) that does’nt even pay taxes!!!
Now there's the place to get philosophical justification...
I would like to hear your plan and what you are going to do about it, if anything but gripe about it.
I don't have to be Michelangelo to know when at paint job sucks.
Good luck with that. Meanwhile some people are actually having their voices heard.
Roger Ebert has proven how easy it is to be a critic.
If you never DO anything, you can't fail, but it's fun and easy to criticize and make fun of those who decide to get off their butts and actually make an effort.
We're not trying to create a masterpiece....just a gathering of like-minded Americans taking a stand.
It remains the best plan on the table until you come up with a better one.
Like I said, it's easy to be a couch potato critic and do nothing...no way to fail at that, but, in a way, you've already failed.
I think this post of yours will accomplish exactly nothing. You still bothered to create it though, didn't you?
So how do you judge failure, when it's illegal to have babies?
It took less than ten years to go from Griswold to Roe. Conservatives HAVE given up, they just don't know it. Here's a newsflash for you though... the liberals damn sure know it! Why do you think they start tossing around terms like "extremist," "militia," and "Timothy McVeih" everytime we do something that runs the risk of being effective?
GREAT!
What did that accomplish for the pro-life movement?
This is not an effort: this is a pep rally.
The citizens of Florida preventing Gore from stealing the 2000 election... now THAT was an effort!
I respect the pro-life movement....and the fact you've even heard of them proves they have accomplished something.
The fact that you and the MSM are calling it a "tantrum" (you couldn't agree more) reminds me that "tantrum" is exactly what Peter Jennings called it when the Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1994 elections....."Well the voters have thrown a tantrum...."
Nothing wrong with going through life as a spectator/critic. If you never actually DO anything, you're less likely to get it wrong.
Just because one might make a mistake is no reason for not trying something. A lot big things start out small. I am reminded of the parable of the mustard seed.
Like I said, this is the best plan on the table until you come up with a better one (other than sitting on your duff and doing nothing).
I will be at our local tea party passing out copies of HR-450 and asking people to contact their representative and ask them to co-sponsor the bill and badger the committee chairman that is blocking it. You can criticize our efforts if you like but you won’t stop anyone.
"Pep rally" is just fine for me!
"citizens of Florida from stealing the 2000 election WAS and effort and it worked. (what did you do in that one?) Had it not worked, you wouldn't have considered it an "effort". You wait, like the Monday morning quarterback to place your bets after the game.
The “massive debt racked up by Republicans” is pocket change compared to what the 0 has done and will cintinue to do to the taxpayers of this country.
Is he the Mommy or the Daddy?
Is he the Mommy or the Daddy?
“What exactly does anyone expect to change because of the tea parties?”
Besides making a point to the msm, Atlanta is going to be handing out “pocket” Constitutions to everyone who attends. Perhaps if more people read the Constitution, they would be upset with where congress has taken us and be willing to make the changes necessary to be more aligned with the foresight our founding fathers had.
I'm with you.
I read a post yesterday from Pajamas Media about the various types of posters and I think it well describes papertyger in this instance:
"The Dismisser — The ultimate arrogant commenter, this person never actually engages with the topic, but merely declares it beneath anyone’s interest, already resolved, or improperly stated - and thus hardly worth the bother. The Dismisser’s only real message is: " I’m smarter than you and you need to acknowledge that fact."
Article is at: http://pajamasmedia.com/edgelings/2009/04/10/a-commentor-bestiary/
One only has to study history to see vivid examples of what inactivity and acquiescence by the citizenry has wrought:
Rome, 250 AD and Germany, 1933, etc...
If we think for one minute that we cannot lose our Republic to Obama’s definitive agenda for Socialist Globalism, we deserve our collective fate !!!
Obama and his Marxist cohorts will destroy our Republic before our very eyes, unless timely, aggressive action is taken by our fellow citizens to thwart this mortal threat to our liberty — and national survival as a Republic.
Act without hesitation; and definitively demonstrate the courage of our forefathers — who risked fortune, life and limb for this privilege.
Thank you, Fellow Freepers, very much.
/Captain and Mrs. D. K. Pope IV
Your eloquent post expresses my sentiments exactly!
I have no problem with that: we are in desperate need of pep rallies right now. Without them as starting point, I doubt whether organized opposition and action would ever follow.
Many Americans are today disheartened, discouraged, alienated and angry. That is not a recipe for a successful movement. Among the projects of the Left during the past 50 years was a determined effort to dismantle the cultural institutions that have traditionally bound Americans together, and replace them with Government. These institutions are families, neighborhood, communities, churches, synagogues, membership organizations, and charities.
It is an index of the Left's success that so many Americans today feel "siloed" - isolated from one another and powerless to act. Many have turned toward the State for nourishment and security, as has been the plan. But many others understand the dangers inherent in statism/socialism and have resisted, even in the absence of political leadership. What they desperately need are means of connecting with others who agree with them, and share their ideas and perceptions, and the Tea Parties are a fine way of accomplishing this objective.
Now: Andrew Sullivan is an obnoxious and pusillanimous twit who enjoys nothing more than creating limp-wristed little straw men for him to blow down. And then, he congratulates himself for his perspicacity as though the artful construction of lies were a Pulitzer Prize category, as in this day and age, it may well be.
Nonetheless, those of us who insist on speaking plainly recognize very real threats that others may ignore at their own peril:
- Massive, unprecedented levels of debt, monetized by trillions of dollars of fiat currency and soon, by withering tax increases;
- Uncontrolled illegal immigration that creates nationwide social pathologies and imposes economically-damaging costs and leaves our borders open to attack by...
- A growing and irridentist radical Islamic movement that preaches and conducts violence against those who refuse to submit before it.
- A Congress utterly out of touch and out of control whose members revel not in solving problems but in building personal empires with other people's money, and which routinely violates the U.S. Constitution in pursuit of whatever ambitions it imagines it can get away with.
These are not small problems, nor will they be solved easily. To deny them, as Mr. Sullivan does, is petulant and self-serving. But to deny the importance of people wishing to gather together to share their concerns is to miss the necessity of personal connection and validation as a precursor to organization in pursuit of common goals.
But not what they wanted to accomplish.
Like I said, this is the best plan on the table...
Like I asked, to do what?
Meet likeminded people? You don't need to wait on a tea party for that. Be heard? We've been heard. We've also been ignored.
Kf you want change, you're going to have to do something more constructive than hold a glorified block party.
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