Posted on 03/15/2010 2:39:13 AM PDT by Scanian
The political commentariat doesn't know what to make of those thousands of Americans who've spontaneously thronged to tea parties and town-hall meetings to oppose the big-government programs of the Obama administration and Democratic Congress.
Some on the left attack them as fascists or racists, though evidence of that is sorely lacking. David Brooks in The New York Times compared them to the New Left campus radicals of the '70s, which comes closer but doesn't quite ring true.
I think the tea partiers bear an uncanny resemblance to the antiwar activists in the Vietnam War period.
Like the tea partiers, the antiwar folk didn't start off affiliated with one political party. They campaigned against an incumbent Democratic president and his political heir in 1968. Four years later, some supported Rep. Pete McCloskey's antiwar primary challenge to Richard Nixon. The tea partiers have plenty of corrosive things to say about the GOP politicians of the last decade, and at least some of them may support likeminded Democrats.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Sheeet... The so-called "anti-war" activists (leaders of the movement) were phonies! They weren't really opposed to war and violence. They sided with the North Vietnamese and VietCong. The same type of people running the "peace" movement then are running it today. Communist Party USA, Workers World Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party run it today. It is deplorable to compare Tea Party people in any way to this traitor scum in sheep's clothing!
CPUSA's "anti-war" front group is 'United for Peace and Justice'
Workers World Party's "anti-war" front groups are 'ANSWER' and 'Troops Out Now'
The Revolutionary Communist Party's "anti-war" front groups are 'World Can't Wait', 'Refuse and Resist', and 'Not In Our Name'
What a steaming pant load.
There is no comparison whatsoever, and as someone who has taken part in and met many Tea Partiers, I am offended by the comparison to 60’s radicals.
The vast majority of Tea Party participants are job-holding, tax-paying, patriotic men and women of non-college age who believe in the basic goodness and concept that is America.
We aren’t doing it to keep from going to war.
We aren’t doing it because we are bored.
We aren’t doing for the sex.
We aren’t doing it for the drugs.
Most people I have met involved in the Tea Parties wish they could be home with their families or doing something productive.
I agree. All the actions in which I’ve taken part have been as you describe. Tea partiers have other responsibilities, but take time from them because they’re afraid for their country and their children. It’s not done to avoid service or to be part of something trendy.
But most of all, we don’t have the enemies of the United States of America praying fervently for our success, as the liberal anti-Americans in Europe, USSR, PRC, North Vietnam and North Korea did for the success of the Anti-war movement.
All these same people hope the Tea Party movement fails.
Well said. As you can probably tell, I have a deep seated hatred for 60’s radicals and the anti-war movement, and I consider it an insult of the highest order to have these good and decent Tea Party protesters compared to scumbags like them.
By 1968 the "anti-war" movement owned the MSM. The TV networks had replaced newspapers as the main source of news for many Americans.
Even before that the networks sometimes described the "anti-war," "free speech" rabble as the most intelligent generation in history.
That ain't going to happen vis-a-vis the Tea Party. Just the opposite but..
There was no Internet and there was nothing like modern talk radio because the "Fairness Doctrine" enabled the left to use complaints as weapons to threaten broadcasting licenses of station owners.
Elections were the only free speech -- except for a few limited-circulation publications.
We were not the silent generation we were the silenced generation.
The 1960s Marxist-Alinsky campus/street revolutionary rabble took over the Democratic Party and drove many liberals (denounced as "Neo-Cons") out of the party.
Hello! Rat Party.
We can much more accurately be compared to the original Sons of Liberty.
I agree. As a viet vet who went over during the early years (1965 -66) and then afterward went to college on the GI bill starting in the fall of 1969 I had the opportunity to observe the anti-war movement through two sets of lenses. My take on the thesis of the article that the Tea Parties echo 60’s protests holds no water. The 60’s anti-war movement primarily consisted of young college age students (and drop-out punks later on) who had a self-agrandized perception of themselves as too valuable and too privileged to go serve and possibly put their precious lives at risk. the Tea Party movement is made up of responsible people with jobs or who have retired after a life time of working. Two completely different demographics.
Many are doing it to keep from paying taxes.
History proved McCarthy, with zero charisma, was substantially correct. But at the time Edward R. Murrow, March 9, 1954, gave the green light to destroy Joe McCarthy by any means necessary.
Fourteen years later Walter "NV Communists' Most Trusted Man in America" Cronkite signaled that it was urgent to ignore the Communists' biggest of all defeats (the 1968 Tet Offensive had been a total disaster for the Communists) and save the Communists' "struggle" by efforts here in the U.S. -- thus NV General Giap described post-war that the U.S. media was his "most valuable guerrilla." Who is the tea parties admiring foreign general?
BTW, that same year the signal for rampant anti-administration reporting was the simplest of all. The election of Richard Nixon.
Yes...true...but most are not doing it solely for the selfish reason of not wanting to pay more taxes, but because most of them realize how high taxes hobble the economy, destroy jobs and generally dim the future for their children.
But...yes. We all do have that selfish interest as well. I don’t see a problem with that...after all, capitalism is based on self-interest...:)
I imagine Barone would ascribe higher motivations to many war resisters, too.
Thanks for your service, snoringbear. To be honest, it was the treatment by the antiwar movement of men like you that cemented my vehement dislike of them.
My dad was in the Navy at the time, and we lived in Japan and the Philippines during the most tumultous years of the Sixties (1967-1972) and for me, to read about the things those people had to say about people like my father, my friend’s fathers, and men like you, just pissed me off.
I vowed, if I could contribute anything in any way, I would not give the left free reign to slander and mistreat our military the way they did during and after Vietnam.
Fortunately, I have found I am not alone in this sentiment, and that there are a lot of Americans now who are not just going to sit back and let the left do as it pleases.
I love you characterization of many of those anti-war demonstrators as having a “...self-agrandized perception of themselves as too valuable and too privileged to go serve and possibly put their precious lives at risk...”
That is just SPOT ON!
Well put rlmorel! I was around back in the anti Vietnam war protest era. There was little comparison to today other than a distrust of our government and trying to have a voice in matters that affected those who protested. But, that could be said about any protest movement. So, why compare?
I think the Tea Party movement is larger (for the time span we are in) and is truly grass roots.
Oh, another contrast to the Vietnam war protests...we proudly carry the American flag in our protests, they burned them.
I am sure Barone would, as I am sure many of those anti-war protesters did, and the Code Pink and Moveon.org scumbags do.
However, it doesn’t make it a morally justifiable stand because they BELIEVE it is so.
I think, if you allow yourself to believe a lie when the information is freely available to see the truth, that it does not relieve you of your responsibility for your actions when they turn out badly.
I look at what happened when we left South Vietnam twisting in the wind and refused to support them when the NVA came into the south. The bloodbath and misery after the war ended were predicted by many, yet those who were responsible shrug their shoulders as if there is no blood on their hands and they were innocent bystanders.
In the same way, if our economy is shattered irreparably by this prospective tin-pot dictator in charge currently, will these people agitating in his favor shoulder any of the responsibility for the results? I think not.
Amen to that. Another attempt to slap a label on what is the truest grassroots movement in centuries. The mainstream can’t or won’t grasp that.
Many are doing it to keep from paying ruinously confiscatory taxes.We aren’t doing it to keep from going to war.
Just like today, the organizers were/are older established communists who were/are anything BUT "anti-war". They worship(ed) monsters like Mao, Che, Castro and even Stalin. Hard to be an anti-war pacifist when these are ones heroes.
I, too, have been around for both, Mr. Barone, and I think you have been into the wacky weed...
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