Protesting the Protesters

Instead of simply reporting on conservative and libertarian uprisings, the press decided to take up the cause of the ancien regime and do combat with the tea partiers. 


“Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic” --Fyodor Dostoyevsky









Reductio Ad Absurdum: Who gets there faster, Big Government Advocates or Tea Partiers?

The press is good at taking something an ordinary American says at a Tea party and deconstructing it down to absurdity, often going after syntactical errors or poorly constructed arguments. "See?" They say, "These people don't even know what they're protesting!"

The cognoscenti say "This lady receives social security and medicare and she's protesting big government! What a hypocrite!" This statement is itself illogical and dishonest: Protesting a system you're coerced to participate in is hardly hypocritical, but anyway...

They find one little loose thread and pick at it until they unravel the fabric.

This is a valid line of attack in logical argumentation, but these reporters are still being dishonest. Their role is not to debate newsmakers, but report the news. They expose a logical error or mangled syntax to discredit the messenger and, by implication, her message. All good and fair, but this obscures the larger truth, and I think they do it on purpose.

“Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.”
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Meta-Narrative: You may have discredited this particular example, but the larger truth still remains

The left makes the same cry I am now making when they find recourse in the "meta-narrative." e.g. "Maybe the latest racist attack was a hoax, but racism still exists!"

Or, "OK, so that family Newsweek claimed was driven to bankruptcy by health care costs is not really broke. They own expensive real estate. But medical costs really do bankrupt some families!"

The press eats this propaganda up and spreads it like manure, where a thousand liberal fantasies bloom. No argumentation, no logic examinations, just channeling the emotion.

Things like racism and health care problems are real, but hard to put a quantitative finger on. Bad things happen.  As Dr Sowell points out, in a nation of over a quarter billion people, improbable events are commonplace. The press can be relied upon to point out every obscure event that buttresses the liberal cry that, "something must be done!"

“Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel”
-- Ivan Turgenev

We don't need no stinking meta-truths!
The present conservative and libertarian concerns are valid: We really are in debt, our government really has invaded every corner of our lives, and people really don't trust institutions anymore. These are measurable, objective facts. We don't need meta-truths: The real thing is on display!

* Unemployment at 10%, while the "stimulus" removes capital from the marketplace, leaving businesses unable to expand and hire more people.

* Government taking our money from the US Treasury and giving it to politically-connected banks, businesses and unions

* Government apparatchiks telling us how to sneeze, how to wash our hands, and a gaggle of nattering nannies scolding us about nutrition, compassion and racism

* A government insinuating itself deeper and deeper into our lives with endless tangles of red tape

* Government spending money it does not have, and encouraging citizens to do the same, putting us in hock to China, devaluing the dollar and eroding our savings

Politicians, liberal agitators, and their enablers in the press launch a farrago of rhetoric and argumentation to defend it all, but common sense people who know nothing of formal logic and debate do know that our nation cannot survive if this continues.

The jig is up. 


Obama picture source:   https://billstclair.com/

Tea Party America: Free Markets, Free People

The Tea Party movement scares the establishment, including country club Republicans and big business

But if you look at the past half century or so you have to think: How come even when Republicans are in charge, even when they're dominant, government has always gotten larger and more expensive? It's always grown! It's as if something inexorable in our political reality—with those who think in liberal terms dominating the establishment, the media, the academy—has always tilted the starting point...  (WSJ - Peggy Noonan)

The 1900's:  A Progressive Century
The 20th century saw the founders' constitutional republic grow into a monster, gobbling ever more money and personal freedoms.  Sure, some good things happened:  Womens suffrage, civil rights, taking care of the elderly.  But we also got a pay-for-play government of czarist fiat and special exemptions.  America's ruling oligarchy makes money crafting dense bureaucratic sludge and then selling indulgences to the moneyed class who don't want to eat it.

The 21st Century:  A Tea Party Nation?
Big Business is scared of the tea party, because we know their big government crony crapitalism has nothing to do with free market capitalism and the rule of law.  Progressives are pro-big business; tea partiers are for free markets and free people.  We want a capitalism ruled by the invisible hand and continually cleansed and purged by Schumpeter's creative destruction.  Big business wants to gorge itself on government money while hiding from competition behind government-constructed ramparts of bureaucracy.
 
Here are some excerpts from the Wall Street Journal that should make all tea partiers proud and happy.

some executives and lobbyists say they are growing spooked by the populist rhetoric they are hearing from some tea-party Republicans.

Some candidates have said they want to take aim at a $30 billion annual package of tax breaks for a range of businesses—among them Wall Street firms, the timber industry, fast-food restaurants and the owners of NASCAR racetracks.

Good!  They should be scared.  Government has no business handing out taxpayer money to any of those businesses.

Trent Lott:  Poster Boy for Country Club Republicanism

"They may view some of the tax incentives as some type of corporate welfare," said Trent Lott, the former Senate Republican Leader and now a lobbyist. "But if you care about jobs and the economy, you have to give people incentives."

It's all corporate welfare, Trent!  You're exactly the kind of Republican lawmaker we're glad to see gone!  And Lott is oh so wrong about "giving people incentives."  We have aspirations and we bring them to the marketplace.  We produce goods and services useful to our fellow man, and we are rewarded.  Nobody needs motivation!  We want to feed ourselves and our families, and make a better life for ourselves, that is motivation enough.

Here  is Idaho State Rep. Raul Labrador, a tea party favorite for election to US Congress...

Mr. Labrador said he opposed all government programs that help one segment of the business community over another. "I'm against all of them," Mr. Labrador said in an interview. "I don't think the government should be picking winners and losers." 

He included tax breaks for particular industries. "We should have taxes low for everybody, and not just for a particular industry or segment," he said.

Mr. Labrador understands that the rule of law is not a Swiss cheese, but a simple set of rules that everybody in the marketplace must follow, no exceptions!  May God bless us with many such politicians

Free Market Conservatism will win this battle
We will win this battle, my friends, and here's why:  We stand for the power of people, they stand for an ever increasing power of the state.  We throw our bums out, they refuse to.  We have an overarching philosophy of Hayek and the founders, they have Chomsky and Michael Moore.  It's no contest.

 
WSJ - Tea Party's Rise

Tea Party or Tar and Feather Party?

Is the tea party a dangerous conservative monolith controlled by nefarious powers, as the liberals claim?  

Or is it a hapless, incoherent rabble, as the liberals claim?

They can’t have it both ways.  Actually they can.  Liberalism thrives on logical incoherence.  


Anyway, USA Today printed a most admirable article about the Tea Party Movement.  I think they nailed it:

The "Tea Party" is less a classic political movement than a frustrated state of mind.

"I don't really understand it, but I like what they stand for," says Terry Rushing, 63, of Greensburg, La., who was among those surveyed. "They just support everything I'm looking for — lower taxes, less government. ... All the good things, you know."

This is what worries establishment Republicans...

Even so, the movement is less a party than an anti-party, with no clear consensus about whom its national leaders are and a generally dyspeptic view of organized political power.

"It's a party opposed to the idea of parties," says Jill Lepore, a Harvard historian whose book about the movement, The Whites of Their Eyes, is scheduled to be published in October.

This is what worries liberals...

The Tea Party reminds her more of a religious revival than a political movement. She compares it to the Second Great Awakening in the 1830s, a religious resurgence that helped fuel temperance and abolitionism.

Much of what the tea party embraces is non-partisan:  Opposition to insane spending, bloated government and capricious regulation on individuals and businesses.  A general sense that government has gotten out of control and our representatives and bureaucrats no longer listen to us.

Skepticism is Healthy

What emerges from the polls and interviews is a deeply engaged, highly skeptical group of people — even toward others in their ranks.

The age of believing what our political heroes tell us is over.  For tea partiers, the age of political heroes is over as well.  We know we need government, and it takes people to run it.  We’ll vote for you, but we’ve also got our eye on you.  We made you, Mr. Politician, and we can break you.


The libs (and establishment Republicans) are scared witless of the Tea Party movement, and that’s a good thing.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.  -- Thomas Jefferson

Dennis Prager Breaks Down Lefist Tactics

Dennis Prager is a wise man and a gifted teacher. He explains why the left continues to scream that the tea party is rich, white, hateful and racist. This is a brilliant analysis of how propaganda works, and it is a scary descent in to the dark, tangled mind of the left:

Opponents of ... the tea parties regularly note that tea partiers are overwhelmingly white. This is intended to disqualify the tea parties from serious moral consideration.

But there are two other facts that are far more troubling:

The first is the observation itself. The fact that the Left believes that the preponderance of whites among tea partiers invalidates the tea party movement tells us much more about the Left than it does about the tea partiers.

It confirms that the Left really does see the world through the prism of race, gender and class rather than through the moral prism of right and wrong.

 One would hope that all people would assess ideas by their moral rightness or wrongness, not by the race, gender or class of those who hold them. But in the world of the Left, people are taught not to assess ideas but to identify the race, class and gender of those who espouse those ideas. 

 Name Calling to Avoid a Debate

This helps explain the widespread use of ad hominem attacks by the Left: Rather than argue against their opponents' ideas, the Left usually dismisses those making the argument disagreed with as "racist," "intolerant," "bigoted," "sexist," "homophobic" and/or "xenophobic."

You're against race-based affirmative action? No need to argue the issue because you're a racist. You're a tea partier against ever-expanding government? No need to argue the issue because you're a racist.

It's not about ideas with progressives--it's about shouting us down because we are a danger to their money-gobbling, freedom-stealing schemes.

Go read the whole article here:  Dennis Prager

Left Wing Hate and Anger

It's a collectivist fit of psychological projection:  The enraged, hateful left who sorts everyone by race and gender, is accusing conservatives of being hate-mongering racists.

Their rage has blinded them to reason.  Check this out from the Washington Post:

As several states with active "tea party" groups prepare to hold important primary elections this month, the movement is struggling to overcome accusations of racism that are tinting perceptions of this loose network of conservatives. 

These authors are not journalists; they are propagandists shaping the debate for the progressive cause.  

This is an old trick:  Level a baseless charge, then force the accused to prove a negative.  How do you prove you're not a racist?  Goebbels would be proud of such demagoguery. The burden falls upon those leveling the accusations, as anyone following the Obama "birther" issue should be well aware of.   

More correctly stated...

A delusional and noisy rabble of hopium smoking liberals are struggling to paint conservatives as racist.  Angrily they march on, undeterred by facts and reality. 

For an excellent example of hate on the left, Go Here and read what they want to do to Dick Cheney

Reason.tv sums it all up so excellently.  You'll love this montage of unhinged lefty nutbags shouting their BS into the echo chamber.  Fortunately, it is contained, like the human hazmat spill it is, on the basement-rated MSNBC.

Founding Mothers

"Motherhood itself has become a political act," says Ms. Loesch. "And the tea parties are an extension of our need as moms to protect the future for our children."

Moms power the Tea Party movement!

Michael Graham explains in his WSJ Article, Moms to the Barracades:

Forget "angry white men." In the male-dominated world of conservative politics, the tea party stands out as a movement of energized and organized women. In particular, moms.

In fact, a recent Quinnipiac poll of voters found a majority of tea party supporters—55%—are women. To put that in perspective, only 48% of women voted for George W. Bush in 2004. And just two years ago, President Obama won 56% of the female vote.

When I asked Christen Varley, the Boston tea party leader, she said it's because moms tend to be "the CEO's of our households. We do the shopping, bill paying, budgeting, etc. We know less money means less freedom. Maybe if the president and Congress did the grocery shopping, they'd know why we're mad."

Remember back in the old days when the brave, dangerous, and free-thinking women were on the left?  Well, not anymore.  Politics will never be the same...

Rock on sisters!  And Happy Mothers Day!


* - Pictures from Urban Grounds

Friends Don't Let Friends Be Kooks

KOOK ALERT!  KOOK ALERT!  RIGHTWING WACKADOO KOOK ALERT!*

Left Coast Rebel reported on an unverified story that Obama has ordered the US Army to prepare for TEA Party terrorists.  To his credit, he reported it as an unverified (and weird) rumor, and included comments from active duty soldiers saying it was BS since nobody in the Army likes Obama anyway.

Finntann sent me an e-mail on the same subject, asking in a WTF tone if I'd seen anything about it.  We quickly concluded it was bogus.  Because of their skepticism, Left Coast Rebel and Finntann are not kooks. 

It at least sounded somewhat plausible in light of Obama sending in the riot troops after grannies gathered outside one of his demagogic shoutfests.

Or maybe he didn't.



After reviewing the video footage at big government and correlating it with what WaPo says, looks more like an overzealous small town police force having fun with their Darth Vader costumes.

This is the small town America version of a Monty Python skit
That was a town where the mayor could have came out and personally asked people to stay on the sidewalk and they would have done it out of politeness.  I was waiting for Aunt Mabel to come out of the crowd and jerk the helmet off of her nephew:  "Now Delbert!  You stop scaring these good folks!" As she drags one of the cops off the street by his ear.

Damn, if this crap is leaching into the sane sectors of Blogistan, things are getting out of hand!

Please ignore this crap.  If you want to search around, e-mail buddies and do some research, by all means press on.  But please don't post this crap, and I keep calling it crap because that's what it is:  Crap.

By posting crap like this you are polluting Right Blogistan and causing us to be a laughing stock of the hooting baboons who inhabit Left Blogistan.


* - With all apologies to blogger buddy Kook, who is not really a kook, but the Keeper Of Odd Knowledge.

Obama's Big Government Speech

President Barack Obama is no constitutional scholar


He has written no books or papers on the subject and has done no research. He lectured at a College in Chicago for a few years, and now he lectures all of us. Anyone who pays attention to this man's preachable moments will find herself dumber as a result.

President Barack Obama took aim Saturday at the angry rhetoric of those who denigrate government as "inherently bad" and said their off-base line of attack ignores the fact that in a democracy, "government is us."

WRONG! We are a Republic, not a mob-rules, everybody belongs to the state social democracy. The government is definitely not "us!" The government is a body established by the people via a constitution to manage certain public functions. The progressives have hijacked that simple concept and stretched it all out of shape. Progressive President Barack Obama is a product of their 100 year Long March.

Obama used his commencement speech at the University of Michigan to respond to foes who portray government as oppressive and tyrannical - and to warn that overheated language can signal extremists that "perhaps violence is ... justifiable."

The Road to Tyranny is Paved with Good Intentions
If extremists are out there who think that "perhaps violence is justifiable," then the government is justified in taking a "strong hand" to "protect the people," right? See where this leads?

Calling tea partiers dangerous and racist is the pretext to shutting them down, or at least placing them beyond the pale of civil society. That is the agenda, paint them all (half the country!) as fringe kooks.  Their crazy, dangerous ideas about some archaic document are just not worth listening to.

"But what troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad," said Obama...

Who the hell says that? Other than a flock of Hooteries in a house trailer? This is a classic straw man argument.

Freddie's Fat Fannie Crushed The Economy

The speech goes downhill from there as he uses public roads and our military to justify big government (why didn't he bring up health care?), while ignoring the bureaucratic blubber that clogs our nation's arteries.

He then rolls out that ridiculous liberal idea that "too little government" caused the financial meltdown, when Freddie's fat Fannie was plopped right down in the middle of it all. Just ask Democrats Barny Frank and Chris Dodd, who received hundreds of thousands from the big bankers...

Party of The State vs. Party of The People

Folks, big government is all they got. Everything they offer requires them to dip into our pockets so they can provide it.  Big Government is the clanking, crushing, belching machine the progressives have hijacked to ram their horrible, collectivist, anti-American ideology down our throats (or up some other orifice.) 

If big government is discredited (and it already is in the minds of many), the progressive movement, and the craven Democratic party, is through. They have no other means to reshape society in their own twisted image.

We have the founders, and their small government, personal responsibility agenda.  We have a vision, a vision of basic human liberties as espoused by the founders.  These freedoms cost nothing, and allow everyone to be free to succeed or fail on their own merits.  Government facilitates that by safeguarding our liberties and protecting our nation, and yes, smacking big corporations when they break the law. 

We Have the Advantage
Having the authors of the constitution on our side is a great advantage.  Here's another: The flaming red fact that we are broke. And the Big Progressive Machine grinds to a halt without money.  Freedom and liberty cost nothing, and America has proven time and again that a free people in a free market generate wealth and drive an economy that produces real jobs so people don't have to go begging to Big Daddy Government.

* - H/T to Political Melange, who has a great analysis of this speech
* - All quotes from: AP My Way - Obama Takes Aim

Liberals are Tea Party Poopers

People always fear what they do not understand and attempt to marginalize what they cannot control.  (MySA - Jonathan Gurwitz)

Fear and Loathing on the Left
As many of you know, I've been traveling around the left side of Blogostan, engaging in dialog with the native liberals there.  Some are sincere and articulate--but the vast majority just seems angry, unhinged and vulgar.  Most lefty blogging concentrates on MSNBC-based personal attacks on Palin, Bachmann (where are the feminists?) or any conservative deemed hate-worthy by the Ministry of Propaganda.

We're All Racists Now
The latest diktat directs loyal liberal statists to scream "RACIST!" at all conservatives, especially "tea baggers."  News outlets dutifully comply, combing the country for statistical outliers and the oddball bigot, then trumpeting the "news" from the minarets.

So the slobbering leftwing wackadoos keep shouting bullshit into the echo chamber; a cacophony of hooting loons and cawing boobies exchanging hysterical calls into the dark night of ignorance: 

"Racist rednecks!"
"Haters!!"
"Christian Hypocrites!"
"Keith Olbermann said so!"

Stories about black conservatives taking heat for having the temerity to leave the Democrat plantation are hard to find.

(AP) - They've been called Oreos, traitors and Uncle Toms, and are used to having to defend their values. Now black conservatives are really taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement—and for having the audacity to oppose the policies of the nation's first black president.   

The Times They are a Changin'
Demographic surveys show that the tea party, unlike the Obama cabinet "looks like America."

But thanks to some recent polling, a less distorted image of the tea party movement is emerging. For starters, it's not inordinately composed of angry white men. A USA Today/Gallup poll found that 79 percent of tea party supporters are white — compared with 75 percent of the general population — and 45 percent are women.

Tea partiers aren't all GOP stooges either. The same poll also revealed that 49 percent of tea party supporters are Republican, 43 percent are independent and 8 percent are Democrat. (MySA - Jonathan Gurwitz)

Winning theWhite House, The House and Senate has not calmed the fiery rage burning brightly on the left.  Instead, the flames are climbing higher.  America has rejected them, so they will continue to lash out, slash out, and spew their foaming hatred on the vast majority that disagrees with them.  Things could get ugly.  Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned...

The "Real" Tea Party

Who's got the real tea party?

Who cares?  That was my answer to a commenter in a thread over at Feed Your ADHD who asked me which tea party faction I belonged to.  I don't even know what the factions are.  Then Snarky and the other posters dogpiled her for asking such a stupid question.

Controversy Sells
David Paul Kuhn writes about current tea party controversies, including the convention and all those factions and claimants to the tea party name.  Every movement has its pretenders to power, camp followers, hangers-on and crafty opportunists trying to cash in. 

Every successful movement will also be fought over and franchised by the power-hungry.  This makes good theater for the lefty nutball, Marxists Spouting Nothing But Crap crowd, but ordinary people just shrug it off.  I'm not going to refuse to vote because the tea party convention charged $500 for people to get in.  I also wouldn't care if they paid Palin a million dollars to speak.  It's not my money.

The tea party movement could explode into a thousand little bits of tea leaves and it still wouldn't matter.  Conservatives will vote for the more conservative candidate, and we don't need community organizers plying us with booze and cigarettes and free bus rides to do it.   

Astroturf Schmastroturf
Sure, Dick Armey, God bless him, gets the event permits and foots the bill, but people show up of their own volition, some crossing the country to do it.  You call it astroturf because those hundreds of thousands didn't just all show up spontaneously with no prior coordination?  Hah!  When has that ever happened?   

In the end, you gotta pick a team, and "tea partiers" sure won't be pulling the lever for Democrats.

We Are Conservative, We don't need leaders to tell us what to think

Liz Sidoti sums up the zeitgeist well:

This is pure people-driven politics facilitated by the Internet. This is an ideological mix of libertarianism and conservatism with the common denominator being lower spending and smaller government. This is a loose collection of citizen groups with no leader but many voices.