InvisibleBlack
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quote:
ORIGINAL: brainiacsub
Most of the spending which the Teas object to- TARP and stimulus - was in response to unprecedented economic duress and the same advisors who testified in front of Congress that this spending was necessary to prevent a depression are the same ones that would have been advising McCain. Most economists now agree that this was the right thing to do. The other big spending is health care reform, and where the Teas are hypocritical is in not acknowledging that with what we've spent on wars and defense in the past 10 yrs, we could have already paid for health care reform 3 times over. It's a matter of priorities.
I'm not arguing right or wrong over policy. The issue I have is over the hypocrisy of the Tea Party which, to my mind, boils down to one of two assertions:
1) The positions that the Tea Party holds are innately hypocritical.
or
2) The members of Tea Party are more hypocritical than other parties.
Hypocrisy doesn't have to do with right or wrong or correct or incorrect. One can believe something completely stupid and not be hypocritical. Hypocrisy is the act of persistently professing beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities or standards that are inconsistent with one's actions.
Now, given that Bush grew the debt at a rate of 3% per year to support the War in Iraq and that more recently Bush and Obama grew the deficit by 20% per year to bail out failing segments of the economy, I don't believe that it is innately hypocritical to hold the position that the War in Iraq was necessary and justified a 3% debt increase and that the bailouts were unnecessary and did not justify a 20% debt increase.
I am not saying I agree with that position - I'm saying that someone can hold it and not be a hypocrite. It's spending differing amounts for differing causes. One can support one and object to the other without necessarily contradicting one's self.
I personally can't stand John McCain and have viewed him negatively since he managed to wriggle out of going down with the other senators in the Keating Five - but it's not impossible that there would be groups of people today who would oppose him just as vehemently as they do the current Administration if he spent 10 or 12 or 14 trillion dollars bailing out the banks. I would agree with you that there would be less of the current Tea Party membership protesting President McCain but that's made up for by the fact that there would be more of the crowd currently supporting Obama protesting President McCain for doing the same things Obama is doing.
As for proposition number 2 - that the Tea Party is more hypocritical than other political parties - I think that's just party bias. I think that there's a huge helping of hypocrties in every political party and that, by their very nature, such people are unable to see their own or similar hypocrisy. I could bring up a few more good examples of such hypocrisy and we could see who rises to the challenge but it's pointless. The issue with such hypocrisy isn't that one holds the view that on a single issue , in this particular case, it's different for "my" guy than for your guy - it's that somehow, for every issue - it's different for my guy than it is for their guy. That somehow "my" side can do no wrong. My side's war crimes are okay. My side's treaty violations are justified. My side's rights infringements are necessary. My side's lies are needed. My side's dirty campaign tactics are acceptable. Or, in this case, "my" side's protests are legitimate expressions of valid concerns and any improper or illegal behavior is trivial or justified by the rightness of our cause but "their" protests are a bunch of fake, phony, bought whiners who are angry and violent and dangerous.
If you view such things as "business as usual" then it's not hypocrisy and you won't be attacking the other side for them. If you spend four or eight years hammering on a point and then shrug when your party is in power and does the same thing - then it is hypocrisy.
Regarding the Tea Party - from my admittedly uninformed observation (I don't pay them a lot of attention), it would appear to me that they are mostly made up of disenfranchised and disaffected Republicans who feel abandoned by their own party, with a large dollop of libertarians and other anti-government types, and a sprinkling of nuts (which would include the militia types and the racists).
Are there racists in the Tea Party? Yes, of course. Are their hypocrites? Yes, of course. Are either of these groups a majority? I don't believe so. I think they're fringe elements and, sadly, there are a lot of angry, unstable, irrational types out there these days.
However, neither racism nor hypocrisy necessarily invalidates the arguments the Tea Party is putting forward as, again, a concept is valid no matter where it comes from. Someone who is a racist hypocrite can still solve complex equations and derive the right answer, or develop a new scientific theory, or advocate a fiscal, geopolitical, military or strategic position and be right. If someone puts forward the proposition that the level of United States government debt is unsustainable and that by this time next year it will be mathematically impossible to pay off that debt - a valid response is "based on my projections using this data set - you are wrong" not "you, sir, are a racist".
All of that being said, I only know a couple of Tea Partiers (is that the term? Here in NYC Tea Party types are fairly rare) and both of them I work with. Neither of them are visibly or overtly racist or hypocritical. Today I sat down and asked them some salient questions - such as, what is the Tea Party platform, who do you view as the Tea Party's leaders, and can you state what you view the core beliefs of the Tea Party as?
Admittedly, my sample set is two so it's not a statistically valid sample, however, I'm not jiggering my survey results in any way so my poll may be more valid than the mangle-ized stuff they put on the network news even given its small sample size.
Now, both of the guys I spoke to are self-proclaimed Tea Partiers. They attend the protests and the rallies and get together with other such Tea Party advocates and discuss issues. They're both educated, college degreed, and hold reasonably middle-class jobs.
Neither one of them could assert or identify who the leader or leaders of the Tea Party were when I asked them. Neither one of them could point me to a Tea Party platform or had any awareness that one existed. (Admittedly, this seemed to bother them when I brought it up and I suspect by tomorrow they may have some sort of answers as they will have gone and looked these things up.) When I asked them what they thought the Tea Party stood for, they independently and seperately both said basically the same thing.
My assertions above about what I thought the Tea Party message was were, pretty much, wrong. Both of these gentlemen asserted that the underlying credo of the Tea Party is that the Federal governemnt has drifted too far away from the core principles laid down in the Constitution and that it needed to be reigned in and reduced in size and scope to something more in line with the guidelines laid down in that document.
So, the OP is closer to the self-proclaimed beliefs of the Tea Party than I was.
Oh, one last thing (heh, I wrote another essay - gotta watch that). I've said before - I think the Tea Party and a lot of similar anger and protest is due to the fact that a segment of the population current feels disempowered, ignored, ineffectual and powerless and that they're not used to this and that it bothers them. They are reacting in the ways that other segments of the population who are typically disempowered, ingnored, ineffectual and powerless have been reacting for decades.
It might actually be a good idea for everyone to spend some time being disenfranchised and seeing what it's like when your "leaders" don't seem to give a rat's ass about you or what you want or how poorly you're doing.
I think it's fascinating to watch as the Democratic Party, the former party of the "working man" and the "poor" becomes associated with the elite and the rich and the corrupt bankers and Washington insiders and that it's the conservative crowd (not the Republican Party, mind) that is suddenly taking on the mantle of being for "the little guy". It's amazing. Less than five years ago I would have bet that it would never happen in a million years. There's a socio-political thesis project right there. Were I running the DNC, I'd be hugely concerned.
My father once told me that in politics you can tell how serious someone is taking something by how much time they spend publicly attacking it. Given his criteria, it seems apparent to me that the establishment and the Democratic Party are greatly concerned over the Tea Party. I postulate that this is because the Tea Party makes them feel uncomfortable. Having (or having being part of) huge crowds of angry protesters fighting the evil of the "big guys" is a comfort zone for the Democrats. Being the "big evil" that people are out in the street protesting is way outside of that comfort zone and even if, deep down inside, you believe that the protestors are wrong and misguided, it has to be a very creepy feeling to come walking out of the Capitol Building and see huge angry crowds protesting you as being part of the big ruling machine crushing the little guy when that's the position you spent your life fighting against.
Thoughts?
< Message edited by InvisibleBlack -- 6/1/2010 9:10:18 PM >
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Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
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RE: A Historical Take on the Tea Party - 
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