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CallaFirestormBW -> RE: So you're a Tea Partier? (11/27/2010 5:23:09 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
Calla,
I can't answer that specifically, but I suspect that the issue is actually about winning elections through a party that they had the greatest chance of affecting, and which had the greatest chance of making an impact on the current government.
Regardless of what some may think of libertarian principles, historically the party of that name has not been very successful politically.
Firm
That doesn't make sense, Firm. If those who claim that the reason that they're in the Tea Party is because they espouse libertarian philosophies had actually -vacated- the Republican party and allied themselves with the Libertarian party, I suspect that that would have made a fundamental enough shift of electoral power that the Libertarian party would have made some headway.
No political organization that I know of in history has -ever- been effectively "changed from the inside". Rather, those who slip inside of a political organization have been -digested- and assimilated into the greater body of the philosophical creature. This is regardless of whether that entity has been the Democratic, Green, Libertarian, Republican, Tea Party.... it is a function of overwhelming mass.
If the purpose of the Tea Party was to espouse libertarian philosophies, trying to yank the head of a barreling freight train around to a new track wasn't the way to go about it. it makes much more sense that a mass exodus from the Republican party might have made the point much more effectively by proving that the party had moved -away- from the direction desired by a large portion of its membership. Therefore, it seems to me much more likely that the goal was NOT to further libertarian philosophies, as the cartoon that you presented intimated, but to use the smoke screen of "libertarian philosophies" to find a rationale to distance oneself from the underlying -unpalatable- philosophical stance represented by a rather large and vocal segment of the Tea Party participants.
It cannot be denied that there is a large, visible, and very vocal contingent within the Tea Party who have, in word and deed, tried to force their religious beliefs on others, and who have denied the humanity of those who do not share their perceptions of gender, marriage, or race -- and are willing to destroy the Constitution to compel those beliefs on the entire population. Even conservative pundits have commented on such... some praising, some questioning, but it is pretty much acknowledged as a visible segment of the Tea Party population. Now perhaps that is -not- the goal of the majority of those who are involved in the Tea Party movement, but if that is the case, then, once again, it seems that the appropriate action for those who disagree with the individuals who may or may not have co-opted the Tea Party for their own agendas would be mass exodus from the offending party.
For myself. I -do- believe in smaller, more effective centralized government... AND I believe that there are certain responsibilities that this smaller government has towards its population that must be met -- because unless the government is in place for the service and protection of the well-being of its constituency, it serves absolutely NO purpose whatsoever, and should be dismantled and replaced by a government that -does- understand how to focus on its core responsibilities (which, BTW, do not, IMO, involve legislating morality)... and for those reasons, I will choose to remain Libertarian.
Calla
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