Definitely something to think about when judging the movement itself. Perhaps this is a good way to make a statement.
We welcome those who are interested in liberty and free-markets, are willing to educate those who want to know more and apologize for nothing concerning what we believe.
That is kind of why I said the news picks what to show us. I really don’t know enough about the tea party. It is sometimes hard to find reliable information online because so many sites are extremely one view or the other. There is not enough middle ground, or impartial reporting.
Well I am very new here and know very little about economics, I just know what sounds right to me. I am here to learn. I’m reading a lot of the more serious threads but they are a bit over my head for now. If I say anything too stupid just let me knonw [H]
I’m not dumbing down anything. I’m just doing something other than navel gazing.
So tell me LS, did you pop out of the womb a libertarian radical? How many years did it take? How long did it take before you could understand all the issues? How long did it take before you could argue and defend all those issues?
And you expect you will instantly convert someone else with a radical libertarian rant? That’s not logical or realistic.
Do you want to change things or do you just want to be right?
No, I’m engaging the statists.
You’ve ceded the battelfield and retreated to complain about how you would have won if they statists only fought fair.
For the record last night our TP president, who was a good conervastatist when I met her, read from G. Edward Griffin last night. I was shocked. I never pointed her at Griffin specifically (and wouldn’t have picked him, but still) but just consistently used to logic of freedom to deride the left but then always point out the comparisons with what the right does.
It works. It may not work fast, or completely, but it works better than doing nothing at all.
Imagine if we’d reached out to the soon to be welfare slaves when we had the chance? (I say ‘we’ though I wasn’t around then)
Now they are lost. Who is to blame? The statists for lying? That’s wtf they do.
The statists aren’t to blame for lying. We’re to blame for not telling the truth.
To the people that need to hear it. In a way that they can understand it.
You’re right. There’s lots of RP ppl. I would say Santelli’s (arguably libertarian) rant was the catalyst.
Rush and lots conservatives and GOP politicians of course scrambled to attach themselves to it, and especially to try to paint it as ‘not a third party’.
The TP movement is not paying much attention to that.
It’s is not a pure libertarian movement by any means, but it’s a lot more libertarian than the left or right media want you to believe. And the reason they don’t want you to believe it because they fear libertarian ideas gaining purchase. Rightly.
There’s a lot of us involved. And yes we do have to hold our noses a lot. But I can state from personal experience we’ve made inroads.
Why do you assume others are navel gazing?
A bloody screaming mess unfortunately.
I’ve done it many times. For the sake of efficiency, I come out with my best stuff first. Depending on the reaction, I decide how much time and energy I want to devote to taking it further. Some people have potential, some do not. I’m interested in doing the easy work first, and hopefully having enough hands to make the hard work easier later.
Is there any point in changing things if you aren’t making them right?
How so? You’re ceding the legitimacy of the state to them. That is the crux of the argument. Health care, taxation, licenses, bailouts, these are all just window dressing on the core issue which is, “Who owns you?”
???
Let me know when your tea party stands against murdering gooks and ragheads, and then I will yield the argument to you. For now, I will choose not to politically enable people who endorse mass murder.
This is like saying people are to blame for not voting for Ron Paul.
Well that is because conservatism was dying after the Bush administration and they are so welded into the Reagan paradigm that they will never have a president like him [ I’m wondering if we should be thankful for that, I guess we should ] so they needed a movement that represented their supposed ideals of limited government and fiscal conservatism. Oh look here, something that is such a thing. They focus the microscope on it and using their communication abilities which span the whole country, they suddenly become the biggest supporters.
I could agree with that statement. The media is wondering at portraying state necessity either for the left or right. The left: HEALTHCARE! The Right: TERRORIST MILITARY SOLDIERS!
Boogie boogie boogie!
Steps towards liberty are a great thing. Though I would ask you to read my post in the Continental Congress topic.
That comment shows a NPR like understanding of the phenomena. It’s not what you think it is but you would know that if you engaged.
You are missing the obvious. The statists didn’t lead with statism. It has taken them decades to turn a significant number of people and they didn’t do it by leading with their most ‘radical’ tenets. But now the radical has become the norm.
If you want to yell at conservatives you’re going to continue to accomplish change and education at the same rate you have been. Negative progress compared to the statists.
I mean it’s really not that hard. Join. Befriend. Advise. Influence.
The right statists do not have adequate retorts for the jabs of the left statists within their philosophy because they both depend on the same predicate: that might makes right. They need ammunition and that we can provide, because we can elucidate an anti-statist argument. And it’s effective.
But that ammunition carries the seeds of liberty, and as they rely on it they can no longer ignore the contradictions with some of their own premises.
And they ask questions.
And we can answer those as well, and that’s when we score a point for freedom.
It works. And for us, who won’t use force, there’s no other way than persuasion. Now is an opportunity.