Archive for April, 2009
Should Parents Bring Kids To Tea Parties?
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009I’m not going to tell you what my my decision is, but I want to know your opinion.
Cool Map
Monday, April 13th, 2009What do you call sodapop?
Twittered this over the weekend. Wanted to share again.
Margaret Thatcher’s Modern Message
Monday, April 13th, 2009I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand”I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” or”I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and[fo 1] there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation and it is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate—” It is all right. We joined together and we have these insurance schemes to look after it” . That was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system and so some of those help and benefits that were meant to say to people:”All right, if you cannot get a job, you shall have a basic standard of living!” but when people come and say:”But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!” You say:”Look” It is not from the dole. It is your neighbour who is supplying it and if you can earn your own living then really you have a duty to do it and you will feel very much better!”
There is also something else I should say to them:”If that does not give you a basic standard, you know, there are ways in which we top up the standard. You can get your housing benefit.”
But it went too far. If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society.[fo 2] There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate. And the worst things we have in life, in my view, are where children who are a great privilege and a trust—they are the fundamental great trust, but they do not ask to come into the world, we bring them into the world, they are a miracle, there is nothing like the miracle of life—we have these little innocents and the worst crime in life is when those children, who would naturally have the right to look to their parents for help, for comfort, not only just for the food and shelter but for the time, for the understanding, turn round and not only is that help not forthcoming, but they get either neglect or worse than that, cruelty.
Meanwhile, the collectivist bent seems to be gathering steam.
Americans have traded bootstraps for bailouts.
Giving Republicans Positive Reinforcement
Monday, April 13th, 2009Are the Tea Parties actually discouraging Republican elected officials?
Currently, Republican Congressmen and Senators are sticking together and voting against the horrendous Obama spending package. And yet, there is significant animus toward our elected Republican leadership.
My co-blogger John Hawkins believes we should reinforce Republican politicians when they stick to core principles. I agree. And Republicans will get some, if they continue to demonstrate some toughness.
Part of the Tea Party movement is an angry reaction to what conservatives feel was a total breech of trust by the Republican party–on spending, on expansion of the government, etc. In addition, losing seats in the House and Senate didn’t seem to have any impact on the Republicans. They just motored along, driven by self-interest.
Concrete example: Approving huge earmarks–which are really just pay-offs to get re-elected. So while it worked for Congressmen personally, it killed the party brand generally. And voters on the right saw this. They also saw that the Republicans just didn’t give a damn.
Two huge losing elections later, Republicans, are now in the definite minority. How does it feel? Not so good. But the problem is, it might have been prevented if Republicans had acted, even remotely, like Republicans, instead of big spending, earmark loving Democrats.
It is not enough for Republicans to be the “less bad” party. The Republicans need to convince voters that they are for real. It takes time to rebuild the trust.
Reinforcement will come as Republicans show a record of walking the talk.
Tea Parties And Liberal Angst
Monday, April 13th, 2009On the same day I had a Twitter conversation with Jane Hamsher, who is absolutely convinced that a nefarious plot by shadowy right-leaning organizations backs the Tea Party movement, I received this email from the actual people doing the Houston organization:
Anyone having any meetings the next two days? Would like to stop by and maybe help coordinate. I don’t know everything, but can try to make it where I can.
Merchandise, We’re needing a status on the shirts, please tell Felicia if anyone knows.
Also, if any of you can donate, we’re really hurting for cash at this point.
Click here to Donate Or use Pay Pal to donate to the info@houstontps.org account.
-Josh
Okay, so this is a young conservative guy that I’ve met once at a local conservative meet-up. For the leftists out there….Do you understand what he’s saying? He’s saying to the other INDEPENDENT organizers over the parts and pieces of the Tea Party protest that he’d like to help and how’s it going. Pretty decentralized, I’d say.
Little Miss Attila noted the conversations and has this to say:
Unless the argument here is that every center-right organization or individual is somehow one large lump of protoplasm that cannot quite make up its mind about marijuana, gay marriage or what constitutes separation of church and state, but knows that it wants lower taxes. In that case, the reason that Tea Parties are so much better-attended than ANWF events is that . . . the right commands more robots than the Soros-funded left does! (This leads us to the conclusion that we threw the last Presidential election, in a further attempt to confuse the left.)
The fact is, the people at these events are mad as hell at Washington. Republican Senators, at least, seem to get this, as NONE but Jim DeMint is showing the intestinal fortitude to show up to one of these conspiratorial gatherings. They’re afraid they’ll be skewered. And if the response to my questions on Twitter as to what their involvement should be, they are partly right.
As an aside, though, I think Senators are making a political miscalculation by hiding in Washington or wherever and avoiding the gatherings. It would be good for them to wander among their constituents, handler-free, and just talk to them. This is the point of the protests: It seems like no one is listening to the average voter and it seems like a vote doesn’t matter anymore because politicians do what they damn well please. By not attending, the Congress people reinforce that notion.
Back to Leftist angst. I’m smelling more than a little jealousy, fear and loathing from my leftist brethren. Protests over the last eight years were nonsensical, anemic affairs with screaming meemees in pink T-shirts. Or they’re naked hot chicks for PETA. Or they’re naked bicyclers protesting war and Israel and the new world order. In short, the Leftists come across as unstable whack-jobs with no job and time to burn who had no purpose in life but their thinly veiled America-hate. Plus, they just don’t have many numbers.
Oh, the press likes to make these little mews of discontent seem like roars, but let’s be serious. Thinking people are embarrassed to see what passes for a protest these days. No one wants to hang with a bunch of smelly hippies still living the halcyon days of the early bell-bottomed 70s.
Plus, the Left’s protests ring hollow. For all the talk of supporting troops, actions like defacing recruiting stations or liberal Senators, including Barack Obama, making reference to our soldiers as killers, doesn’t sound so supportive. Not to mention the Truther movement believing 9/11 was an inside job.
In stark contrast, the Tea Party movement is being organized by regular old people. Thousands of citizens will come to these events. And people like me, are trying to figure out how to get to Washington, D.C. over July 4th because that’s the next step.
And the next step is laying out for our leaders what we want policy-wise.
And the next step after that is getting people elected who will embrace what made America great to begin with.
The Left hopes, hopes, hopes the Tea Party movement is a flash-in-the-pan, impotent action. Heck, some on the right do, too.
My sense is that they’re all very wrong.
People feel disenfranchised from the government generally. The Republican party once stood for small government, fiscal responsibility, and freedom. The Democrat party once stood for the common man, the worker. Both party members seem to stand for one thing: PERSONAL GAIN.
Being a politician, like Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the fetid lot, is very lucrative. These people, without irony, can vote themselves raises while unemployment heads toward 10%. These people, without shame, can make income tax “mistakes” and not be charged interest and penalties, while the common citizen would pay and probably be prosecuted criminally. These people, can cry out against regulations they passed and blame others for an economic collapse of their own making.
Anyone with a frontal lobe is sick of the lot of them.
So what is a citizen to do? We vote for candidates we think will follow principles and then they sell out. The Tea Party protests are a way to let the government know that it has got to stop.
Maddy Pamilia, a 17 year old citizen journalist reported from the Pasadena protest:
Basil said that we had a “tyrannical congressional majority.” He added that this tea party would “make Samuel Adams proud” and “we have something he didn’t have.”
John Ziegler started out laughing that it took a lot to get him to miss the Masters, but this tea party was a good cause. He got the crowd to cheer when he called Arnold Schwarzenegger Benedict Arnold Schwarzenegger and said he should be punished. He ended with, “Never stop fighting for truth and never stop fighting for America.”
Teresa Hernandez said the government right now is like “crazies running the insane asluym” and the government is “spending money like drunken sailors.”
Again, I say to the Left, what do you object to? This is what I heard about why it was important to elect Barack Obama–that he’d bring responsibility back. Really? Is that what’s happening, because the multiple trillion dollar deficits don’t seem responsible.
If the Left had any principles whatsoever, they’d be joining these protests and making their voices heard. Really, this sentiment isn’t Democrat or Republican. It’s about freedom. It’s about the individual. It’s American.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews
