Protests Reveal The New Civil Rights Issue: Ignoring The Will Of The Majority
Friday, August 7th, 2009The Left, exasperated by being thwarted both without and within, have taken to distortion, demonizing, and violence. Discussion not allowed.
This is expected.
Conservatives and small government types, have had it. The press has been in the business of painting those on the Right as psychotic, baby-killing, meanies. If you doubt the bias, tell me how many soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since President Obama took office. Yeah, suddenly body counts don’t count. They don’t fit the narrative. So of course, the press will lie about the protests. Nothing much new here.
But it hasn’t only been the press. For six years, Republicans controlled the House and had an evenly divided Senate and Republican president. And still, the government expanded. It wasn’t just war spending that did this. Big fat government freebie programs like the Prescription Drug Benefit passed under President Bush did this. Wars come and go. Entitlement programs live forever.
Conservatives and libertarians wondered why they should vote Republican. Some didn’t. Some just did not vote. Others voted for Ralph Nader or Bob Barr. And some disgruntled conservatives and libertarians voted for Barack Obama because they hoped for change.
The most bitter pill is being swallowed by those in the latter category. For now, they see the government expanding exponentially bigger. The growth of the government is so staggering, the average person can’t comprehend the scope and the size. They can only feel the oppressive magnitude.
So, when the cameras turn onto the faces of average Americans, and the people watching see themselves in those faces and those faces are portrayed as “mobs”, the people get angrier. This is not a group who has been content for a long time. This is a group who have seen their hopes for a smaller, leaner, sensible, more efficient government thwarted over and over and over.
The Republicans still don’t seem to get it either. It’s not just the President and his pet progressives who have insulted the tax payers and citizens. They just seem to be more ribald and open about their contempt.
Protests over health care are the current topic. Expansion of the government’s scope and intrusion is the underlying concern. That the political class don’t seem to care one iota about how the American people feel reveals a general contempt for democracy.
That the President and Representatives and Senators don’t even read bills before passing them symbolizes everything wrong in America right now. And these same people are surprised that something like the Tea Party movement emerged? That they’re surprised reveals their disconnect with the American people.
It would be more comforting if it seemed like the Republican party was more in touch, humble, and responsive. But, like their Democratic buddies, so far they haven’t been.
Maybe the Town Hall protests are making a point. Maybe. The discontented need to keep the ultimate goal in mind and understand that freedom’s enemies will distort even the smallest disrespectful action. The Anchoress has wisdom here.
This is a civil rights issue, ultimately. When a small percentage of the population impose their will against the majority and the majority must pay for the minority, the notion of representative democracy is turned inside out. A vote means nothing.
I suggest that our representatives Meet the Mob. They have lots to say that’s worth listening to. Our Republic depends on it.
John Hawkins Tea Party Leader Steps Down After Provoking Jealous Lovers Rage
Friday, May 15th, 2009I’m not saying that John Hawkins is the leader of the Tea Party movement because I write for his blog and I’m trying to score brownie points. I’m not saying that John Hawkins is the leader of the Tea Party movement because he says so and because he says so it makes it so. I’m saying that John Hawkins is the leader of the Tea Party movement because of this:
“In my book, there is no “leader” or “spokesman” for the Tea Party movement. It’s a pack, not a herd.”
Not parsing here, but he said, “leader”…”for the Tea Party movement” and that’s good enough for me.
So, why don’t the Democrats feed the legacy media’s darling, Keith Olbermann the real story..the story that hasn’t been told? Well, of course, it’s because Janeane Garofalo is involved. See, what really happened, is that Tea Party leader John Hawkins dumped Janeane Garofalo because behind her pseudo-intellectual discussions of frontal lobes and reptilian brain parts like amygdalas, she’s actually not that bright. Tea Party leader John Hawkins was disappointed. He had heard that liberal feminists were smarter and hipper. They didn’t wear lipstick or comb their hair, or even shave their armpits much, so he figured they MUST have brains. Imagine his surprise to find out that his rabid spaz of a dog Patten, hell the feral cats living beneath his house, had more executive brain function than the dour Ms. Garofalo.
Rebounding from that coupling, Tea Party leader John Hawkins heard that Maureen Dowd wore lipstick and was still single. Since she was a legacy media leader, having won a Pulitzer for her incisive writing and fierce investigative reporting, he figured they’d be a power couple. Alas, this union was doomed. Janeane Garofalo might not be that smart but her work as a CIA operative made her cagey and more than a little immune to the moral vagaries of torture. Ms. Dowd met an unfortunate end. She was found Manolo-up with some form of microcomputer sewn into the skin of her mid-back but that’s a story for another Bourne novel.
Why Keith Olbermann refuses to report Tea Party leader John Hawkin’s sordid social past is itself a murky tale. Evidently, the news would be a boost to the true media leader, Chris Matthew’s TV show Hardball because Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd were tied together (not literally, well, not for long anyway) by a common leg shivering malady. It’s incurable.
Never mind that Tea Party leader John Hawkins gets marginalized while guys like Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, Erik Telford, Michael P. Leahy and Eric Odom get all the credit. Lameness.
When. Will. The. Bias. End? I ask you. Really, Keith. Get it right! Your petty professional jealousy. Your not-so-secret lust for torture-loving, lipstick-averse CIA operatives. It all reeks of a complete lack of professionalism. You have a reputation to uphold. Get your stories right.
John Hawkins, leader of the Tea Party movement, a man swirling in controversy, can’t buy press because of the horrendous bias. Still, he found it better to step down than subject Patten, the cats, and, the Tea Party movement, who follows his brave lead, any more shame. Anyone else, and this is a story. Tea Party leader John Hawkins, is too big, it seems for bad press. He, like Democratic populist mansion-living, super-rich, loving husband and lawyer John Edwards and law and order focused, corruption-fighting, straight arrow Eliot Spitzer, decided to spare the Tea Party movement, his party and his dull-witted ex-girlfriend any more shame.
You heard it here first.
Why Republicans Should Be More Concerned About The Tea Parties
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009Unresponsive Republicans face some bad news this election cycle: vicious primary fights. Sure, they’ll have all the big, fat-cat money that rolls in that comes with winning national office, but the Tea Parties are giving folks who would never get press a lot of free attention while the incumbents sit on the sidelines for fear of saying something wrong, having to defend something wrong, or being part of an uncomfortable situation.
Yesterday, via Twitter, a friend informed me that my local Representative Kevin Brady (R), faces a primary fight by one of the main local Tea Party speakers. The roughly 10,000 people there know who he is now. That’s a lot of motivated voters in a primary fight. These people vote. And they’re going to vote in the primaries. These people are angry.
The more I’ve thought about this phenomenon–John McCain is also facing a primary fight along with Arlen Specter, Chris Dodd and probably many others before this is all over–the more DC insider types might want to start paying attention to their constituents and the Tea Party phenomenon.
I’m of two minds about these primary fights. On the one hand, bruising races will drain a candidates resources and force him in a long, arduous campaign season which may weaken them in the general election. In addition, enforcement of ideological purity can have troublesome consequences. On the other hand, win or lose, the candidate will be reoriented to a proper perspective–where he’s in fear of his constituents rather than the constituents being afraid of him.
The Left wants to pretend the Tea Parties are anti-Obama. The Right wants to ignore them. Both are wrong and dismiss them at their own peril.
Voters all around are sick to death of the inside-the-bubble D.C. mentality. The willful denial by the political class was illustrated by the Rasmussen poll. Of course D.C. people dislike the Tea Parties. They bode ill for their cushy tushy futures.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News
Teh Resistence Blog
Tuesday, April 21st, 200910 Things You Didn’t Find At The Tea Party
I’m late to the Tea Party with this, but it’s a must read.
Tea Bag Envy And The Left’s Lack Of Imagination
Thursday, April 16th, 2009I’m going to tell a story in pictures today. Since the Left, including the Legacy Media, simply cannot display any empathy–that is, since they are incapable of putting themselves in someone else’s shoes–perhaps pictures will help them “see” what we on the Right see. Then again, maybe not.
Imagine being a conservative woman blogger. I don’t have to imagine, because that’s what I am. In fact, my local friend and often times, co-hort, Kathleen McKinley is also a woman blogger. We have both been subjected to vicious sexism, degrading insults and general antipathy because we are considered traitors to our gender. That is, we are breeders, we are anti-abortion, we are conservative, and we like men. Our critics don’t see the irony of degrading a woman for making a choice they disagree with, but I digress.
We also, it turns out, “whip up” people. We are powerful. Yes. We. Are.
Like many bloggers across the country, Kathleen and I went to a Tea Party. In our case, we went into Houston, where estimates have the crowd at around 8,000 people. Kathleen was up on stage right and got some great crowd, performer and speaker pictures. I was mingling with the crowd.
I brought my kids with me. One was sitting in that stroller you see. The crowd was filled with dangerous people–the elderly, children, college, students, and everyone in between. No wonder the government is on high alert.
Now, I think it’s important, here, to point out what a Leftist demonstration looks like and that it is rarely safe to bring children to those. Here is some visual evidence as to why.
Imagine, if you will, if the whole left had been singled out by the government in a report to police. Say, for example, you’re dangerous if you are still sporting a John Kerry or Al Gore for President sticker (something I saw a couple days ago). And one could argue that those people are a little dangerous…I mean, come on people, it’s been years. Get over it. Imagine how the Left would howl at that sort of over-generalized profiling.
The crowd was diverse. Imagine: There are black people who judge President Barack Obama not by the color of his skin but by the content of his policies. I know, it’s hard to fathom when you’re steeped in identity-politics and every position is defined by your gonads, skin and sexual identification, but can you at least try to imagine that there is diversity of thought in this country still?
That DHS report must have been taken seriously by Houston because there were police everywhere. And everywhere I went, they were hanging out, shooting the bull and looking bored or vaguely interested in the content. Some officers brought their horses as close as possible, and had a good view while they, too, listened to the speakers.
Oh, I know, when there’s a bunch of folks gathered and it wasn’t orchestrated by George Soros or his minions, there must be a conspiracy in there somewhere. Well, Rick Santelli’s rant started something, even he couldn’t fathom. People thought, you know what? Enough.
The general mood, as the picture above demonstrates was against all the fat cats in Washington, with a good dose of hostility toward the greedy Wall Street types so willing to gamble with someone else’s money. Republicans and Democrats got skewered.
Should politicians be afraid? Yes.
If they aren’t afraid, they’re beyond help. If they have any sense, they realize that people are sick to death of the way things have been. Mostly, people are sick of spending. Leftists, look at that picture again. See how the Republicans are portrayed? They’re pigs but just not as big of pigs as Democrats.
It’s the spending, stupid.
Some brave Republicans showed up. Above, you’ll see one. John Culberson is a Rep from Houston. The other is Sheila Jackson Lee. She did not show up. I took this picture on the outside of the square as he was entering. He said, “I don’t want to speak. Just let them know that I’m here.” And he didn’t speak. He did listen.
Many Republicans did not show up at the Tea Parties. They worried about being tarred and feathered. I think their absence demonstrated the weakness that so many find repulsive. If you’re going to vote like a Democrat, at least come and defend your reasons. If you’re going to spend our children and grand children into poverty, defend why it’s necessary.
Jane Galt, it turns out, is hot. Many fine looking young people at the event.
John Galt is also a fine looking specimen.
The gathering was also good humored. Unlike the sneering, frothing-at-the-mouth anger or childish temper tantrums displayed by the Left when they gather, the people at the Tea Party seemed to really be enjoying themselves. They didn’t even need hallucinogens, tie-dye or mud to have fun.
Gotta love George Washington with a moustache.
And then, there’s the envy:
The Tea Parties, around 300,000 in attendance nationwide, were a gathering of people, on a work day, no less, that the Left can only dream about. Sure, they’ve bussed people in for the nowhere near a Million Man March. But who did the organizing? Guys like Barack Obama who were paid “community organizers”. No such animal at these shindigs. Regular old people donated time, resources, and energy to make this happen.
Regular people in Cincinnati. Regular people in Atlanta. Yes, Atlanta. Regular people from Santa Ana. Regular people from everywhere.
This is America. And people like this couple showed up.
How did the Media cover these events, IF, they did? Well, FOX went live with it and covered all sorts of cities. CNN picked fights with attendees rather than report. MSNBC was embarrassing.
Imagine, if you will, that the Media, except one network, made fun of over 300,000 of their potential viewership. Imagine if the Million Man March, or even better, the Code Pink ladies, were treated with derision and scorn rather than seriousness. One could question whether, in Ma Sheehan’s case anyway, whether she should have been treated seriously. But everyone did. Everyone.
The Legacy Media has demonstrated why they are diminishing into irrelevance. They see no problem in portraying the electorate as stupid rubes if it doesn’t fit their own narrative. The Tea Bags have outed the Media once and for all.
They are in bed with President Obama’s administration and the Left generally and they don’t care who knows. It’s better this way. It’s better to be clear when it comes to propaganda. When it’s subtle. When a Dan Rather pretends at objectivity, it’s confusing. Not anymore. Now, we know.
Still, if the Left can imagine being on the other side, they might wonder how they’d feel if the Media attacked them. But then, why worry about what will never happen?
All in all, the Tea Party day was something of a Leftist dream…but it wasn’t the Leftists doing it. In their envy and anger, they revealed yet again their bias and contempt for average Americans.
Cross-posted at RightWingNews.com
What Is The Tea Party Protesting?
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009Dan Riehl says it’s the spending. So does Betsy.
Glenn Reynolds calls them, in the Wall Street Journal, a “they’re really a post-partisan expression of outrage.”
Michelle Malkin talks repeatedly of “generational theft“, as in people are protesting robbing our children to pay for the current generation’s mistakes.
MaxedOutMama brilliantly discusses the economics of things. The Tea Party folks, myself included, might not understand the details, but the principles of things are clear. She says here:
But with employment declining, and CRE busting so badly, and with corporate profits in a profound swoon, the fundamental economic choices facing a government are:
The government lets the natural economic cycle run its course (and that natural economic cycle is for a depression-like event), or
The government intervenes to bring needed infrastructure investments a few years forward, which puts a floor on the drop in economic activity, supports employment, and knocks the bottom off the cycle.
Our current leaders in Congress seem to have chosen yet a third way to produce a lengthening and deepening of the natural economic cycle, which is to pull money out of the private sector and to invest it in projects such as research grants for non-viable energy production, mandates for utilities to spend on higher-cost energy production, investments in frilly socially attractive programs (community outreach?), and throwing money into non-viable financial institutions. These steps pull money out of gross private domestic investment instead of supporting it.
I don’t think it makes Americans extremists because they see the implications for this government mess. The protesters are protesting a tone-deaf government, bailouts, spending, and just the implications for the future.
Some aren’t protesting at all…and taking a vacation.
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
Tea Parties & More: Putting Money, Time & Energy Where Our Mouths Are–UPDATED
Friday, April 10th, 2009The Tea Parties are coming up and many of us, myself included, whose activism has been limited to voting and blogging are getting involved now locally. Twitter and Facebook have been good resources for networking and keeping up on how things are going. Still, many working people are too busy for that, but this new way to keep abreast of things is really useful: Being notified on your cell phone via text message of local events.
Please go to Let Freedom Ring and you’ll find all sorts of resources.
There is a sense that the United States government is no longer by the people and for the people. Now, the government is by special groups and for special groups who receive special favor. Average Americans need to band together to be heard.
The Left is way ahead of the Right when it comes to controlling the narrative, shaping policy and pushing an agenda. They spend money and push around power. Not only do they protest and make noise, they have agencies to do their ideological bidding and the press plays along:
Conservatives know liberals have built a powerful network of pressure groups who have entree — where right wing groups do not — into the newsrooms of the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News and other left-leaning outlets.
What is not well known is that Fenton Communications, founded by liberal activist David Fenton, binds the two together to produce explosive public relations campaigns that conservatives have trouble matching or rebuffing.
Understanding Fenton’s connections to the press, liberal Washington lawmakers, pressure groups and trial lawyers is increasingly important for conservatives if they are to emerge from their decidedly minority status in Washington.
Think there isn’t coordination? Look at what Doug Ross has dug up. Most recently, a sham group for Big Labor has pushed forward “research” about uninsured people.
Hundreds of Mainstream Media headlines resulted from this bogus PR effort.
Oh, and P.S., the research is wrong.
The Right needs more coordination, more cohesion, more money, etc. And the big corporations bending over for the Left need to grow a spine and put money where it counts–fighting these extorting jerks by funding conservative foundations, media groups, bloggers and more.
Finally, conservative politicians need to walk the walk. Who, exactly, do these people represent anyway? Do they represent the average taxpayer being asked to bailout their irresponsible fellow Americans and corporations? Or do they, like the Democrats, represent the big interests, but just in a more subtle way. Are Republicans for personal responsibility or not? Are Republicans for economic freedom or not? Are Republicans for individual solutions or not? Are Republicans for the family or not?
Because Americans are unsure about the Republican party and feel betrayed by it, they are very angry. They feel taken advantage of and duped. Americans don’t want a “little bit better” Republican party. The party slogan has got to cease being, “It Could Be Worse”.
We’re seeing what worse looks like. It’s far worse than even we could have imagined. Still, Republicans can forget being rewarded for bad behavior. They need to stick to principles and make better, more proactive policy.
America suffers a crisis of leadership. We need new leaders. The Tea Party movement is not just about registering discontent, but renewing the focus on what matters.
America is at a cross-roads. We are either the nation the Founding Fathers imagined or we’re morphing into an impotent Europe II. What will it be? Average Americans should be the “deciders” not Leftist special interest organizations that have the Mainstream Media in their hip pockets. The Tea Party movement is a start.
UPDATED:
Matt Lewis talks about the outrage fueling the Tea Party movement and the liberal left’s odd two step of dismissing it as irrelevant and seeking to interfere at the same time:
In fact, it looks like liberals are taking this far more seriously than they are letting on. Furthermore, their underground efforts to disrupt the Tea Parties may even be a tacit endorsement of their effectiveness. Michelle Malkin noted that, “the tax-subsidized and Soros-subsidized troops are going to try and wreak havoc every way they can. Many readers and fellow bloggers have seen signs that ACORN may send in ringers and saboteurs”.
But one reason there is reason for liberals to fear this spontaneous movement is that, for years, the nature of conservatism to be a chaotic movement (in the sense that conservatives are guided by an “invisible hand” as opposed to following appointed “leaders”) has been a political detriment. The good news is that technology has finally arrived at a point where this independent nature is no longer a liability.
I think Matt is right. At one time, the fact that conservatives tended to be working, spread out and difficult to organize because, well, they have lives, has changed thanks to technology.
Also, I think that everyone–both elected officials (Republicans included) and the Left–is underestimating the fury. Yes. Fury. Moral outrage is mild. When my Aunt and Uncle at age 70 know about the Tea Party and are going into Chicago to attend and protest, the sentiment has reached the bottom of the grassroots. My Aunt and Uncle don’t read my blog. They are barely computer literate. But they get email and they know all about the Tea Party and they’ll be there. I was shocked, frankly, at their anger and involvement.
Underestimate this movement to your own demise. And every elected Republican should have his or her ass at the Tea Party. Don’t expect to speak. Just be there and absorb. Listen to your constituents and keep your yappers shut. Right now, you have no credibility. That includes you, Newt. People are sick and tired of hearing talk and ideas and then having the government get bigger, take more and just generally acting irresponsible.
Enough.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News
When Conservatives Peacefully Protest Leftists Are Afraid–UPDATED
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009I don’t pay attention to Lefty blogs…mostly, because they’re havens of psychologically imbalanced emotionalism. For more psychological dissecting of the Left, read Dr. Pat Santy of Dr. Sanity fame.
There is one key psychological concept every conservative should know because the Left is in this perpetual state. It’s called projection. Or, in Kindergarten speak “when you you point one finger at me, three point back at you”. Projection is defined as follows:
psychological projection (or projection bias) is a defense mechanism where a person’s personal attributes, unacceptable or unwanted thoughts, and/or emotions are ascribed onto another person or people. According to Wade, Tavris (2000) projection occurs when a person’s own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else.
This is important to know. Because when a leftist screeches “hypocrisy!”, it’s a case of projection.
When a Leftist decries the incendiary talk of the “right wing”, it’s projection.
When a Leftist calls Conservatives crazy, it’s a case of projection.
When Leftist worry about the violence of the Right Wing killing cops, it’s a case of projection.
I bring this all up because commenters at my Houston Chronicle blog–basically a bunch of liberal trolls with nothing better to do than spew stupid–are kvetching about the upcoming Tea Party Protests. People (of all political stripes, by the way) peacefully protesting are called racist, radical, hate-filled, etc. You know the drill.
The Left just cannot handle when they do not control the anti-establishment narrative. But it’s time they admit it: They are the establishment. Government interference means that their beloved Barack Obama is interfering with American lives. It is Barack Obama taking control of individuals and companies and industries.
Protests used to be a sign of patriotism. Now, if a person is anti-establishment (i.e. anti-the ideas coming out of the Democrat House, Senate and Executive Branch, oh, and don’t forget the media), he’s an obstructionist, racist, violent, crazy person. Well, if the press decides to cover the Tea Parties, they’ll meet working Americans who are sick of being bullied by a ruling class that has forgotten that they represent the people rather than preside over subjects. They will see families and tax payers and fed up Americans wanting to have their voices heard.
What bothers Leftists so much is that they believe they own the outsider, persecuted status and don’t much like seeing the opposition protesting now that their leader is the establishment. The whole order of things has been shifted. Well, you can’t own the power everywhere and still cling to your victim-status, Leftists.
The Marxist ideology, socialist actions and liberal arrogance is waking up the silent majority. People who haven’t paid attention to politics for years are paying attention now. And they’re going to Tea Party protests across America on April 15th. Unlike most Leftist gatherings, these protests will be peaceful, energized and fun. Nothing to fear here… No need to project violence fantasies on the Right.
More from Michelle Malkin
UPDATED:
Kim Priestap has an excellent piece about the Chief Projectionist In Charge.
Lorie Byrd and I are on the same wavelength, evidently.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News
