Tag Archives: tea party

Defining the TEA Party

Posted on February 10, 2010 | 1 comment

During my lunch break (it’s raining outside, so no hour long walk for me today), I read two excellent articles talking about how to define the TEA Party. The first one is from Hot Air, and focuses upon the Left’s neurosis regarding this definition:

The Tea Party movement is a political Andromeda Strain to the media, a baffling outbreak of viral unhappiness which has thus far defied every attempt at diagnosis. This is unsurprising, since the media has little interest in listening to what the Tea Party is actually saying. Instead, they attempt to stuff this remarkable grassroots movement into a variety of scary costumes, so they can be conveniently dismissed.

Read the whole thing, because he goes on to show the caricatures the Left creates to make themselves feel better. The second is from BigJouralism, Andrew Breitbart’s new blog. It actually finishes the job, explaining what the TEA Party is all about, in a simple, single sentence:

With that, let me tell you what the Tea Party movement wants. I will make it simple and straightforward and easy for all to understand — I will put it in all CAPS and type slowly:

THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT WANTS AMERICA TO RETURN TO CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES.

Well, yeah, that works. You look at the people involved with the TEA Party, listen to the speeches made at their events, and read the quick interviews with the participants, and that single sentence sums it up pretty well. It’s actually pretty amazing, if you take the Constitution at its word and “be simple” about it, how much the government does that’s obviously unconstitutional. I mean that, too. In allowing the Federal Government to expand to its current rediculous size, the Supreme Court had to ignore and/or explain away key parts of the original Document. In many ways, large sections of the Consitution have been rendered meaningless over the course of the past 200 years. Read the 9th and 10th Amendments, then try to square them with our current reality. You can’t, using any measure of common sense. But, when the ambition of political leaders ran up against them, 9 Justices twisted themselves into pretzels and made it work.

Note to the Left: in a very real way, when attacking the TEA Party, you’re attacking the Founding Fathers, their ideas, and their hopes and dreams, as well.

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Europe’s Booze Belts

Posted on January 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

I discovered the Strange Maps blog a few weeks ago and just can’t get enough of it. Here’s the latest post, which breaks down Europe into three alcohol belts. As you might suspect, there’s three of them: wine, beer, and vodka, which get progressively cooler. Identifying more with the British/Scottish culture, and living in the microbrew capital of the United States (Portland, Oregon!), I’m all about the beer belt. So, this probably is my favorite part of the post:

For cultural reasons, however, the Vodka Belt has been losing ground to the Beer Belt. Scandinavians tend to drink more beer than before (although possibly this doesn’t mean they drink less wodka). Maybe this is due to the perception of beer correlating more with ‘core European’ behaviour (as it is the preferred alcoholic beverage of Britain, Germany and other influential and centrally positioned countries). That might explain the emergence in Poland, some years ago, of a Beer-Lovers’ Party (which actually won seats in the Polish Parliament in the early 1990s). Beer has since surpassed wodka as the most consumed type of alcohol in Poland.

That’s what we need in the USA! A Beer-Lover’s Party! It does sound much more fun that the Tea Party, doesn’t it?

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More Tea Party Commentary

Posted on April 30, 2009 | 3 comments

Thanks to Instapundit, I saw this today.

Judging from the left’s hysterical reaction, something really big must have happened. But the only way to really understand the left’s misinformed and paranoid attacks is to realize that the protests represent tangible proof that basic libertarian values continue to resonate with the American electorate. That, apparently, is a difficult thing for some to accept.

Yes, that seems right to me. It’s been almost surrealistic for the Left — as a whole — to be so venomous about the tea party protests. Isn’t this the People Power Party? I guess only when you’re protesting on the right side of things. And I’ll paste in a piece that Glenn pasted into his post, because it’s perfect:

What were the tea parties about? Reading the signs and talking to people (unlike CNN’s incredibly hostile Susan Roesgen, I actually let folks answer my questions in their own words), the “agenda” was crystal clear. Tea party activists were worried and angry about government bailouts for the irresponsible, about spending that “stimulated” record growth in government and not much else, and about government borrowing that will place unconscionable burdens on future generations of Americans. My favorite sign of the day: “Give Me Liberty, Not Debt.”

Some tried to diminish the tea parties as misguided tax protests. In reality, the protestors demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of economics that went well beyond objections to higher tax rates. You can’t spend money you don’t have, the tea party attendees understood, and government spending above current revenues must be paid for with higher taxes, more borrowing (to be paid for with higher taxes in the future), or artificial government expansion of money and credit, which can only debase the currency and make everyone poorer through inflation.

Yes! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying ever since these protests started. It’s not about the taxes we’re paying now — it’s about the future. Listen: you can’t run 2 trillion dollar deficits without eventually increasing taxes on the middle class. The only other option is inflating the value of the dollar to make 2 trillion dollars not as scary, which 1) makes everyone’s savings worth less and less, and 2) is exactly what tin pot dictators do when the going gets tough.

Tell me this isn’t scary. I dare you.

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Posted in Economy, Politics

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