Pharyngula

Posted by: Thebear, just an agent of peas | September 29, 2010 11:42 AM

As a non-americano I got serious problems deciding whether to laugh or cry...

Posted by: Lynna, OM | September 29, 2010 11:45 AM

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here.

Doesn't exactly fit Ann Coulter's description of the Republican party as having all the pretty people.

Wait ... maybe when beauty is displayed in dark skin, Ann Coulter can't see it?

One of the salient points here is that the people Matt Taibbi describes are being manipulated by rich folks at the top, folks who are really just looking for fewer regulations on, for example, the oil industry and the insurance industry.

No one likes to be told that they are being manipulated. They think they're smart enough to spot manipulation and be immune to it. Not so. Manipulation comes in many forms, but the most pernicious are some of the advertisements, websites, conferences, radio stations, magazines etc. bought by big business (and big religion) and used to pull the wool over the sheeple's eyes.

Posted by: Capital Dan | September 29, 2010 11:45 AM

This just exacerbates the dread and embarrassment I feel in being an American. If I could afford it, I'd run laughing across the boarder and never look back.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 29, 2010 11:47 AM

Cue "PZ YOU SHOULD LEARN ABOUT THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT BEFORE YOU CRITICIZE IT. I EXPECT MORE FROM A SCIENCE BLOG."

Posted by: Darreth | September 29, 2010 11:54 AM

Stop calling them 'Teabaggers'. The proper name is Teatard Party.

Posted by: The Tim Channel | September 29, 2010 11:58 AM

There is something good that came out of the tea party movement:

http://thetimchannel.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/free-while-supplies-last/

Enjoy.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 29, 2010 11:59 AM

Good call Thebear

Posted by: Free Lunch | September 29, 2010 12:00 PM

If I could afford it, I'd run laughing across the boarder and never look back.

Denmark has an interesting method of deciding who gets a green card. I either have to get a lot younger or learn Danish to accumulate my 100 points.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | September 29, 2010 12:02 PM

As a non-americano I got serious problems deciding whether to laugh or cry...

As an American, I cry. We are well and truly fucked.

Posted by: A. Nuran | September 29, 2010 12:05 PM

#13 - "co-opted by the Republicans"? It's been a Republican operation from the beginning. It was organized by Dick Armey's PAC. It's funded by the Koch brothers. The pollsters have shown it's entirely made up of long-term Republican voters who fit squarely into the GOP base. It pushes Republican platform planks.

It's like saying the DLC has been co-opted by the Democratic party establishment.

Posted by: cairne.morane | September 29, 2010 12:05 PM

"That's because the Tea Party doesn't really care about issues — it's about something deep down and psychological, something that can't be answered by political compromise or fundamental changes in policy."

Bingo.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | September 29, 2010 12:08 PM

It's like saying the DLC has been co-opted by the Democratic party establishment.

"The Tea Party: herding the Republican masses farther to the right for over two years."

Please excuse me. I have some angst I'm going to drown in a tub of beer.

Posted by: pinkboi | September 29, 2010 12:12 PM

I think lucky #13 hit the nail on the head. First, all the frustration with Bush got us excited about a [more intelligent, at least] Bush-clone and the frustration with Obama is yielding similarly lackluster (or worse) results. I should also add that I don't know if there's any real continuity between it and the current movement, but there were tea parties in the Bush years (by libertarians) protesting the wars and erosion of civil liberties (from the Patriot Act, etc).

Here's how I would characterize the current Tea Party movement - whenever economic times are hard, people get generically frustrated and feel the urge to rail against something. I don't think most TPers can really articulate what they are there for beyond just summarizing their political beliefs.

Posted by: raven | September 29, 2010 12:20 PM

Doesn't exactly fit Ann Coulter's description of the Republican party as having all the pretty people.

Reminds me of the old Frank Zappa song.

What is the ugliest part of your body?
Some say your nose, some say your toes.
But I think it is your mind.

Zappa was quite a character.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | September 29, 2010 12:26 PM

Sounds like somebody is a little cranky

A cranky tea cracker. There's something we've never seen before.

Posted by: Doug Little | September 29, 2010 12:31 PM

Hey, I once went to a meeting of Democrats, and at that meeting there were a lot of mean people there

Except that you probably didn't.

Posted by: CMT | September 29, 2010 12:36 PM

Is there any chance that Tea Partiers are not "manipulated" and actually believe in the group's platform?

Posted by: Niblick | September 29, 2010 12:40 PM

So one bunch of far-right morons got co-opted by another bunch of far-right morons. So f*cking what?

Libertarians have nothing to do with the right, so the relevance for you, I guess, would be the discovery that "left" and "right" are a false dichotomy.

Posted by: Matt "Nora" Penfold | September 29, 2010 12:42 PM

Is there any chance that Tea Partiers are not "manipulated" and actually believe in the group's platform?

It is not exactly a coherent or positive platform. As best I can work out it is pretty much:

Against people with black skin being President Reduced Government Spending - Except for that which directy benefits Tea Party members Low taxes - for Tea Party members anyway. Others should have to pay tax to provide the benefits the TPers benefit from.

Posted by: PaulC | September 29, 2010 12:44 PM

"A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending"

To begin to understand this, it helps to realize that they are not angry in spite of the scooters. They are angry, among other things, because of the scooters.

No, I don't claim to understand either. I just observe. Years ago I checked back with some college friends who had turned into dittoheads. They were living in an inherited farmhouse in a rural area with few jobs. Both were engineers whose education had largely been subsidized as part of a state university system. Neither had jobs in their field; there weren't any to be found where they lived. Their grievance: the only jobs they could find were with state agencies, their coworkers routinely engaged in petty theft (e.g. borrowing equipment bought with taxpayer dollars), and the salaries were just about enough to get by.

As far as I could figure, their resentment stemmed from being left out of the big free-market dream, which would have involved taking some initiative, moving somewhere that had good jobs, and accepting a higher cost of living along with higher salaries. They also didn't seem concerned with the fact that they were squandering a taxpayer-funded education.

I can't say for sure, but maybe certain people who depend on government view it as an enabler of their worst habits. The people stuck with dead-end government jobs think they'd be starting their own business if only the nanny state wouldn't make it so easy not to. The folks with scooters would be up on their feet if not for the corrupting socialism that provides them with scooters.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 29, 2010 12:46 PM

Libertarians have nothing to do with the right

Then they should stop acting like they do.

Posted by: daveau | September 29, 2010 12:47 PM

amphiox@25-

What's radical about that platform? I'd vote for that.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 29, 2010 12:48 PM

The Tea Party is being manipulated by Republican candidates who want to continue jerking off their billionaire lobbyists.

They claim they want smaller government, but this is the same party that also wants to limit a woman's bodily autonomy and bring back sodomy laws.

Posted by: Athena | September 29, 2010 12:50 PM

MAJeff@19: Tea Crackers...nice one!

Posted by: Matt "Nora" Penfold | September 29, 2010 12:52 PM

I also just love the people receiving state run health care railing against it.

We see something similar here in the UK, especially amongst those who voted Conservative in the last election. They complain that their taxes are too high, and that benefits are given to those who do not deserve them, but all to often on further questioning they turn out to be in receipt of benefits themselves.

I saw a classic on the BBC when a women swore blind she did not get any benefits paid out of taxes, until she revealed she was retired and in receipt of tax credit, received £200 every year in a winter fuel payment, made extensive use of the NHS and was taking evening classes at her local college.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | September 29, 2010 1:04 PM

Are you referring to the way they protest the invasion of Iraq, the USA PATRIOT act, the MCA, illegal wiretaps, rendition and torture, just like those right-wingers are always doing?

And which libertarians would those be? It's a big tent, I suppose, but the most vocal self-identified libertarians I am aware of certainly haven't.

What's radical about that platform? I'd vote for that.

And that's the problem with that exercise. You try to imagine something that would be perceived as a "radical" left-wing platform, something crazy enough to counterbalance the teabagger wing-nuttery enough to shift the political discourse back to the center, but you can't.

Everything you try to come up with turns out to actually be too sensible.

I'll add one more to try to up the crazy quotient:

- Banning the addition of salt to processed food.

Posted by: daveau | September 29, 2010 1:23 PM

amphiox@52-

You're exactly right. There's nothing in the liberal agenda that isn't ultimately a reasonable argument. I'd even pay a tax increase to see that accomplished. Of course, I'm biased.

Posted by: gadow | September 29, 2010 1:36 PM

I remember one undercover interview with tea-baggers at a rally. One elderly woman held a sign denouncing socialized medicine; when the interviewer tried to tell her that Medicare WAS socialized medicine, the woman started crying, "Why are you trying to take away my Medicare? Why are you trying to kill me?"

If you want a real-life example of Orwell's doublethink and blackwhite, all you have to do is go to a tea-bagger rally.

Posted by: Fred The Hun | September 29, 2010 1:37 PM

I think this quote from the linked article sums it up quite accurately.

Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them.

Posted by: broboxley OT | September 29, 2010 1:44 PM

they already have the lefty lunatic fringe party its called the coffee party (ooh hard and smart democratic politicos must have stayed up late to think of that one) http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/
why isnt it popular and in the news? Here is a clue by four, it was the independents that voted en mass for Obama and company against the Bush administration's bountiful crap. Obama and the democrats have shown that they too are capable of building bountiful steaming piles of crap and sneer at the people who voted them in. So the pendulum will swing again. Thats how it works in America. Too bad all the independents are too afraid to vote for another party instead of democans or republicrats the party with 2 right wings.

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmqD_mcUIrSfOTlK3iGVsnEDcZmI43srbI | September 29, 2010 1:51 PM

Call me a cynic, but I see this as nothing more than a cyclical "anti-whomever-is-in-the-White-House" thing.

Frankly, it will probably do the system some good to have some of these nut jobs show up in Washington.

But the electorate will tire of them, precisely because they won't be able to offer exactly what Obama wasn't able to offer. That's instant change.

Even if every tea bagger (my preferred term if only as an homage to John Waters) is elected in November, will "Obamacare" be repealed? Ha!!!

Will Social Security be gutted and replaced with a private system? Not on your tintype.

Will the discretionary spending budget in Washington go down? Maybe by a whisper.

In short, they will be able to deliver absolutely nothing of what they promise. And they will inept and crazy in trying to do so.

And the pendulum will swing back.

What *is* likely to happen is the moderate-rational Republicans (yes, a vanishing breed, but still a big enough power to make a difference) will recognize that their re-election chances rest on a thriving economy. And so the logjam of anti-everything-Obama-proposes will break. The economy will recover. People will have jobs. They will be happy.

Obama will win in a landslide.

You've heard it here first.

Posted by: Aquaria | September 29, 2010 1:57 PM

Niblick:

"L"ibertarians in America almost universally support far right wing anarchy. As in no regulations on corporations. No taxes. No anti-discrimination protection. And so forth.

Nobody wins under that system except the rich.

That's why I abhor libertarians.

And this is from someone who, by academic definition, is a ""libertarian" socialist. The only thing I have in common with the typical "L"ibertarians is support of a few privacy rights. The rest? Pond scum is better than the average "L"ibertarian, who's ignorance is superceded only by his selfishness and callousness.

Ron Douchebag Paul thinks it's okay to ban abortion in his "Libertarian" Utopia.

Well, fuck him, and fuck anybody who supports a woman-hating, genocidal scumbag like that. And fuck you if you think I"m about to listen to any fucktard that wants to tell me what to do with my own damned body. Dictating to women what they can do with their own bodies isn't liberty, the key word in libertarian--a term right-wing douchenozzles stole from the left! Read some history, and you might learn something.

Whenever libertarians start sniveling about how wonderful their fucked up delusion is and how they care so much about liberty, it makes me want to punch them in the throat. 99% of self-identified Libertarians care only about themselves. Even their "no wiretapping no war no drug busts is all about There's a reason its core followers are a bunch of white, middle class males. Who else would think life is so fucking easy that everyone can take care of themselves if the big bad government would just get out of the way?

Yeah, out of the way of a bunch of slag heaps born on third base and thinking they hit a triple, so it' s okay that their privileged fat asses get everything in the world and fuck everyone else.

That's why I loathe "Libertarians."

Now if you're not one of the right wing anarchists, then cool. But if you think that having a society that favors the rich and powerful will solve a damned thing, sod off.

Posted by: blf | September 29, 2010 2:03 PM

The proper name is Teatard Party

No, the proper name is Republican Party.

No, the proper name is Thugs, short for Rethugican Warmongering Bigots.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | September 29, 2010 2:11 PM

they already have the lefty lunatic fringe party its called the coffee party (ooh hard and smart democratic politicos must have stayed up late to think of that one)

Get back to us about this when this coffee party has a network advertising their gatherings and treating these gatherings as news events.

Posted by: AmyD | September 29, 2010 2:18 PM

Exactly! My friends and I were discussing health care reform at a cafe in a small town and a retired couple came over to express their dismay because, while they get Medicare and VA benefits, they had a problem with "entitlements." Other people's entitlements apparently.

Posted by: broboxley OT | September 29, 2010 2:18 PM

#68 the coffee party has 3 networks, problem is there is nothing to cover.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2010/09/27/decaffeinated-coffee-party-convention-fizzles-out-almost-no-media-accl

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 29, 2010 2:26 PM

#68 the coffee party has 3 networks, problem is there is nothing to cover

Fox news was critical to the formation an promotion of the TeaBaggers. They are as much a creation of Fox as any other entity.

Your comparison is ridiculous.

Posted by: broboxley OT | September 29, 2010 2:32 PM

cbs news http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20000354-503544.html

aol news http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/liberals-hope-to-stimulate-obama-with-coffee-party/19397890

fox news http://www.foxnews.com/topics/coffee-party.htm

npr http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124648089

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/02/tea-party-coffee-party

didnt help, it wasnt anyones cup of tea

Posted by: broboxley OT | September 29, 2010 2:34 PM

drabbit, forgot links are moderated. Janine #73
http://www.google.com/search?q=coffee+party+news&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=f51&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=n&ei=7oSjTLLGCsOblger9YnoBA&start=10&sa=N
lots of main stream news but people were not interested

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlARhxz_EZad2_PPNvQmVelK-U8LVLTYeA | September 29, 2010 2:42 PM

Lets have a look at these supposed whiter-than-white libertarians that Niblick keeps talking about. Here's Cato:

Our data show that libertarians have generally voted Republican—66 percent for Ronald Reagan in 1980, 74 percent for George H. W. Bush in 1988, and 72 percent for George W. Bush in 2000. But they are not diehard Republicans. John Anderson and Libertarian Party candidate Ed Clark got 17 percent of the libertarian vote in 1980, and Ross Perot took 33 percent of the libertarians in 1992.

But for those on the trail of the elusive swing voter, the real news is 2004. The libertarian vote for Bush dropped from 72 to 59 percent, while the libertarian vote for the Democratic nominee almost doubled.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6735

What can we conclude from this? We can't conclude, as Cato tries to just after the above quote, that "Libertarians didn't like Bush's record on excessive federal spending, expansion of entitlements, the federal marriage amendment, government spying, and the war in Iraq" (incidentally, I'm not sure what expansion of entitlements they're talking about).

Instead, what we can conclude, is that DESPITE "Bush's record on excessive federal spending, expansion of entitlements, the federal marriage amendment, government spying, and the war in Iraq", 59% of the libertarian vote in 2004 went for Bush. We can also conclude that libertarians have, in modern history, been associated with the Republican party i.e. the right wing.

Thus Niblick, when you say "Libertarians have nothing to do with the right" and "You'll have to look fairly hard to find any libertarians supporting any of those things", you're spouting bullshit.

I mean, if you have "excessive federal spending, expansion of entitlements, the federal marriage amendment, government spying, and the war in Iraq" under Bush, and an opposing candidate named John Kerry who's part of the neoliberal consensus, and STILL the libertarians plum for Bush in their droves, what in the fuck are libertarians for, except excessive privilege and window dressing for an alliance of neocons, fundies, and corrupt profiteers?

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | September 29, 2010 2:48 PM

lots of main stream news but people were not interested

Like Chimpy said, your comparison is ridiculous. There was not any media that was part of organizing an astroturf group. As for people not being interested, perhaps anyone who might be part of a coffee party were too insightful to be sucked into a transparent media ploy.

Also, I seem to have missed Olbermann and Maddow pushing the Coffee Party Convention this last week end.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | September 29, 2010 2:51 PM

I don't know what the future holds, but the Tea Party way of life, in as much as that actually means anything, is already doomed.

But they will not go down without a whine.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | September 29, 2010 2:57 PM

Everyone seems healthy and well-fed. What do they have to bitch about?

The Republicans lost and there's a black man in the White House.

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlARhxz_EZad2_PPNvQmVelK-U8LVLTYeA | September 29, 2010 2:58 PM

Here:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Olbermann+and+Maddow

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | September 29, 2010 3:04 PM

Nobody wins under that system except the rich.

They don't win either. They just think they're winning, until their interests come up against those of someone even richer.

And there's always someone richer.

(And even that one guy at the top won't stay at the top indefinitely).

Posted by: Niblick | September 29, 2010 3:06 PM

If the Big L libertarians don't want to be seen as dance partners with the right wing, then stop hold their hands at the dance.

The Libertarian Party would copulate with a horse, if they thought it would get them elected somewhere.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 29, 2010 3:07 PM

The Libertarian Party would copulate with a horse, if they thought it would get them elected somewhere.

can't argue with that

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | September 29, 2010 3:09 PM

Broboxly, because you seem to be either unwilling or unable to understand my point, I will fucking spell it out for you. I did not see any publicity on MSNBC for this Coffee Party Convention. I cannot say the same about the other two networks that are "mouthpieces" for this party.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | September 29, 2010 3:14 PM

The Libertarian Party, which is what you refer to when you type "L"ibertarians

Maybe you shouldn't be so arrogant as to assume you are entitled to declare by fiat what someone else intends to refer to when they choose to use a certain word.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | September 29, 2010 3:18 PM

the chick that looks like a guy

Your mysogeny and homophobia is duly noted, asshole.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 29, 2010 3:22 PM

I actually did look forward to his candidacy for president, which was a growing rumor around the time before his terminal cancer was revealed to the public.

Was it really a growing rumor or just a hip bumper sticker that hippies like me put on their VW vans?

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | September 29, 2010 3:27 PM

Perhaps I should talk about the former shock jock and former drug addict who is one of the biggest mouthpiece of the Tea Party and one of the biggest personalities (as opposed to journalist) of Faux News.

(I am crying as I type this.)

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 29, 2010 3:30 PM

#101 dont pay your property tax and see what happens, you do lease from the government #100 where do you get homophobe? I didnt say I wouldnt bang her

Still classy

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | September 29, 2010 3:35 PM

I didnt say I wouldnt bang her

Congratulations, assclam! My opinion of you just slid down an other notch.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | September 29, 2010 3:38 PM

the chick that looks like a guy

Where did this come from? She only looks that way in airbrushed photos designed to make her look that way, and even then the only guys she looks like are guys who look like girls.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 29, 2010 3:38 PM

Doesn't really answer the question since I've no idea about the Miles book or its sources, or if there is any confirming evidence. The suggestion seems to be yes, Zappa at least considered it in more than an idle fashion, but how seriously is opaque.

I've considered running for president.

ok, not really.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | September 29, 2010 3:41 PM

where do you get homophobe? I didnt say I wouldnt bang her

Oh, so you're a literalist?

Do you acknowledge being rabidly anti-poultry, then?

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | September 29, 2010 3:56 PM

@105

That shit doesn't fly here. Take your libertarian, homophobic, sexist bullshit elsewhere. Your ideology is bankrupt, amoral, and completely divorced from reality.

Posted by: samilobster | September 29, 2010 4:23 PM

I'm seeing lots of confusion in your statements.

Translation: Why do people believe the observable reality that the libertarians and teabaggers didn't give half a shit about government spending until a black man was in the white house and that they constantly defend and support everything the republicans do, from aiding the rich to hating gays, instead of believing my bullshit about how the people we see every fucking day doing these things aren't 'real' libertarians?

Posted by: Cosmic Snark | September 29, 2010 4:46 PM

Bokko999 #21

I love the surrounding article. Especially where it says "The ACLU is all for religious freedom, as long as you’re willing to bow down to their religion of secular humanism."

There's not much these red-state religitard palindrones don't lie about.

Posted by: steamingchuck | September 29, 2010 4:48 PM

I worked with Taibbi for a while at The Buffalo Beast.He is honestly one of the best people I know.

Posted by: Kagehi | September 29, 2010 5:04 PM

Lbertarian:

1. Deregulation. Yet, no clear concept of what the hell they should do that with. Hint - they supported more deregulation (i.e. less rules on companies) along side Republicans, which **led** to the problems in the financial industry, the oil industry, and others, than they have things like deregulation of say radio frequency usage. From what I can see, they have a knee jerk view of *any* regulation, no real interest in examining, or believing, possible problems that could arise by removing the oversight, and fail, badly, at figuring out which ones are bad, and which ones need to be either adjusted, or kept. Mind, the left often applies scatter shot, "we have no real idea what sort of mess might arise from this", style additional regulation, but then so does the right, just in different categories.

Basically, we have "regulate things without bothering to think too hard about what the result will be, and deregulate some other stuff, with no clue, other than it makes us money, also with no clue what the result will be", all too often, from "both" major parties, and then we have the libertarians, which would deregulate things on "both" sides of the fence, without any more clue what the effect would be than the other two had putting it in place in the first place, and often supporting some of the stupidest acts of deregulation in the last 20 years.

Oddly, I am of the mind that you fix a process by simplifying it, and understanding **why** its not working, not by throwing it out, then hoping things don't blow up worse in the process. This isn't called "deregulation", which is a frakking short cut, for people that can't see more than 3 years past when they signed the damn paperwork.

Liberty - They have that one pegged. If it inconveniences the libertarian, or their other beliefs, it needs to be illegal. Otherwise, nothing needs to be illegal. Simplistic? Sure, but it makes the party nothing of the sort, with respect to this idea, since **none of them** can agree which things fall in which category.

Smaller government - Again.. Fix the damn process, and simplify it. Which doesn't mean doing so in a way that breaks it, or which removes entire swaths of agencies, overburdens others, or otherwise fucks things up more, by simply throwing out something, without clearly comprehending what the result will be 5, never mind 10, or 20 years from now. Smaller would be nice. But, unless you first throw out nearly every idiot in government first, and strip ***all*** corporate influence from the process, the mishmash of idiocy we have right now has too many mine fields in it, where shrinking a seemingly unneeded bit here, screws up a very large bit someplace else.

Again, you need to **ACTUALLY** understand what is going on, not some stupid shit you actually get from these people, which is a) ignore people they don't want to listen to, b) talk to think tanks, usually their own, and no one else, then c) go with what their *gut*, or *belief*, or the 5 minutes they spent reading Wallstreet Journal in the bathroom, **tells them** is the cause of the problem, without having a damn clue what the result of their decision is going to be (and not being in office 8->30 years later, when it goes down in flames, as a direct result, dropping the blame in someone else's lap).

Lower taxes - This is pure right wing for them. At least right now, with the Republicans making it their bloody rallying cry. Its just as stupid when libertarians say it, because, well.. Same problem. Its "cut them, because that helps me and other people, we will figure out what government stuff we *can*, never mind *will* pay for *after* we cut them." Sigh...

No, I have no simplistic view of libertarians as being one of two types. They are the Christians of the political world - a small number of naively simple "ideas" that most people could more or less agree on, with hundreds of conflicting opinions of how the do that, no real clue/interest in *if* they are dead wrong about something, and an absolute ***certainty*** that they know the only true path, no one else recognizes the problem, and only the "right" version of their 500 conflicting solutions will bring about lower taxes, more freedom, less government, and greater prosperity. They have an ideology, not a plan, since no two of them can agree, beyond quoting the ideology, how the hell to do *any* of it.

Posted by: areyoulistening | September 29, 2010 5:06 PM

Okay, from reading earlier comments I thought I'd chime in on the whole libertarian bit. According to how I understand libertarianism, American "libertarians" are doing it wrong - they're actually authoritarians who are laissez-faire capitalists. Liberal libertarians (...liberaltanians?) are the opposite - socially liberal, and no unfettered free market crap.

#105

#101 dont pay your property tax and see what happens, you do lease from the government

It's called "eminent domain" and it's why the government is allowed to hand you a check for the appraised value of your house and say "You have to move out by because we're running a freeway through here." That property tax, if I'm not mistaken, pays for public schools.

Posted by: areyoulistening | September 29, 2010 5:11 PM

No, I have no simplistic view of libertarians as being one of two types. They are the Christians of the political world

Well, of course they are, why do you think they're so crazy with regards to social policy?

And this brings to mind: you omitted "their pastor" and Pat Robertson from your list of who they go to for advice.

Posted by: karmakin | September 29, 2010 5:33 PM

The problem with American Libertarianism, is that it's entirely focused on Negative Rights. That is, it takes a view that the only true infringement of rights can come from the government.

You could have a movement that recognizes that each of us can act in ways that infringe upon the rights of others, and that we need to find the best way to balance those rights in order to make society work and persist.

The problem is that there's no easy ideology in that, no easy answers. It's actually very difficult to do. It requires objectivity, an eye for the real world, and most of all, the willingness to listen to the experience of others.

Posted by: Doug Little | September 29, 2010 5:41 PM

I was listenng to npr when a tea party rep and a religious whacko rep were being interviewed

You sure they weren't one and the same person? And are you sure there wasn't a white supremest rep and village idiot rep amongst the mix as well?

Posted by: JackC | September 29, 2010 5:46 PM

Great article all in all, but he kind of Godwin's himself there at the end.

JC

Posted by: legistech | September 29, 2010 6:10 PM

Brobox,

I'm not sure I understand; if you were trying to make the point that a moderate democratic movement got zero traction then why did you refer to them as a "lefty lunatic fringe" group? Actually, your entire post seems a bit disjointed to me, like you've left out steps of your logical chain. Your answer for why this now-moderate group isn't popular is because the Independents don't like it, right? You're saying the Independents are a disproportionately large share of the Tea party?

Posted by: MosesZD | September 29, 2010 6:11 PM

My mom and step-dad, if they're not teabaggers, are damn close. The irony is my step dad has never had to rely on a non-government job in his life. And my mother, the last time she had a non-government job I was forty-five years ago when I was five.

Like the hypocrites in the article, they were adamant against "socialized medicine." But they love their Medicare. And they use it, they've both had multiple surgeries the past couple of years.

My mom had emergency gastric surgery because something went wrong in her intestines. They operated that day, and without a death panel even.

They're also replacing both knees this winter. Knees she screwed up by irresponsible. I'd give her a break, but I've seen look down on minorities with the same problem cause by the same reason.

She's been completely happy with her health care. If you ask her about Medicare buy in, she'll repeat Fox News talking points about hordes of Canadians coming to America because Canadian medicine is the worst. Even though it's not true...

My step-dad is diabetic and suffers from diabetic neuropathy. So he needs a LOT of healthcare for that. Four years ago he had a massive stroke that required hospitalization and tons of therapy. And two years ago Medicare replaced his hip.

He'll tell you, in a debate, the evils of government run medicine and how it is a complete failure. Yet when you ask him about his medical care -- it's always first rate.

He doesn't get the irony.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | September 29, 2010 6:18 PM

The point I was making that even a moderate democratic movement got zero traction but the tea partiers are home for not only the republican base but a single issue magnet.

Meanwhile ignoring one of the large reasons why they got so much traction and got large so fast. The backing, promotion and making news where it didn't exist support of Fox news.

And the fact that there were no policy initiatives driving the "Coffee party" nonsense. It wasn't even moderate Democrat, it was middle of the roaders saying, "let's talk nice." Basically, a pre-Jon Stewart "movement for sanity."

The comparison between the two movements itself fails because they aren't similar in focus.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/O.jullMj0I2VvJaxMMVeNKSfOPf73voLSxJAe9PdlOWwi8Y-#258ec | September 29, 2010 6:22 PM

The Tories now calling themselves Republicans have promoted a "movement" calling itself The Tea Party to exploit the public's resentment and fear to try and maintain and gain more political power. They have always done that in the same way always pounding on the same weak spot.

Those who have opposed authority and "tyranny" and support liberty now called the liberal left have let the agenda be defined by the right wing and spend a lot of time and effort down playing their own principles so to preserve power but in the end accomplishing little.
No one seems to be talking reality.
everyone just seems to be afraid of real change (which is natural) and prefers to maintain and support the status quo. The result is slow death, no real leadership and divided government.
I could suggest some things, proposals
like a guaranteed annual income,
zero cash payments to agriculture for "favored" crops, a modern state health system, much stiffer environmental laws with inspections and punishments and adequate taxes to pay for it . I could recommend that kind of stuff but I won't because it wont happen.
for those who worry about the U.S. and its huge stock pile of ICBMs and bombs and the powerful army don't worry to much it is a very perishable commodity it depends on a lot of very expensive maintenance which if things continue the way things are going for very much longer will be unpaid for and therefore undone.

sliding down hill is always the easiest and fastest way to go

uncle frogy

Posted by: the_leander | September 29, 2010 6:29 PM

@ 137

Hmm, I must admit that whilst it was all going through all I could see from over here were press releases and the occasional sound bite if something big was about to kick off. Trying to find a half decent breakdown of what was actually on offer, who was against it and why, without hyperbole was damn near impossible at the time.

@ 139

Ahhh right!

Thanks folks.

Posted by: MosesZD | September 29, 2010 6:41 PM

Posted by: broboxley OT | September 29, 2010 3:28 PM

#101 dont pay your property tax and see what happens, you do lease from the government #100 where do you get homophobe? I didnt say I wouldnt bang her

Rule #1: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Rule #2: See Rule #1.

Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlARhxz_EZad2_PPNvQmVelK-U8LVLTYeA | September 29, 2010 6:49 PM

Let's have a look at some of the suggestions for the leftist version of Teabaggerism:

- Forfeiture of the right to own land, all property must be leased from the government.

If we were starting a society from scratch, I'd want this implemented. But this is impractical, so we can just substitute for a land value tax.

- Replacement of all banks with a government run financial system

In some sense, we nearly already did this. Although, it's more a bank run government rather than the other way round.

- Ending the tax exemption for churches and religious oganizations.

Must do better than that. End tax breaks for all types of charitable donations.

------------------------

The problem with American Libertarianism, is that it's entirely focused on Negative Rights.

The libertarians like to think so, but actually this is false. Libertarians do do positive rights, they're just too stupid to realise it. A libertarian government gives people the positive right to interfere with other people (i.e. take out their stockpiled ammunition and use it to shoot them) if they happen to cross an arbitrary line on the ground that happens to define "their" property. And this is called "individual liberty"!

Don't get me wrong. I'm a social democrat, not a Marxist or whatever. But for the non-Marxist left, while we agree that there has to be private property, and thus homeowners should have the power to defend themselves, how much private property there should be, and exactly what powers owners should wield over their property is up for grabs. For me, I believe private property has to exist, purely because it is good for the economy. Not because of some "liberty" to own what some long dead person enclosed from the rest of humanity hundreds of years ago. This means that government should be as "big" as is necessary for benefit of the economy, and for other moral principles like less inequality. Not fetishizing private property rights means you can require racist business owners to serve black people as well as everyone else. Not fetishizing private property rights means you can have a universal single payer health care system. Health care has gigantic positive externalities, it should be subsidized a great deal. And you can try all kinds of things, like asset-based egalitarianism, workers co-operatives, wide-scale redistribution, and so on.

And all the libertarians have to do is reject the idea that privilege and primogeniture, and the historical theft and enclosure of the Earth's resources, implies any kind of POSITIVE right making them caesars over "their" property.

But privilege is all that libertarians are. Most will just sit and stew, or rant and rave, and leave the world a worse place for them ever having been born.

Posted by: BlueIndependent | September 29, 2010 7:54 PM

"While China obviously has more soldiers I'm fairly certain they have nowhere near our air power and I know for a fact that they're navy is utterly dwarfed by ours. You'll notice the people fearmongering about how China is gonna invade us any day now with their enormous hordes never give an explanation for how this invasion force would make it past the Pacific Fleet."

Exactly my thinking on the matter. There was that story several weeks ago about China supposedly having some super missile they're testing that could strike any one of our ships down with next to no warning, and that is supposedly capable of defeating existing anti-missle systems. I just don't buy that at this point. We spend so much money on our military technology, and I find it hard to believe that China figured something out that we have next to no defense for. We already have to worry about international ICBMs that travel extremely fast and deliver modern thermo-nuclear payloads. This missile China supposedly has seems to me to be much smaller time as a general concern.

The invading Chinese hordes idea is also pretty laughable. We're already everywhere by land, sea, and air, and it's hard to see how China would amass a navy anywhere near strong enough to not be seen, make it the whole way here mostly unscathed, and then land the millions of soldiers they're claimed to have. And as if India and Japan (China's BFF) weren't our close allies. India is probably pretty ready for action, having been on alert in its, um, relationship with Pakistan, and dealing with some regional terrorism.

The notion of China invading the US is the stuff of foreign affairs comedy.

Posted by: TheCalmOne | September 29, 2010 8:20 PM

samilobster #125

While China obviously has more soldiers I'm fairly certain they have nowhere near our air power and I know for a fact that they're navy is utterly dwarfed by ours. You'll notice the people fearmongering about how China is gonna invade us any day now with their enormous hordes never give an explanation for how this invasion force would make it past the Pacific Fleet.

They'd have trouble making it past Australia's Harpoon-equipped F-111s and OTH radar, let alone your Pacific Fleet...

Posted by: Hypatia's Daughter | September 29, 2010 8:28 PM

Do most Libertarians know that open immigration is part of their party platform?
In an idealized world, letting labor move between borders as freely as capital and land (yes, I know you can't move land but if a company is free to move their business to another country with little restriction, it is essentially the same thing), seems fair and economically efficient.
But I think the reality would be have a lot of social consequences.
I cannot imagine many of those conservatives who call themselves "Libertarians" but who hate all them illegals would be very happy if they were not only made legal but had a welcome mat put out at the border.....

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 29, 2010 8:38 PM

It's just that they're shockingly willing to believe the appalling horseshit fantasy about how white people in the age of Obama are some kind of oppressed minority.

wait, so you'll whine about being called a racist, but not being called earth-shatteringly stupid?

well, that fits.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | September 29, 2010 8:40 PM

@155

Racism isn't necessarily conscious or explicit. Being more willing to believe "The president is TEH ANTICHRIST" when he's black instead of when he's white is indicative of a subtle cultural racism. It's not a hatred racism, but it's a fear racism all the same.

Posted by: blindside70 | September 29, 2010 8:48 PM

"Who are the teabaggers? Cranky, ignorant old racist hypocrites who are all about me-me-me-me, deftly manipulated by the big business establishment."

This has the tone of the generalizations certain right wingers we know make about liberalism and certain creationists we know make about evolutionists....

They're all racists? There about me me me? and they're manipulated by the big business establishment? How? I just thought they started as a grassroots movement and are now being taken over by mainstream republicans...

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | September 29, 2010 8:52 PM

@161

*sniff sniff* I smell socks.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 29, 2010 8:54 PM

I just thought they started as a grassroots movement

Propped up by a media mogul.

Posted by: Katrina, radicales féministes athées | September 29, 2010 9:27 PM

I just thought they started as a grassroots movement

Propped up by a media mogul.

And funded by the Koch brothers.

Posted by: timrowledge, Ersatz Haderach | September 29, 2010 9:50 PM

WRT China invading -

They'd have trouble making it past Australia's Harpoon-equipped F-111s and OTH radar, let alone your Pacific Fleet...

Fools! Don't you understand that China will simply sidestep the running-dog-capitalists and invade by tunnel!

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | September 29, 2010 10:09 PM

There was that story several weeks ago about China supposedly having some super missile they're testing that could strike any one of our ships down with next to no warning, and that is supposedly capable of defeating existing anti-missle systems. I just don't buy that at this point.

Even if they had such a missile, the idea that they could manufacture enough of them (to outpace American production of targets and counter systems), get enough of them into range to fire them, and protect their launch sites, launch vehicles, and manufacturing plants from the U.S. Air Force is laughable.

(Note that Nazi Germany had a missile with similar specifications, relative to the tech of the time. It was called the V2. It did them no good.)

If the the U.S. stands completely still in military capability (fat chance of that), then maybe, just maybe, in perhaps 20 to 50 years, China might attain sufficient capability to challenge American dominance in the South China Sea (ie their freakin back yard!) enough to be a credible threat to Taiwan. And that is as far as a Chinese military challenge to U.S. hegemony goes for the foreseeable future.

Posted by: skeptifem | September 29, 2010 10:48 PM

RE #25

Its called the green party. I am registered as green. Outside of the "lets examine alternative medicine" thing their platform is awesome. It includes universal healthcare as well as things like preferential voting being implemented, and local community panels that can punish cops for discimination, exempting neccessities from taxation, ending corporate personhood, etc.

Our celebrities deserted the cause after nader ran the first time. SO yeah.

Posted by: foodmetaphors | September 29, 2010 11:00 PM

Yeah, out of the way of a bunch of slag heaps born on third base and thinking they hit a triple, so it' s okay that their privileged fat asses get everything in the world and fuck everyone else.

Nice!! Will have to use that the next time my big fat white friend goes on about how great libertardianism is :D

Posted by: samilobster | September 29, 2010 11:30 PM

There was that story several weeks ago about China supposedly having some super missile they're testing that could strike any one of our ships down with next to no warning, and that is supposedly capable of defeating existing anti-missle systems. I just don't buy that at this point.

I remember when the fearmongers had a field day with that news, how quick they were to declare the US Navy obsolete based on the claim *not any actual evidence* that China had a new super weapon. Until I actually see them hit a moving target with it, not some stationary ship with a beacon to make it extra easy to find, I'll consider China's new super missile about as much a threat as Iran's bomber-drones.

Posted by: Utakata | September 30, 2010 12:02 AM

That sounds like one of those machines that does naughty things to pornstars' lower orifices there Rey Fox @ 173. Though I guess...whatever makes him troll better.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 30, 2010 12:33 AM

.....

Posted by: JThompson | September 30, 2010 12:35 AM

@amphiox: The problem is that China wouldn't actually have to beat us. They could just sit there and try to stalemate until we got mired in a land invasion. We've damn near bankrupted ourselves harassing two countries that don't have nearly the military strength, size, population, GDP, manufacturing facilities, etc of China.

If it came down to a fight between the US and China we'd either win VERY quickly, lose our shit and lob nukes and make most of the planet uninhabitable (Because everyone else would start launching too.), or No-Bid-Contract to Blackwater and Haliburton ourselves into complete and utter collapse.

No amount of building our military up will change that. If anything it would make it cost us more and faster.

Posted by: Al B. Quirky | September 30, 2010 1:07 AM

@#181
So your idea of a tyrant is a super-fit family man with a nice wife and 3 beautiful daughters, who also happens to be a volunteer wild-fire fighter ?

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | September 30, 2010 1:15 AM

So your idea of a tyrant is a super-fit family man with a nice wife and 3 beautiful daughters, who also happens to be a volunteer wild-fire fighter

And how is any of that in any way related in any fashion at all to someone's status as a tyrant?

Posted by: Utakata | September 30, 2010 1:35 AM

He could be a (righty) child molester, amphiox @ 186.

Posted by: blindside70 | September 30, 2010 1:57 AM

The Koch brothers are libertarians and supporters of the Cato institute? This is far right to you? Are all authoritarians leftists? According to the wikipedia! page sited above by #166 he's influenced by Hayek? Von Mises? These people are not conservatives and for the most part neither is he. Sarah Palin is about as far from libertarian as can be.

Just because you're not liberal, DOES NOT mean you're a right winger. It may mean you're still crazy, but it's still Political Science 101. The political spectrum is as complicated as evolutionary biology, I'm just saying we shouldn't simplify it (and simplify it incorrectly) like it was in the last part of this post.

The tea party "movement" has been hijacked and mainstream republicans are using dislike of Obama to take it as their own... There is still no Republican that has a chance though in 2012... Obama would have to spit on the pope...

Posted by: SC OM | September 30, 2010 2:12 AM

According to the wikipedia! page sited above by #166 he's influenced by Hayek?

Hayek.

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 30, 2010 2:33 AM

Now I'm super tempted to write blurbs about historical tyrants describing them in terms of their family/non-political life.

oooh, that would be a wonderful parody page.

Call it something like

"Family_Values.org"

"Highlighting the family life of the world's most influential people."

or maybe a parody of the old Robin Leech "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous".

I'd help you with that, if you actually want to do it.

I think it would be a kick!

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 30, 2010 2:37 AM

Cato.

sorry, but I just keep seeing THIS every time I see the phrase "Cato".

Posted by: Rincewind'smuse | September 30, 2010 2:54 AM

Once again, the Left's obsession with skin color comes to the fore

Why is a simple observation an obsession in your twisted little mind? And no, having a few melanotically gifted people up front to be photographed does not constitute evidence that the Tea Party is heterogenous only that you're gullible.The vast majority of self identifying Tea Partiers are older whites. The fact that they aren't all racist does not mean that they don't have a core contingent of racists(look at the signs,stupid) and if they are a minority, the majority of party members don't give enough of a shit to do anything about. Which is worse?

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 30, 2010 3:05 AM

It would, but nah - I want to work on the cookbook!

oh crap!

i forgot to check the pharyngula cookbook site for emails.

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 30, 2010 3:22 AM

You're an idiot or you haven't read the article.

why make that mutually exclusive?

can't he be both lazy and stupid?

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | September 30, 2010 5:36 AM

I'm starting to see the merits of cultural relativism, because some of the quotes from the teabaggers make me question whether we live in the same reality.

Posted by: Al B. Quirky | September 30, 2010 7:16 AM

@#198
.. a simple observation that required 'scanning thousands of faces in the crowd' - call me skeptical but I question MT's zero result (for reasons I've already tabled)

Posted by: John Morales | September 30, 2010 8:20 AM

ABQ, calling you skeptical would be like calling a sphere cubical. You have form.

Posted by: mikerattlesnake | September 30, 2010 8:44 AM

@208

But he tabled the reasons! Tabled!

As for the libertarians, they love to talk about how they are against "hurting people and taking their shit" (as some friendly political proselytizers here have said), but they never emphasize that they are also against "helping people and giving them shit they need," which is, as far as I'm concerned, pretty much the most important thing the government of a large society can do. There's just no other entity that can ensure a decent standard of living for the majority of the populace at as low of a cost. Profit-based industries have no incentive to help people (or at least would force them to compromise in ways that severely limit the help they would provide) and therefore libertarianism is a pipe dream for utopian fantasists, much like pure communism.

Posted by: ConcernedJoe | September 30, 2010 11:00 AM

Tea Party - the rallying of RWA people who like to think they are free-thinking revolutionaries (but are really RWA drones) with the added sprinkling of those that are not fully RWA but who just hate the uppity man of color who happens to be our elected by wide margin President. In other words - the typical Republican-base of recent decades.

Libertarians - people who are free-thinking revolutionaries at heart but who are insecure enough to want the certainty that simplistic portrayal of complex problems brings to the table - and the feeling of superiority that comes from calling yourself "self-reliant" and others moochers enough regardless of reality. In other words - people stuck in some fashion in adolescence.

I know my above comments are painting with broad-brush but sometimes a broad-brush appropriately does the job - and fine detail work only a small part of the job.

In other words - when I see a rigorous, cogent, and coherent treatment of the issues, backed up by successful models, by those groups I will pay due respect (whether I agree or not). Until then ... my painting stands.

Posted by: Lee | September 30, 2010 11:52 AM

Everyone here who is going 'How can these people be so STUPID!?' really ought to read The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer.

http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf

It describes the authoritarian mindset and its recent coagulation around the very conservative end of American politics (or vice versa). The book pre-dates the formation of the Tea Party, but Altemeyer has a couple of essays on them off his site:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

And FWIW, his comments section has got a troll-in-residence who reminds me of a troll seen here, though for the life of me I can't remember who....

Posted by: Flex | September 30, 2010 1:10 PM

So I say to my libertarian acquaintances (I don't think I can call them friends because I haven't signed any contract saying I can), I say to them, "Hey, man. I grok where you're coming from."

I say, "You want no one, no how, telling you what you can or can't do."

I says, "And as a compromise, to convince me to agree to leave you alone to do anything you want, you will graciously restrict your own freedom by saying that you will not stop me from doing anything I want to do, unless I do something first, like step on your lawn. Then I will have interfered with your private property and you are justified in blowing a hole in my chest and then suing my relatives to clean up the mess."

I says, "I know, you would first respectfully ask me to get off your lawn, maybe, but you would be justified under your beliefs in shooting me."

Then I says, "Okay. I'll respect your beliefs. But I want you to respect mine."

I says to them, "I believe that I and 300 million of my friends are going to get together and agree to limit our own freedoms by agreeing to abide by a body of laws. Laws that we realize we will have to compromise over. Laws that we realize that we will have to occasionally change."

I says to them, "I believe that because we are not going to have perfect laws, and some people will not automatically agree to obey these less than perfect laws, we need a group of people whom I and my 300 million friends can trust (mostly) to enforce those less than perfect laws."

I says to them, "I believe that there will be arguments about these laws, and how they are enforced, so we're going to set up another group of people to review the application and enforcement of these laws. These people will be charged with adjudicating the enforcement of laws and assigning punishments based on the severity of the offense to my 300 million friends."

I says to them, "We recognize that these laws, police and judges are also less than perfect, but my 300 million friends feel that it is better to work within the structure of these laws to improve them rather than throw them all away and go back to taking the risk of being shot for accidentally stepping on someone's grass."

I says to them, "In addition, me and my 300 million friends think that it benefits all of us to pool some of our resources together and use it to pay for the above services, as well as roads, schooling, health care, regulating businesses to prevent fraud, setting standards for weights and measures, setting standards for food, setting standards for workplace safety, providing for defense against other groups who are not part of my 300 million friends, and even allowing the formation of other smaller subgroups within our large group to do things like negotiate with their employers."

I says to them, "Me and my 300 million friends realize that we get huge benefits for working together, maybe we are sheeple, but we can recognize the benefits. So we are going to make some additional rules that if you live among us, and enjoy these benefits of education, clean food, good water, and affordable shelter, you will contribute to them. By force if necessary."

I says to them, "Either way you look at it, it comes down to force. To protect your property you claim that ultimately you would be morally justified in forcing me off it, to the point of killing me. To protect our property, me and my 300 million friends agree that, in the last resort force, even deadly force, may be necessary."

I says to them, "The difference is, me and my 300 million friends realize that we are less than perfect and can make mistakes. So we put various checks and reviews in our system of justice to (hopefully) catch those mistakes and to do what we can to rectify them."

I says to them, "You, on the other hand, appear to be claiming that your judgment is infallible."

I says to them, "You say that government is immoral because it ultimately rests on force. I say that if this is true then your philosophy must also be immoral because it also ultimately rests on force. The only difference is who is using the force."

I says to them, "I'm using my liberty, granted by your first premise that I should be free to engage in any activities I wish, to form a nation of 300 million people. People who generally abide by the same laws and have agreed to limit their own freedom to judge and punish others. People who have agreed to abide by the rulings of other fallible men."

I says to them, "Why can't I use my personal liberty to form a nation which may limit some of my personal liberties, but benefits me more?"

Now, I realize that the above is, to some degree, a straw-man representation of libertarian thought. But those people who I've come in contact with who call themselves libertarians generally don't display nuances.

Instead, they say something along the lines of, "I didn't sign any contracts agreeing to be part of this society."

Very reminiscent of the teenager's argument, "I didn't ask to be born."

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/vRDAZ3QRyt7jp5A5XNQr9.0smZ4-#4624f | September 30, 2010 4:21 PM

Here's an idea -
How about we avoid labels like Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, etc and just make up our minds on each issue independently?

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 30, 2010 5:48 PM

How about we avoid labels like Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, etc and just make up our minds on each issue independently?

and get rid of religion and political parties too?

well, one can dream.

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 30, 2010 5:56 PM

I keep forgetting to ask about this...

Some months ago, there was discussion in the endless thread of having a place to deposit recipes Pharyngulites wanted to share.

So, I made a basic site to do that, with the proviso that the one who was most interested in doing this (Josh) would be the one who would manage it.

well, Josh got busy, and apparently is just now getting around to wanting to play with it.

anywho, the site is (or was - last I checked the domain name was just about to expire), here:

http://sites.google.com/a/crackergate.com/pharyngula-recipes/

looks like it's still up.

If you want to post there, just send an email to addy listed, and i can make you a login.

Or Josh can; haven't checked to see if he is ready to take that over yet today.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 30, 2010 7:49 PM

awwww, poor quirky.

fucking loser.

Fuckwit Quirky doesn't understand understatement. He might think R. U Sirius...;)

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | October 1, 2010 2:19 AM

The early "tea partiers" were mostly Ron Paul supporters, who although nominally Republican, opposes everything Republicans today stand for.

O RLY Ron Paul has suddenly become pro-abortion, pro-environmental protection, pro social-safety-nets, anti-free-market? and also stopped being a racist? That's fucking news to me.

they already have the lefty lunatic fringe party its called the coffee party (ooh hard and smart democratic politicos must have stayed up late to think of that one)

o.O

if you seriously think the Coffee Party is fringe nything, you're fucking deluded. they're even more inanely obsessed with centrism and bipartisanship than Obama. They're o milquetoasty, it fucking hurts.

For example, "anarchy" is the furthest thing imaginable from the left OR the right wings.

Every anarchist I know would like to disagree.

We would protect minorities from lynching, or assault, or vandalism, or theft, and we would prosecute corporations as well as individuals for fraud, theft, threats, etc. How can you reasonably call that "no regulation" and "no protection"?

you do realize it takes a strong government to be able to effectively persecute anyone for anything? Dismantling a government simply turns a place into a plutocracy with guns a la Colombian Drug Cartels.

Glad you know the history of the term; more than can be said of a lot of people here.

liar. most people here are fully aware of the ironic history of the term.

#116 again, where is the homophobic or libertarian come from,

every single comment you've made about Maddow so far was misogynist and homophobic. And while you're not as fucking insanely libertarian as some of the other people currently infesting this thread, I've not forgotten your occasional outbreaks of "you stoopid entitled leftists, I had to work my ass of for everything, and therefore you don't get to think others should get things for free".

The point I was making that even a moderate democratic movement got zero traction but the tea partiers are home for not only the republican base but a single issue magnet.

gee, might that be because the teabaggers were created by a media outlet, whereas the stupid coffee party is actually a real grassroots thing that spawned on facebook out of a snarky comment?

I just thought they started as a grassroots movement and are now being taken over by mainstream republicans...

it's not grassroots if it has always been sponsored by Fox as well as various Republican organizations. But of course you wouldnt know that, if you're getting your information about them from them themselves.

So your idea of a tyrant is a super-fit family man with a nice wife and 3 beautiful daughters, who also happens to be a volunteer wild-fire fighter

And how is any of that in any way related in any fashion at all to someone's status as a tyrant?

it's a form of defense against an imagined/projected attack: since most right-wingers imagine their opponents as inhuman, they think merely proving that someone is human is a defense against all sorts of accusations. I actually wrote about that a while back

pretty much negates how vile these people and their actions are.

nothing short of murdering them would be able to accomplish that.

Because an evil man used something good does not make that good thing evil. Because Stalin was atheist does not make atheism evil. Because Pinochet worked Classical Austrian Economics into his evil regime does not make Von Mises and Hayek evil.

except that's not what happened. The Chicago Boys actively supported Pinochet and fucking jumped on the chance of being part of his new government, precisely because they knew their fucked up economics wouldn't fly in a democratic state. Pinochet didn't "work in" Austrian Economics, the Austrian Economists invited themselves to the party and wrote a customized economic handbook for him to use.

Posted by: stephenhfoster | October 3, 2010 4:53 PM

Isn't the Tea Party the Democrats Trojan Horse? Give the poison a little more time to work.