Unfortunately that is what they’re upset with… Obama has changed the status quo and spent the country into a downward spiral while the unemployment rises. Socialism is on everyone’s lips and all internal threats to my way of life coming courtesy of a soft and slow moving tyranny. It simply took the lazy American a bit of time to realise what was happening which is why there were no protests 2 yrs ago. Simple. And it’s almost a universal thought. People will start to re-embrace the principals on which this country was founded. The same principals which many young men and NOW women have fought and died to preserve. A way of life which all others envy. Through the awakening and a few basic areas of common ground such as the constitution, home-land defense and infrastructure rehabilitation this party or whatever it will evolve into will be able to continue growing. Call me crazy but I think Americans are going to take their country back and by doing so with revolutionary attitudes we will reach new heights on the global scale of greatness. Even exceeding the times of prosperity which we often look back to as the “hay day.” If this weren’t the greatest nation and system in the world people wouldn’t flock to it by the millions. So my thoughts are don’t fix something if it’s not broken. Drop the european, one world global ideology. I don’t want government health care or government run anything for that matter. The exceptions being defense and infrastructure. And, of course, serious funding to a well staffed VA to care for the soldiers who answered their nations call and did only what they were told, right or wrong in your eyes. I happen to be one of these individuals and I want my country back and I also want better care for myself and every veteran whose sacrafices are an alien thought to most. Obama needs to get out of my day to day life. Who’s with me on this one?

I think the next big wave of tea parties is likely to be the 4th of July. I’m going to be in Boston, attending OCON. Hopefully the schedule will permit attending the tea party there. It shouldn’t be too hard to find other Objectivists to come along!

Because the Tea Party movement is a grass-roots phenomenon united more by sense-of-life than by a coherent intellectual position, it’s easy to find isolated examples of people coming from a variety of viewpoints. I view them less as an expression of an ideology than as a mass audience seeking an ideology to give expression to an incohate sense of ‘wrongness’ about the nation’s course. That’s why I think it’s important for Objectivists to be involved — the only way people seeking the answers we can provide will find us is if we’re there to talk to. If we stay away, the answers on offer will be a stale mixture of the same mush that got us into this mess in the first place.

I drove by the protest (it’s on the way home from my work). When the traffic slowed down, I rolled down my windows to try to get a sense of what was going on at the protest. I was trying to decide whether to stop and join in or not but I heard a lot of people shouting “Build a wall!” and decided to drive on. Sounds like that wasn’t representative of the overall event. Darn. I would have liked to have seen you guys there and add my voice. I had also previously heard that the event was sponsored by the Constitution Party, which is wildly misnamed, so that basically made up my mind. Any thoughts?

Arguably, the protests did start a couple of years ago — under the Porkbusters rubric, which has significant crossover with the Tea Party stuff. It’s not like there was no organized pushback against excessive government spending during the Bush administration; pretending otherwise is just attempting to rewrite history. I think the massive government bailouts were another turning point, and those only started about six months ago. Another reason why people might be more likely to protest excessive spending now is because, well, the spending has gotten a lot more excessive. Consider this CBO chart of deficts and deficit projections:

During the latter half of the Bush administration, the excessive spending curve was at least trending in the right direction, up to 2008. Contrast that with the projections for the Obama administration, where the deficit starts at roughly four times the worst year of the Bush administration, never drops below the worst year of the Bush administration, and, after 2012 trends in the wrong direction. Might that provide grounds for people to react negatively? I’d think so.

I could note that if the left were concerned with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights they should stop trying to pretend the Second Amendment isn’t part of it, and they shouldn’t have raped the First Amendment with an astroturfed campaign for campaign finance reform, but I won’t bother. I might also note that if the Obama administration were that concerned about habeas, they probably wouldn’t be doing this. And finally, I’d note that if you don’t think the Obama administration’s economic policies pose a threat to liberty that just shows that you don’t understand the link between economic freedom and political freedom. Over the long run you can’t have one without the other. Property rights are the necessary condition for the implementation of other rights; without them, the others will go away.

–Ken Barclay (Kenb in the Objectivism Seminar)

Excellent write-up, and thanks for the mention! With enough of these summaries we should definitely be able to compile a list of the best practices for future events.

Brian

http://reality.ohio.newintellectuals.org