Some Modest Questions for the Tea Party, and for Democrats Too

[JohnWxy]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Some-Modest-Questions-for-by-Scott-McLarty-100831-706.html

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Which traditional values would Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party like to see revived? Robber Baron Era values, before laws guaranteeing workplace safety, eight-hour workdays, vacations, benefits, and the ban on child labor? Pre-Social Security values, when old age meant destitution for millions of Americans? Religious values of the 19th century, when Roman Catholics, Mormons (like Mr. Beck), and other non-Protestant Christians suffered discrimination? Jim Crow values, before an activist Supreme Court rendered its Brown v. Board of Ed decision and Big Government passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

If the Tea Party is conservative, why don't its members complain about warrantless surveillance of US citizens, extraordinary rendition and torture, the USA Patriot Act, the neocon doctrine of preemptive invasion, the 'unitary executive theory' of presidential power (endorsed by Justices Thomas, Scalia, Alito, and possibly Roberts), subprime mortgage schemes, Wall Street trading in derivatives and similar financial arcana, international free-trade cabals like NAFTA, and other radical innovations of the past two decades?

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Shouldn't Tea Partiers be happy to pay their taxes? I realize that this is a sensitive question, but most Tea Party members come from a demographic (white, born in the late 1940s through the '70s) that has benefited more than anyone else in history from government largesse. Americans who came of age in the post-World War II decades owe much of their unprecedented prosperity to Big Government programs like the GI Bill, low-interest Federal Housing Administration loans (with 'redlining' clauses that excluded blacks), huge subsidies for defense contractors during the Cold War and other industries that employed millions, massive transfer of funding from cities to the burgeoning suburbs, federal projects like interstate highway construction and the space program, generous investment in public schools, and, of course, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which ensured financial stability in old age or a medical crisis. By their own standards, Tea Partiers are practically red diaper babies.


If the Tea Party is conservative, why hasn't it embraced the movement to abolish corporate 'personhood' and restrict the rights enshrined in the US Constitution to humans, as our Founding Fathers intended? Wouldn't a truly conservative movement demand a return to the days when corporations were obliged to observe their charters and serve the public good or risk dissolution?
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[LiberalLoner]

1. Well, my father is a teabagger, and he does want all public good services

abolished. He feels no one except the children of ultra-wealthy should get an education (claims he didn't learn anything in school, even though he got a Master's Degree in Public Administration - claims he was completely self-taught.) He feels there should not be worker safety laws or child labor laws or social security, medicare, medicaid or any welfare at all.

He would love a dog-eat-dog world, with no laws whatsoever. But then he's also a wife-beating, child-molesting active alcoholic so maybe his reasoning skills aren't the best.

I have a feeling most of the teabaggers are a lot like my father. Given how many alcoholics, mentally ill, etc. we have in the U.S., I am probably right.

[awoke_in_2003]

3. "He would love a dog-eat-dog world"

lots of people talk tough and think they would like a dog-eat-dog world, but they don't realize their are really big dogs out there that would gladly beat someone senseless to get what they have.

[LiberalLoner]

4. So true! n/t

[nenagh]

2. There is some basic glue to the TeaPartiers....

I think it is a "White first mentality"..front of the bus for ME..

Oh yes, and make sure I get "All I Can" ...$$$ for ME.... because I deserve it... I'm better...

But the rest of the people? Unemployed? ..Suffering? They brought it on themselves.. Lazy, won't work..

So TeaPartiers are suckers for the Beckster and Fox who know how to yank their chains..

The Beckster infers that the TeaPartiers are a Meaningful, Important Group of Americans..

Rather than perhaps over the hill seniors.. and dutiful water carriers for the Beckster.

But what brings them out is such numbers? Anger.. Fear.. Their world is changing..

Mind you... I think it will backfire.. :)

[handmade34]

5. ...not so modest

if only we could get people to use that thing up there under their hair... instead of with their other body parts