Tea Party=Fundie?

[ilovetchotchkes]

All my tea partier relatives are lapsed Catholics and I have a friend who is a pagan and a tea partier.

I'm a dirty liberal hippie. :o

[Patsy]

The analogy is weighted to inspire an emotional response. A more accurate analogy would be if the mother was carrying a petri dish full of cells that hadn't yet formed a brain or nervous system.

A woman was on a plane that hit such technological problems, the air masks fell from the ceiling. She knew the cabin was depressurising and losing oxygen, because she'd been told this can happen in the safety demonstration thirty minutes before. She put her mask on first, as she had been directed to do, then put the mask on her child. Because she had not passed out from oxygen deprivation she was able to help the child.

I think that analogy probably works better if the child represents an actual four-year-old she already needs to take care of (and therefore prioritise over a pregnancy), but I have a feeling the quoted OP doesn't give too much of a shit about those actual four-year-olds' parenting needs.

[VintageJen1984]

It is important to remember that not all those who affiliate with the Tea Party are fundy and not all fundies are Tea Partiers. The Tea Party arose in response to TARP and the $800 billion dollar stimulus package. They saw runaway government spending, especially to bail out Wall Street, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was dangerous for the country. Passage of Obamacare, a trillion dollar entitlement bill, in the middle of the worst economic turndown since the Great Depression, only fueled their anger.

Unfortunately, that message has been hijacked by the Evangelicals who have used their shared belief in smaller government to lobby the government for morality laws (abortion, gay marriage, etc.). Idiotic hypocrites.

Originally, this is why I was a tea partier. Too much spending and I believe in uber-small government. The the tea-vangelists hopped on board and took over steerage and I don't feel comfortable with them.

I was at a party this summer where I said I wanted to move to a foreign country because I don't feel this country is any freer than a large percentage of other countries out there. Americans get very hung up on America=freedom, but we're just as limited by laws here that go way, way beyond "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".

[FloraDoraDolly]

I went to a Tea Party in the fall of 09, just to see what was going on. As a centrist, I expected to hear views more conservative than my own, but even back then they were veering way farther to the right than I could feel comfortable with, touching on social issues and rehashing the usual GOP talking points even though the original Tea Party movement was supposed to stick to fiscal and economic issues. One of the speakers even said that America is a Christian nation. I am a Christian, but that kind of talk goes against everything I believe in as an American.

The people at the Tea Party were generally nice. I don't know if they would have stayed that way if I had mentioned I supported Hillary in 08. We were in front of a bunch of local government buildings, and the participants took care not to step on the flowers. Aside from the Christian nation comment and some other remarks, I didn't get the feeling that I was among fundies. Fundie lite, yes. But I didn't see any frumpers or long denim skirts or extremely large families.

I haven't been to an Occupy event yet. There's one in my area next week and I'm thinking maybe I will go. Again, I just want to check it out. An online friend-- an older woman who has mobility issues-- went to the OWS in NYC and those people were rude to her, especially the young white boys. There was lots of food donated by local businesses, but the organizers wouldn't allow the real homeless people (the bottom one percent) to have any of it. But my friends who went to Occupy events in other cities didn't have these kinds of negative experiences. Some of them did get hassled by the cops, though. So I don't know if I'll go or not. We'll see...

[Patsy]

I do believe Jon Stewart pointed the tea party out the best. They are complaining that OW is breaking laws, they are screaming for smaller gov't and saying those people are breaking laws.. yet they have named themselves after one of the largest acts of racism and vandalism in the USA. They have named themselves after people who dressed up as Native Americans and dumped a shit ton of tea into water. Seriously, I think they need to pay more attention to history and what really happened.

Is it true that they left alcohol and other manly drugs, ALSO highly taxed, and only trashed the lady's highly-taxed substance? If so, dickweeds, and also, hear my shock that a lauded political movement let women take the practical flack of their actions.

[slickcat79]

Dbag 9: Moral responsibility......? I believe I know it to be called sacrificial love, even if I knew I was gonna die and had other children. How could I stand in the face of my children and tell them I love them and they were meant to be and very ...precious to me all the while knowing I was going to kill their next sibling so I could live longer to be their mother..... I would wait on my Lord and Savior and trust in Him, even if that meant he choose ME over the new life HE deemed fit to be in our lives. Take a look at your great grandparents lives and further back. They did not have the "choices" we have today and many, many families were left motherless because of a situation in childbirth. They did not grow up hating their parents or the world for the loss of their parents...they accepted it as their fate, their lot in life and picked themselves up and kept going to become great people themselves.

Stupid. So stupid. I can't think of any other words to describe it. You honestly think your living, breathing children would give a rat's ass about a clump of cells if it meant they were going to lose their mother? How could you look at the faces of your children and tell them you're choosing their potential sibling over them and live with yourself? It's like the plot of Steel Magnolias. Lots of people saw Julia Roberts' character as heroic or something; I always thought her decision was dumb, dumb, dumb.

Also, demanding citations on the people who didn't hate their parents/the world for losing a mother in childbirth. Sure, plenty did accept that and move on; many probably didn't even remember having a parent or losing them. But there are also plenty of stories from people who hated their new sibling because they considered the child responsible for killing their mother. Or even fathers who blamed the child for killing his/her mother. And I'm sure there are many people who fervently wished there was a safe way to end an unwanted pregnancy rather that kill themselves over it, but that wasn't a choice.

[JesusFightClub]

I think where fundies and tea partiers intersect is mainly in their anti-government views. Some refer to tea partiers are tea-vangelicals, and I've no doubt that some are (as demonstrated by this conversation), but some are just disgruntled libertarians (IMO). True libertarians do not want government interfering with anything, including women's uteruses.

I may be pedantic, but would they not be ancaps (anarchocapitalists) not libertarians? I've only ever heard that line from ancaps who don't want gov't to exist at all.

[Austin]

I may be pedantic, but would they not be ancaps (anarchocapitalists) not libertarians? I've only ever heard that line from ancaps who don't want gov't to exist at all.

I thought libertarians do not want government interference and for government be as small as possible.

But that may be wrong - I'll defer to your expertise on the matter. :D

[emmiedahl]

I think many libertarians fit under the anarchocapitalist label. It's the name of a political party in the US.

[pomology]

"A mother was walking with her 4 year old child on some train tracks when out of nowhere a train comes speeding towards them."

Well, that mother is a moron for walking on some train tracks with her 4 year old. Women do not choose to have ectopic pregnancies and the like (or to be pregnant in the first place, necessarily). And if the mother did save her own life and sacrificed the four-year-old, I wouldn't blame her, because in a split second you don't think, you do, you go by instinct. It's not some big philosophical thing. I think most mother's instinct's would be to save their child, but I would not think less of them for acting otherwise. Besides, the mother would probably spend the rest of her life blaming herself and it's not my place to add to her burden. She would be scarred and pained and traumatized enough as it is.

Oh, and ectopic pregnancies are not an either/or situation. It's not like the child lives and the mother dies or the mother lives and the child dies. It's like the mother and fetus both die or the mother lives. It's a pretty clear cut situation, in my opinion. In one situation you are letting a person die. In the other, you are saving a life. I don't see how anybody would have trouble making that decision, but I clearly don't understand fundie logic.

Dbag 3 is an idiot.

[Guest Anonymous]

I think many libertarians fit under the anarchocapitalist label. It's the name of a political party in the US.

Anarchocapitalist is a completely new term to me. I've always been of the Adolph Fischer school of thought - "every anarchist is a socialist, but every socialist is not necessarily an anarchist."

Obviously an anarchocapitalist is a completely different creature than a garden variety anarchist, it's just jarring to me to read the term when I'm so used to those two philosophies being rather like oil and water.

I learn so many things here. :)

[emmiedahl]

I don't know a lot about anarchocapitalism or libertarianism, so I am just working on assumptions. JFC is the expert on all things socialist, so hopefully s/he comments on this.

[myanimus]

Dbag 2: Never. Every life is precious and equal in the eyes of the Creator. HE is the author of life and we have no right to deprive anyone of it. In case of the mother's life in danger, every single effort should be made to save both lives.

But God help should you ever have to make that choice.

Dbag 3: A mother was walking with her 4 year old child on some train tracks when out of nowhere a train comes speeding towards them. The mother only has time to push her 4 year old out of the train's path, or save herself and jump out of the way. How would you feel about her if she jumped out of the way while choosing to sacrifice her 4 year old? I don't really see how abortion to save the mother is different??

Not even remotely comparable!

Dbag 2: Also, saying the mother is "sure to die" is leaving no room for God to intervene and provide a miracle if that is his plan which is His specialty. In my opinion. It's a hard situation to wrap your brain around for sure. As a mom of four though I can say without a doubt I wouldn't have hesitated to choose my baby first and I would have wanted my husband to make that same choice if it fell on him to decide. Then left the rest in God's hands. He has a plan and a purpose for eveything and that little life would not have ever been formed if He himself had not ordained it.

This is insanity on so many levels, I don't know where to begin... Children raised without a mother, choosing to leave your spouse a single parent? Abandoning your children that rely on you now?

Random Homeschooled Teenager: no. And I see no point in stating why- its self explanatory. Why would you kill your own child anyway? Adoption, although often times complicated is the way to go in my opinion.

Aside of the many other reasons someone might choose to abort I'm sure it's not an easy choice, I don't imagine it's an easy choice to give your child to a complete stranger either. I know there are great adoptive parents out there but I myself wasn't lucky enough to have them.

Dbag 6: Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Either you believe God is the giver and the taker of life, or you don't. I do.

Funny, I totally do believe God is the giver and taker but I also believe God gave us freedom of choice and that God said each person will be held accountable for their own actions, its a personal choice and one I'm glad I'm legally have.

Dbag 7: I think we need to "err" on the side of life in this situation. As a mom who survived an very high-risk pregnancy, I got the incredible privilege of getting to watch my twins grow weekly via ultrasound from 7 weeks on. I can say absolutely ...that life begins at conception. I was told by doctors that my girls had about a 30% chance of living. I was told throughout my pregnancy that "if" they lived they'd likely be disabled mentally/physically. Once I was admitted to the hospital (my girls had reached the point of viability but still had a high risk for disabilities) I was asked by the doctor "if" I still wanted them to "fight" for my girls or not. I was disgusted to learn it was still my choice at this point, as I couldn't legally get an abortion. When I pressed the doctor about this he replied, "Well, some people don't like to 'deal with' the preemie stuff." I will say that "with God all things are possible" and doctors don't don't know it all and don't have the final say. Our experience has proved just how wrong doctors frequently are, as my girls are the picture of health today. On a side note, one of my heroes was my next-door-neighbor growing up. She was diagnosed with cancer during her 2nd pregnancy and refused treatment as to not pose a risk to her unborn son. She died shortly after his birth, but I'm sure she never would have regretted giving up her life for her son's.

You really are fucking crazy!

Dbag 8: It's never ok. God creates ALL things and He doesn't make mistakes. That child's life is NOT a mistake, his/her special needs are NOT a mistake. They are created for a purpose just like every "normal" child. And NO man should be able to make the decision under any circumstance to kill a baby...ever.

God is infallible people however are not. If for one minute anyone thinks God intends children to be abused in anyway just because some dumbass could have sex you're out of your rabid ass mind! I believe having sex one can get pregnant and I don't believe just because God made it so you could means God intended for you to have a child. A lot of people can not get pregnant and I'm sure they'd be excellent parents.

Dbag 9: Moral responsibility......? I believe I know it to be called sacrificial love, even if I knew I was gonna die and had other children. How could I stand in the face of my children and tell them I love them and they were meant to be and very ...precious to me all the while knowing I was going to kill their next sibling so I could live longer to be their mother..... I would wait on my Lord and Savior and trust in Him, even if that meant he choose ME over the new life HE deemed fit to be in our lives. Take a look at your great grandparents lives and further back. They did not have the "choices" we have today and many, many families were left motherless because of a situation in childbirth. They did not grow up hating their parents or the world for the loss of their parents...they accepted it as their fate, their lot in life and picked themselves up and kept going to become great people themselves.

I believe in God but also believe in science and the fact that if doctors can save my life and allow me to raise my children God would want that, if I'm wrong I would be the one to deal with that on judgement day.

Dbag 10:Did you see the 180 movie? He gets to this and people on the street turned from being pro-choice to against abortion as a result of logical reasoning.

I think just about anyone can change someones mind right up until that someone is faced with the need to make that choice.

Dbag 12: Never. And in response to every conceivable "what if" imaginable; NEVER!

Hopefully you will never be in such a dire situation to have to choose

Me: Dbag 3, that is not common at all. I would say the most common is an ectopic pregnancy, which constitutes about 1% of all pregnancies. In the case of an ectopic pregnancy, your choices are: abort, or let the mother and baby both die. You are saying you would choose the latter, which makes me glad that legally it is not your choice.

YES

Dbag 13: If you get pregnant then and you didn't want to, oh f$$king well, you made a choice and now you have resposibilities, and this whole haviing to choose mother or baby, again oh flippen well. Shit happens. But it is NEVER EVEER ook to murder the child in your womb. Period. You are a f$$king coward and POS human being if you do.

What about failed birth control and God forbid rape and incest? You are a stupid, self centered, ignorant bitch but despite all that I don't ever wish you being in the position of such tragedy to have to choose.

[Happygirl99]

Hmmmm.... So I am terrible because I had an ectopic pregnancy removed. Thankfully, it was not in my womb but in my tube, so that is okay then, right.

[JesusFightClub]

Anarchocapitalist is a completely new term to me. I've always been of the Adolph Fischer school of thought - "every anarchist is a socialist, but every socialist is not necessarily an anarchist."

Obviously an anarchocapitalist is a completely different creature than a garden variety anarchist, it's just jarring to me to read the term when I'm so used to those two philosophies being rather like oil and water.

I learn so many things here. :)

I warn you all in advance. As you may have noticed political pedantry is my thing. ;)

Lissar, 99% of anarchos would agree with you. The vast, vast majority of them are strongly opposed to capitalism and though they have different labels and attitudes they unite in an extreme dislike of ancaps. Most I have encountered would tell you they do not regard ancaps as part of the anarchist movement.

Ancaps are opposed to anything that holds back "the market". I have seen and heard them advocate for the repealing of all health and safety legislation, the complete abolition of any public sector in their fantasy world ("if it doesn't make a profit, it is harmful to society"), even child labour being reintroduced. That is just the start.

They are normally very well off white male college students. You can guess that, eh? ;)

They are also few and far between. It is a very unusual variety of anarchism, if you accept it as that at all.

[emmiedahl]

Sounds like libertarians in the States. Totally.

[Guest Anonymous]

I warn you all in advance. As you may have noticed political pedantry is my thing. ;)

Lissar, 99% of anarchos would agree with you. The vast, vast majority of them are strongly opposed to capitalism and though they have different labels and attitudes they unite in an extreme dislike of ancaps. Most I have encountered would tell you they do not regard ancaps as part of the anarchist movement.

Ancaps are opposed to anything that holds back "the market". I have seen and heard them advocate for the repealing of all health and safety legislation, the complete abolition of any public sector in their fantasy world ("if it doesn't make a profit, it is harmful to society"), even child labour being reintroduced. That is just the start.

They are normally very well off white male college students. You can guess that, eh? ;)

They are also few and far between. It is a very unusual variety of anarchism, if you accept it as that at all.

Thanks, JFC. I'm pretty much a socialist but I have fond feelings for a lot of anarchists and their philosophies. Particularly Daniel Guérin, Emma Goldman, and Leo Tolstoy. I imagine Emma would kick an anarchocapitalist right in the balls, so I would definitely not put them under the *real* anarchist umbrella. :P

[emmiedahl]

So, forgive me if this is a dumbass question: how can an anarchist be a socialist? Socialism requires someone to distribute the resources and anarchists would by definition be against anyone having that kind of power. Right? What am I missing?

[Guest Anonymous]

So, forgive me if this is a dumbass question: how can an anarchist be a socialist? Socialism requires someone to distribute the resources and anarchists would by definition be against anyone having that kind of power. Right? What am I missing?

Anarchists are against anyone having that power, because they think that everyone should have it. Serious anarchists are less about running around causing chaos and breaking things, and more about collectively owning the means of production.

JFC can probably do a better job of this, but that's my short version interpretation.

[JesusFightClub]

Thanks, JFC. I'm pretty much a socialist but I have fond feelings for a lot of anarchists and their philosophies. Particularly Daniel Guérin, Emma Goldman, and Leo Tolstoy. I imagine Emma would kick an anarchocapitalist right in the balls, so I would definitely not put them under the *real* anarchist umbrella. :P

Totally agree!

The anarchos I know tend to be fond of Goldman, Bakunin, Makhno...they regard Guerin with tolerance, don't like Tolstoy. They are worse than Trotskyists are for infighting and I'm not sure where the lines of demarcation are precisely, but the Makhnoists seem to be thoroughly disapproved of by all the rest. Those guys would suspect you of pacifism, I think ;)

When I was but a lass Nechayev was a hero of mine (should I admit to this in public? ;) ) I grew up, and, er, became a Trot *blush*

I am fascinated by how people come to their political conclusions and was really interested by what you said.Would it be too crazy or give too much ammo to have an FJ politics quiver, do you think?

[Witsec1]

Ancaps are opposed to anything that holds back "the market". I have seen and heard them advocate for the repealing of all health and safety legislation, the complete abolition of any public sector in their fantasy world ("if it doesn't make a profit, it is harmful to society"), even child labour being reintroduced. That is just the start.

They are normally very well off white male college students. You can guess that, eh? ;)

They are also few and far between. It is a very unusual variety of anarchism, if you accept it as that at all.

Is ancap the same as Ayn Rand-style libertarian? Because it sound similar. I think for most of them it's just a pose, not a well-thought out philosophy. Like the commenter here who used to go around saying "Taxes are theft!!!!" which really meant taxes for anything he didn't think was important were theft. He would be happy to "steal" from others to support stuff he thought was important, no doubt. Most "real" anarchists I know have thought through the implications of their philosophy a little more.

[Witsec1]

When I was but a lass Nechayev was a hero of mine (should I admit to this in public? ;) ) I grew up, and, er, became a Trot *blush*

Whoa!!! Probably not. I've always been interested in Makhno 'cause my ancestors were the Mennonites he hated.

Edited to fix quote

[JesusFightClub]

So, forgive me if this is a dumbass question: how can an anarchist be a socialist? Socialism requires someone to distribute the resources and anarchists would by definition be against anyone having that kind of power. Right? What am I missing?

Not a dumb question at all! This actually is a bone of contention on the far left (and we have about nine million of those).

The simple answer is that a lot of anarchists don't describe themselves as such to the general public. The reason for this is that people think "scary bomb throwers" or if they are younger, the Black Bloc. Black Bloc actions need a separate thread to themselves, so I will return to topic ;)

So what anarchists often say, where it's acceptable, is "I'm a libertarian socialist". Noam Chomsky describes himself that way, though he is basically an anarcho. What it means is "I am a socialist" (in that I believe society and community, the abolition of capitalism and the redistribution of wealth are all vitally important) "but I am also a libertarian" (in that I believe people will come to these conclusions eventually, I don't agree with there being an overarching State making decisions etc...)

Does that make it make more sense or just sound more weird?

[emmiedahl]

Interesting. I have always associated anarchy as involving a violent overthrow of the government, so I was confused to see it associated with socialism, which gives the government so much power.

[JesusFightClub]

Is ancap the same as Ayn Rand-style libertarian? Because it sound similar. I think for most of them it's just a pose, not a well-thought out philosophy. Like the commenter here who used to go around saying "Taxes are theft!!!!" which really meant taxes for anything he didn't think was important were theft. He would be happy to "steal" from others to support stuff he thought was important, no doubt. Most "real" anarchists I know have thought through the implications of their philosophy a little more.

They tend to like Ayn Rand, but, um, go a little further. If you go further than her, you are in trouble...;)

Not precisely the same. The best way I can think of to describe it is a combination of Social Darwinism and a blind faith in profit. For example, if there were two 8yo kids, one showed some intellectual promise, one was middling. The first should be kept in school (paid for by his parents, but they would be superior stock anyway and as we all know, that is how one gets rich). The second, well, he's not going to set the world afire. There are plenty of jobs he could be doing. He's small, he could work in a factory full time and let's face it, he'd be generating income...

They don't in the slightest think this should be enforced. It would just appear naturally in their ideal society.