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For those who still believe in “working within the system”

Ah, couldn’t you just see it coming?

How to undermine a movement: turn its values on their heads.

Palin and the tea-party “movement”: nothing new.

First, the R-party is taken over by neo-conservatives (who are, of course, neither new nor conservative). Then the L-party falls into the hands of neo-cons. Now, only a year after its beginnings as a vigorous, Paulista, grass-roots movement for smaller government and fiscal common sense, the tea-party movement, too, has been co-opted by the same gang of warfare-welfare, centralized-power, to-hell-with-the-rule-of-law con artists.

The specific power factions may come and go (or change their name and their rhetoric). But nothing ever changes in politics. It’s a trap for freedomistas.

10 Comments

  1. Pat
    Pat February 9, 2010 8:17 am

    The Libertarian Party was lost the day it became a Party.

    It never should have been a political party in the true political sense, but merely an ideal “mission statement” for libertarians with a small “L”. Then big “L” pragmatists (AKA minarchists) then took and ran with it, to the detriment of libertarian reputations everywhere.

    The fate of “tea parties” was inevitable. Many good people with justifiable anger surged to them but, like the LP, their meaning was destined to be redefined by those pragmatic non-thinkers who know enough to latch onto a good thing, but not enough to act out any but their own conservative rantings.

    The history of libertarianism is loaded with (devious or misguided) people who redefine the terms, thus knocking the props from under libertarianism’s strength.

  2. Pat
    Pat February 9, 2010 8:32 am

    In my last sentence I should have said, “… thus knocking the props from under libertarianism’s *power to influence.”*

  3. tzo
    tzo February 9, 2010 9:08 am

    The problem with the tea parties and other protests is that they are targeting government policy, and are petitioning the government for change. This is no different from voting or lobbying, aka working within the system.

    Even civil disobedience falls within this category. The government loves it, in that it gets to respond by ‘fixing’ the problem by creating more legislation. The government loved the civil rights movement and its resulting increased government control. All the government school history books revere Rosa Parks and MLK, lawbreakers, as heroes.

    Government is an idea that most people feel is necessary. When the better idea—government is not necessary—becomes widespread, then the problem will resolve itself.

    Live as much individual freedom as is possible, and educate and encourage others to do the same. The means are the end. There is no other way to reach the end of individual freedom than by the means of living individual freedom.

    Don’t give the State credence by sparring with it. Instead disentangle yourself from it as much as possible.

  4. Jim B.
    Jim B. February 9, 2010 10:35 am

    Meh, I’m just waiting for the whole thing to fall down around their ears. This is why I believe direct armed conflict won’t be necessary.

  5. Kevin Wilmeth
    Kevin Wilmeth February 9, 2010 11:57 am

    Great discussion here.

    “Don’t give the State credence by sparring with it. Instead disentangle yourself from it as much as possible.”

    Yes, yes, YES.

    Why continue to bicker over the One Ring* when we all know that things only change if it gets destroyed?

    _________________
    * This is a hell of a metaphor for our times–to wit, it really makes the case–but we should remember not to count on a Frodo for deliverance. Actually, we should remember that Frodo, noble as he was, failed at the moment of truth, and was saved by a combination of luck and the inevitable unsustainability of the One Ring itself.

    Maybe it makes more sense to forget about Mount Doom, and simply forget about the One Ring for another thousand years or so.

  6. Matt
    Matt February 9, 2010 8:24 pm

    You can’t fight the political machine by becoming a different piece of that machine.

    If you group up in the city square it makes it easier for the government to round you up and crush you.

    The ideals of the tea party, or the old libertarians, or just of plain old fashioned freedom must be foremost every time a citizen votes or makes a decision.

  7. George Potter
    George Potter February 10, 2010 2:24 am

    Let’s imagine that there were, in the world, rich backers of a certain socio-economic system that was hard to implement, almost universally unpopular upon implementation, but — once implemented — offered unprecedented power and gain to those IN control.

    It strikes me that the best way forward for those financing such a global system of behavioral and economic control, is to find a place where an opposing party has historically kept such ideas out of the mix and infiltrate that party. Once infiltrated, the party could then be sabotaged, the infiltrators doing their hard-working best to make that opposition party hated and ridiculed. This would allow the backers to push their system (through the OTHER party) as an alternative, with the opposing parties own staunch agreement that that alternative was their opposite number. If properly chosen, said infiltrators might even truly BELIEVE their own bullshit; ignoring the fact that their own political tools are just as authoritarian and anti-liberty as what they claim to oppose. This would be a win-win situation for said financial backers and adherants.

    Thank God I’m only theorizing! :O

  8. Pat
    Pat February 10, 2010 7:47 am

    Right, George… and to one degree or another, in one form or another – we’ve slid downward every step of the way since (or before) the Constitution was put into place.

    It hasn’t always been a global goal – though if you believe the conspiracy theorists, it has – but it has sure worked in America.

  9. Joel
    Joel February 10, 2010 8:04 am

    Oh, c’mon, George. That could never happen!

  10. Winston
    Winston February 10, 2010 11:19 am

    I started feeling uncomfortable around tea parties early on when Newt started showing up…as I predicted it’s only gotten worse.

    I dunno, the fact that it’s become like an official, politically correct protest group backed by an offical “legitimate” elephant party makes me very very wary.

    Oh, and there was this one I went to here where one of the speakers (A local trying to get into some lousy city or state office IIRC) started quoting Jefferson and Paine and then went on to give a speech about how we need to return to…[i]federalism[/i]…yeah…

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