Bill Whittle (apparently no longer at PJTV) explains. The first of a series.
41 thoughts on “What Are The Tea Parties About?”
I know Libs pretty well. They’re going to focus on his comment that national health care hasn’t worked anywhere, at any time, and shout “Canada!” and “Europe!” until their voices give out. The fact that America has more doctors and better hospitals per capita than Canada or Europe won’t faze them, because he said “It doesn’t work”, and they’ll counter that it does, and not only that “It’s more fair.”
Which is ultimately what they care about. If you define fairness as “Everyone gets the same outcome”, Socialism does deliver that.
“Everyone gets the same outcome”, Socialism does deliver that.
It doesn’t even manage to deliver that. Because there will always be “KennedyCare” for the ruling class. That is, a full medical team on call 24/7/365 plus an attendant nurse at all times and medievac choppers for commuting to work. Or Michael Jackson’s “I’ll prescribe anything” live in doctor.
I don’t believe Brock’s comment about doctors per capita is accurate. Germany and France both have about 3.3 physicians per 1000 people, while the US has 2.3, according to this link.
I’m not sure that physicians per capita is all that useful a metric anyway.
What is interesting about Canada is that it has consistently better health outcomes in terms of life expectancy and infant mortality than the US, on less than 60% of the investment. Fun fact – Canadian government spending on health care is about the same per capita as US government spending on health care. But they cover everyone and get better results than we do.
But they cover everyone and get better results than we do.
That would be why they come here so often for treatment right?
What is interesting about Canada is that it has consistently better health outcomes in terms of life expectancy and infant mortality than the US
Probably because they define infant mortality differently than we do. We have worse statistics because we attempt to save a lot more preemies.
Now that Mr. Whittle isn’t (evidently?) in the PJTV borg, maybe he’ll stop making god damn videos and start writing again.
Video/audio content is inferior for multiple reasons*, and the trend towards it is almost entirely negative.
(Fragility, that it requires your computer to make noise**, lack of searchability/indexing, difficulty of extracting/transcripting accurately for quoting…
** The only positive I can see there is for using it like an audiobook while driving or doing some other relatively mindless physical task.
The negatives far outweigh that positive for almost all serious or semi-serious discussion.)
Actually, his videos appear to pretty much be written pieces that he reads or recites with some accompanying background elements added in post-production. The pacing and flow is identical to what he writes. I would be surprised if there were no transcripts to be found.
Now that Mr. Whittle isn’t (evidently?) in the PJTV borg, maybe he’ll stop making god damn videos and start writing again.
I second the motion.
Fun fact – Canadian government spending on health care is about the same per capita as US government spending on health care. But they cover everyone and get better results than we do.
Perhaps because they do cover everyone. How would that comparison go for people on health care in Canada (everyone) verse people on health care in the US (those with insurance)?
Not that I am defending the US health system, which I suspect perhaps suffers the worst costs of both public and private systems due to excessive government interference. It needs serious reform – perhaps tort reform, more competition, maybe a public voucher system that covers pre-existing conditions (perhaps including poverty and old age), abolishment of medicare and medicaid, etc.
A system with 30 million participants vs a system with 300 million participants doesn’t seem like a fair comparison.
Bill Whittle’s left PJTV? Was there an announcement? I just came from the site and he is still listed.
As far as infant mortality and life expectancy as proxies for health care ‘results’, these are strongly linked to income and ethnicity (infant mortality is also a poor metric, as it is heavily influenced by how some countries – I don’t know about Canada, so I won’t assume – define it in the first place), and Canada does not have a demographic/ethnographic makeup even remotely similar to that of the US. Of course if we wanted to look at cancer survival rates or any number of other metrics that strongly favor the US, I am sure that Jane could be relied upon to offer up a (reasonable) objection.
Canada is likely a better place to be if you are healthy, while the US is a better place if you are sick. We all get sick sometimes, hence I prefer being in a health-care system that is better equipped to deal with it.
Thomas,
I am surprised as well, I not only went to PJTV (and he is still there, with postings are recently as yesterday), but there was a link to the video above on Instapundit, something I suspect would be unlikely if Bill had left PJTV.
Either way, hope it isn’t the case…
The statistics that gauge life expectancy across all age groups when compared to other countries do in fact show a higher overall life expectancy in Canada and Europe. Buuutttt, those “statistics” are inferred from actual studies that break down life expectancies amongst specific age groups. When you start actually making apples to apples comparisons of decadal age groups between countries you will see that the U.S. does poorly when looking at younger age groups. But starts to match European age groups in life expectancy in older age groups over 50. In other words, our end of life care is among the best in the world. Our, survivability rates among cancer patients in particular is astounding.
My guess is that this is more a product of the live fast and die young mentality that pervades the U.S. Once people crest that middle age hill and slow down a bit, they take their routine check-ups more seriously. They are more willing to comply with a doctor’s prescriptions for good health and pursue a lifestyle of longevity . So, if you can make it to 50 relatively intact, your chances of outliving your European counter parts is pretty good.
At the core of why I think it is like this flows from the basic principles of individual freedom and personal liberty. When you are a brash youngster and have the freedom to make generally stupid decisions your chances are higher of doing irreparable harm to oneself. When you grow older and more wise to the workings of the world, and your own body, you’ll tend to live a more moderate and realistic lifestyle. To me this is just a much more rewarding and fulfilling lifestyle in total.
So, the disparity between life expectancies between Americans and their Euro-Canadian counterparts is not so much a reflection of the health care systems. It’s more a reflection on the quintessential American traits that influence the choices we make as we take our journey through this life.
Add another voice that wishes that Bill went back to the written word format. His videos are excellent but I can read his articles in a quarter of the time.
As a Canadian, I can tell you that our health system has both good and bad sides. It’s great when you need help !right now!, and it won’t stick you with a huge bill afterward. However, for the little “ouchies” of daily life, not to mention regular checkups, it stinks. If it’s not life-threatening, expect to wait months, if not years.
Jane has her head up her statistical ass.
First, life expectancy at birth is a meaningless statistic by which to measure health care. Life expectancy at birth is dominated by issues like your ethnic background, your diet, whether you have clean water or not, whether your mother smoked during pregnancy, whether you smoke, whether you’re overweight and exercise or not, how carefully you drive and whether you drink while doing so, whether you are an inner city kid who joins a gang or not, whether you were a premature underweight baby (vide infra) and so on.
Similar arguments apply to distractions like infant mortality — dominated by the age of your mother, whether she had gestational diabetes, smoked or drank, et cetera — plus as Rand points out almost no country other than the United States counts a baby born before 26 weeks as a “birth” — elsewhere it’s just a miscarriage that breathed for a while.
Secondly, when you actually look at health care outcomes — i.e. what happens to you after you get sick — try here — then you find that Number 1, tops in the world, in nearly every single category (how long you live, quality of life, timeliness of care, lack of mistakes in care, even access to care) is the United States. Surprise! Apparently as in nearly everything else in life, you get what you pay for, pretty much.
To return to the topic, though: I wish Whittle hadn’t ceded the rhetorical ground to the Stalinists in the first part of his monologue. It blows my mind that even after centuries of experience, in which we always see that in any Socialist Workers’ Paradise it turns out some are more equal than others, heh heh, as well as the death and carnage as far as the eye can see (“can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs!”) we still take those vicious criminals at their word — i.e. we believe them when they say their movement and goals are founded on a lovely ideal of humanity, and that human beings would naturally be socialists if they followed their better nature.
I say nonsense. I say it is the evil instincts of a man — his delusional wish to get something for nothing, his vicious wish to have unearned power over his neighbor — which lead him to socialism, and I submit as proof what actually happens under socialism. It’s not a weird “accident” or the result of bad implementation: it’s the inevitable and logical result of a philosophy based on profoundly cynical views of human nature and appealing to our worst instincts to bully and envy our fellow man.
By contrast, I think the classically liberal view is optimistic about human nature. It says that human nature is generally good, but has known weaknesses, and that a modest, small, mostly voluntarily adopted system can easily promote the best behaviour of human beings — cooperation in firms and enterprises, voluntary exchanges in the free market that promote the welfare of both partners, et cetera — and at very small cost minimize their worst behaviour.
This is why I don’t understand the tea party. What you’ve got here is a “conservative” talking like a libertarian. So what’s the tea party? A bunch of conservatives who want to recruit libertarians to their cause?
Every minute of this video he’s saying libertarian values == conservative values. Only in the first and last few minutes does he even *mention* the tea party.
And, in case you’re confused, no conservative values *are not* libertarian values. Conservatives regularly express views that are detrimental to liberty, so do Liberals, that’s why the Libertarian party exists! So far as I can tell, the tea party is just a Conservative rouse to capture those voters who think both the Conservatives and the Liberals are power hungry liberty hurting crooks.
You cannot simply use the number of doctors or hospitals to evaluate health care. Would you evaluate a car manufacturer by the number of employees or plants it has?
If you need a lot of doctors and hospitals to achieve the same outcomes it is a sign that your total system productivity sucks.
You have to measure the output. You need to measure life expectancy, fatalities, people afflicted with a disease, people cured from a disease. You can also use performance metrics like waiting time.
No Trent, it’s not a ruse. Conservatives have always been for small government. Don’t conflate libertarian social issues with small government. A classical liberal would talk the same way.
So what’s the tea party? A bunch of conservatives who want to recruit libertarians to their cause?
No Trent, he defines it in the video.
Every minute of this video he’s saying libertarian values == conservative values.
What he never mentions, not once, is libertarian.
conservative values *are not* libertarian values
Where they diverge is using government to enforce social values. Otherwise, they’re very much are the same. The tea party is explicit in that they are not trying to use government to enforce social values (although individual members may be inclined to express such views.) This is what gives the tea party it’s big tent (41% now is it? to less than a third for both Dem and GOP.)
Libertarians believe in small government and free enterprise as do tea party conservatives. Where’s the confusion?
maybe he’ll stop making god damn videos and start writing again.
Several times recently I’ve been finding myself wondering when Carl Pham was going to start a blog. How about it, Carl?
ken, the fact that he doesn’t say the word “libertarian” when he’s espousing libertarian values as being “conservative” is my entire point.. try to keep up.
The point you’re missing Trent is those libertarian values coincide with conservative values. I’m sitting in the car ahead of you. You need to leave the caboose. You’re the one claiming you don’t understand the tea party when Bill is giving you a very clear exposition on two core qualities. The fact that is resonates with both libertarians and conservatives is what gives it it’s power.
I second Ed’s request. One editorial a week would be enough to keep me quite happy. So how about some free ice cream, eh Carl?
Shorter Trent: “Conservatives are evil, and I won’t have it any other way!”
Also, third the motion for Carl’s Phamtastic Blog.
Several times recently I’ve been finding myself wondering when Carl Pham was going to start a blog. How about it, Carl?
The motion having been made, seconded and thirded, I call the question.
All in favor? <raises hand>
I like the blog title from Titus!
Does that mean those of us who read it would be Pham-boyz?
Trent still doesn’t “understand” the Tea Party? I think we should give up on this one.
“I say it is the evil instincts of a man — his delusional wish to get something for nothing, his vicious wish to have unearned power over his neighbor — which lead him to socialism”
Maybe. Maybe, instead, it leads him to become a banker. What, exactly, do the people in the casino divisions of major banks actually do to earn their six-figure bonuses?
“What, exactly, do the people in the casino divisions of major banks actually do to earn their six-figure bonuses?”
Figure out exactly which politicians to bribe. Come on, give us a tough question.
What, exactly, do the people in the casino divisions of major banks actually do to earn their six-figure bonuses?
Game the fiat currency / fractional reserve banking system for their own gain. Note that this merely siphons off a part of the gains to an unintended recipient, not that the intended recipients are more worthy of the gains.
If you’re a libertarian, why not just vote for the Libertarian party?
Because, in California at least, a vote for the libertarian party is a vote against the conservative party. I used to think that possibly the libertarian party had a point when they said that, analogously to the socialist party which never won a major election but nevertheless had every major plank of their 1930-or-so platform adopted, the libertarian party didn’t need to actually win an election, they just had to get above some small percentage and then the two big parties would court their block of votes by adopting policies from the libertarian platform. I’ve seen no indication of this happening in the last thirty years, at least before this year’s tea parties. And those are clearly not due to people voting libertarian.
So what you’re saying is that a vote for the tea party is a vote for the conservatives? Gee, I wonder why that’s not being widely advertised. If the GOP wants more of the libertarian vote perhaps they should reform the religious wing. Rebranding themselves is just dishonest.
Like it or not Trent, it’s a two party system. A vote for the tea party is a vote to cut spending and taxes and reduce the size of government. You want to label that something else so you can harumph about it, go ahead. That doesn’t change the tea party goals.
Rebranding is dishonest? Who knew? Have you ever seen how politics works?
I think the confusion here comes from the use of the word “party.” Trent, the “tea party” isn’t a party like the Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian parties are. In other words, it’s not a registered political party with an official agenda, a governing body, etc. Instead it’s a loose gathering of people from many different political and religious points of view — republican, conservative, libertarian, even some old-fashioned working-class Democrats — who have come to the conclusion that the Federal government has too much power, and has been abusing that power to tax and regulate in order to garner even more power. This is because the government has become both too large and too insular. Our government has become a body of people who have come to see themselves as separate and above the bulk of the population. This viewpoint is combined with a sense that they have a duty to “guide the ship of state” and that any objection by the crew — the American people — is mutiny. This overweening centralized nanny-statism and cronyism is seen as dangerous by conservatives because it threatens stability and prosperity, by libertarians because it threatens freedom, and by old-fashioned liberal democrats because the more powerful and unanswerable the government gets the less it is inclined to care about what the “little person” thinks.
The reason it’s called the “Tea Party” is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, which was a protest against arbitrary tax laws imposed by a faraway, unelected government that did not consider itself answerable to the colonist rabble. But it’s not a political party like the other ones I mentioned above. I hope this clears things up.
PS: I haven’t watched the video so I don’t know if Whittle is treating the Tea Party like a standard political party. If he is, then he’s wrong.
If the GOP wants more of the libertarian vote perhaps they should reform the religious wing.
Or, possibly, since the available electoral history suggests that actual libertarians (as distinct from college freshmen pissed that they can’t get drunk at the titty bar, and thirtysomethings who want the Gestapo to not drag them off during Desperate Housewives) are a tiny fringe of negative cohesiveness and no import, neither the GOP nor the Tea Parties actually gives a damn about getting their three votes.
“I say it is the evil instincts of a man”
Man has no moral instincts. Or so Heinlein said.
Reading Andreas post I envisioned Obama in a red coat at the helm of an old sailing ship, “thirty lashes…” Yep, that’s his management style.
I know Libs pretty well. They’re going to focus on his comment that national health care hasn’t worked anywhere, at any time, and shout “Canada!” and “Europe!” until their voices give out. The fact that America has more doctors and better hospitals per capita than Canada or Europe won’t faze them, because he said “It doesn’t work”, and they’ll counter that it does, and not only that “It’s more fair.”
Which is ultimately what they care about. If you define fairness as “Everyone gets the same outcome”, Socialism does deliver that.
“Everyone gets the same outcome”, Socialism does deliver that.
It doesn’t even manage to deliver that. Because there will always be “KennedyCare” for the ruling class. That is, a full medical team on call 24/7/365 plus an attendant nurse at all times and medievac choppers for commuting to work. Or Michael Jackson’s “I’ll prescribe anything” live in doctor.
I don’t believe Brock’s comment about doctors per capita is accurate. Germany and France both have about 3.3 physicians per 1000 people, while the US has 2.3, according to this link.
I’m not sure that physicians per capita is all that useful a metric anyway.
What is interesting about Canada is that it has consistently better health outcomes in terms of life expectancy and infant mortality than the US, on less than 60% of the investment. Fun fact – Canadian government spending on health care is about the same per capita as US government spending on health care. But they cover everyone and get better results than we do.
But they cover everyone and get better results than we do.
That would be why they come here so often for treatment right?
What is interesting about Canada is that it has consistently better health outcomes in terms of life expectancy and infant mortality than the US
Probably because they define infant mortality differently than we do. We have worse statistics because we attempt to save a lot more preemies.
Now that Mr. Whittle isn’t (evidently?) in the PJTV borg, maybe he’ll stop making god damn videos and start writing again.
Video/audio content is inferior for multiple reasons*, and the trend towards it is almost entirely negative.
(Fragility, that it requires your computer to make noise**, lack of searchability/indexing, difficulty of extracting/transcripting accurately for quoting…
** The only positive I can see there is for using it like an audiobook while driving or doing some other relatively mindless physical task.
The negatives far outweigh that positive for almost all serious or semi-serious discussion.)
Actually, his videos appear to pretty much be written pieces that he reads or recites with some accompanying background elements added in post-production. The pacing and flow is identical to what he writes. I would be surprised if there were no transcripts to be found.
I second the motion.
Fun fact – Canadian government spending on health care is about the same per capita as US government spending on health care. But they cover everyone and get better results than we do.
Perhaps because they do cover everyone. How would that comparison go for people on health care in Canada (everyone) verse people on health care in the US (those with insurance)?
Not that I am defending the US health system, which I suspect perhaps suffers the worst costs of both public and private systems due to excessive government interference. It needs serious reform – perhaps tort reform, more competition, maybe a public voucher system that covers pre-existing conditions (perhaps including poverty and old age), abolishment of medicare and medicaid, etc.
A system with 30 million participants vs a system with 300 million participants doesn’t seem like a fair comparison.
Bill Whittle’s left PJTV? Was there an announcement? I just came from the site and he is still listed.
As far as infant mortality and life expectancy as proxies for health care ‘results’, these are strongly linked to income and ethnicity (infant mortality is also a poor metric, as it is heavily influenced by how some countries – I don’t know about Canada, so I won’t assume – define it in the first place), and Canada does not have a demographic/ethnographic makeup even remotely similar to that of the US. Of course if we wanted to look at cancer survival rates or any number of other metrics that strongly favor the US, I am sure that Jane could be relied upon to offer up a (reasonable) objection.
Canada is likely a better place to be if you are healthy, while the US is a better place if you are sick. We all get sick sometimes, hence I prefer being in a health-care system that is better equipped to deal with it.
Thomas,
I am surprised as well, I not only went to PJTV (and he is still there, with postings are recently as yesterday), but there was a link to the video above on Instapundit, something I suspect would be unlikely if Bill had left PJTV.
Either way, hope it isn’t the case…
The statistics that gauge life expectancy across all age groups when compared to other countries do in fact show a higher overall life expectancy in Canada and Europe. Buuutttt, those “statistics” are inferred from actual studies that break down life expectancies amongst specific age groups. When you start actually making apples to apples comparisons of decadal age groups between countries you will see that the U.S. does poorly when looking at younger age groups. But starts to match European age groups in life expectancy in older age groups over 50. In other words, our end of life care is among the best in the world. Our, survivability rates among cancer patients in particular is astounding.
My guess is that this is more a product of the live fast and die young mentality that pervades the U.S. Once people crest that middle age hill and slow down a bit, they take their routine check-ups more seriously. They are more willing to comply with a doctor’s prescriptions for good health and pursue a lifestyle of longevity . So, if you can make it to 50 relatively intact, your chances of outliving your European counter parts is pretty good.
At the core of why I think it is like this flows from the basic principles of individual freedom and personal liberty. When you are a brash youngster and have the freedom to make generally stupid decisions your chances are higher of doing irreparable harm to oneself. When you grow older and more wise to the workings of the world, and your own body, you’ll tend to live a more moderate and realistic lifestyle. To me this is just a much more rewarding and fulfilling lifestyle in total.
So, the disparity between life expectancies between Americans and their Euro-Canadian counterparts is not so much a reflection of the health care systems. It’s more a reflection on the quintessential American traits that influence the choices we make as we take our journey through this life.
Add another voice that wishes that Bill went back to the written word format. His videos are excellent but I can read his articles in a quarter of the time.
As a Canadian, I can tell you that our health system has both good and bad sides. It’s great when you need help !right now!, and it won’t stick you with a huge bill afterward. However, for the little “ouchies” of daily life, not to mention regular checkups, it stinks. If it’s not life-threatening, expect to wait months, if not years.
Jane has her head up her statistical ass.
First, life expectancy at birth is a meaningless statistic by which to measure health care. Life expectancy at birth is dominated by issues like your ethnic background, your diet, whether you have clean water or not, whether your mother smoked during pregnancy, whether you smoke, whether you’re overweight and exercise or not, how carefully you drive and whether you drink while doing so, whether you are an inner city kid who joins a gang or not, whether you were a premature underweight baby (vide infra) and so on.
Similar arguments apply to distractions like infant mortality — dominated by the age of your mother, whether she had gestational diabetes, smoked or drank, et cetera — plus as Rand points out almost no country other than the United States counts a baby born before 26 weeks as a “birth” — elsewhere it’s just a miscarriage that breathed for a while.
Secondly, when you actually look at health care outcomes — i.e. what happens to you after you get sick — try here — then you find that Number 1, tops in the world, in nearly every single category (how long you live, quality of life, timeliness of care, lack of mistakes in care, even access to care) is the United States. Surprise! Apparently as in nearly everything else in life, you get what you pay for, pretty much.
To return to the topic, though: I wish Whittle hadn’t ceded the rhetorical ground to the Stalinists in the first part of his monologue. It blows my mind that even after centuries of experience, in which we always see that in any Socialist Workers’ Paradise it turns out some are more equal than others, heh heh, as well as the death and carnage as far as the eye can see (“can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs!”) we still take those vicious criminals at their word — i.e. we believe them when they say their movement and goals are founded on a lovely ideal of humanity, and that human beings would naturally be socialists if they followed their better nature.
I say nonsense. I say it is the evil instincts of a man — his delusional wish to get something for nothing, his vicious wish to have unearned power over his neighbor — which lead him to socialism, and I submit as proof what actually happens under socialism. It’s not a weird “accident” or the result of bad implementation: it’s the inevitable and logical result of a philosophy based on profoundly cynical views of human nature and appealing to our worst instincts to bully and envy our fellow man.
By contrast, I think the classically liberal view is optimistic about human nature. It says that human nature is generally good, but has known weaknesses, and that a modest, small, mostly voluntarily adopted system can easily promote the best behaviour of human beings — cooperation in firms and enterprises, voluntary exchanges in the free market that promote the welfare of both partners, et cetera — and at very small cost minimize their worst behaviour.
This is why I don’t understand the tea party. What you’ve got here is a “conservative” talking like a libertarian. So what’s the tea party? A bunch of conservatives who want to recruit libertarians to their cause?
Every minute of this video he’s saying libertarian values == conservative values. Only in the first and last few minutes does he even *mention* the tea party.
And, in case you’re confused, no conservative values *are not* libertarian values. Conservatives regularly express views that are detrimental to liberty, so do Liberals, that’s why the Libertarian party exists! So far as I can tell, the tea party is just a Conservative rouse to capture those voters who think both the Conservatives and the Liberals are power hungry liberty hurting crooks.
You cannot simply use the number of doctors or hospitals to evaluate health care. Would you evaluate a car manufacturer by the number of employees or plants it has?
If you need a lot of doctors and hospitals to achieve the same outcomes it is a sign that your total system productivity sucks.
You have to measure the output. You need to measure life expectancy, fatalities, people afflicted with a disease, people cured from a disease. You can also use performance metrics like waiting time.
No Trent, it’s not a ruse. Conservatives have always been for small government. Don’t conflate libertarian social issues with small government. A classical liberal would talk the same way.
So what’s the tea party? A bunch of conservatives who want to recruit libertarians to their cause?
No Trent, he defines it in the video.
Every minute of this video he’s saying libertarian values == conservative values.
What he never mentions, not once, is libertarian.
conservative values *are not* libertarian values
Where they diverge is using government to enforce social values. Otherwise, they’re very much are the same. The tea party is explicit in that they are not trying to use government to enforce social values (although individual members may be inclined to express such views.) This is what gives the tea party it’s big tent (41% now is it? to less than a third for both Dem and GOP.)
Libertarians believe in small government and free enterprise as do tea party conservatives. Where’s the confusion?
maybe he’ll stop making god damn videos and start writing again.
Several times recently I’ve been finding myself wondering when Carl Pham was going to start a blog. How about it, Carl?
ken, the fact that he doesn’t say the word “libertarian” when he’s espousing libertarian values as being “conservative” is my entire point.. try to keep up.
The point you’re missing Trent is those libertarian values coincide with conservative values. I’m sitting in the car ahead of you. You need to leave the caboose. You’re the one claiming you don’t understand the tea party when Bill is giving you a very clear exposition on two core qualities. The fact that is resonates with both libertarians and conservatives is what gives it it’s power.
I second Ed’s request. One editorial a week would be enough to keep me quite happy. So how about some free ice cream, eh Carl?
Shorter Trent: “Conservatives are evil, and I won’t have it any other way!”
Also, third the motion for Carl’s Phamtastic Blog.
The motion having been made, seconded and thirded, I call the question.
All in favor? <raises hand>
I like the blog title from Titus!
Does that mean those of us who read it would be Pham-boyz?
Trent still doesn’t “understand” the Tea Party? I think we should give up on this one.
“I say it is the evil instincts of a man — his delusional wish to get something for nothing, his vicious wish to have unearned power over his neighbor — which lead him to socialism”
Maybe. Maybe, instead, it leads him to become a banker. What, exactly, do the people in the casino divisions of major banks actually do to earn their six-figure bonuses?
“What, exactly, do the people in the casino divisions of major banks actually do to earn their six-figure bonuses?”
Figure out exactly which politicians to bribe. Come on, give us a tough question.
What, exactly, do the people in the casino divisions of major banks actually do to earn their six-figure bonuses?
Game the fiat currency / fractional reserve banking system for their own gain. Note that this merely siphons off a part of the gains to an unintended recipient, not that the intended recipients are more worthy of the gains.
If you’re a libertarian, why not just vote for the Libertarian party?
Because, in California at least, a vote for the libertarian party is a vote against the conservative party. I used to think that possibly the libertarian party had a point when they said that, analogously to the socialist party which never won a major election but nevertheless had every major plank of their 1930-or-so platform adopted, the libertarian party didn’t need to actually win an election, they just had to get above some small percentage and then the two big parties would court their block of votes by adopting policies from the libertarian platform. I’ve seen no indication of this happening in the last thirty years, at least before this year’s tea parties. And those are clearly not due to people voting libertarian.
So what you’re saying is that a vote for the tea party is a vote for the conservatives? Gee, I wonder why that’s not being widely advertised. If the GOP wants more of the libertarian vote perhaps they should reform the religious wing. Rebranding themselves is just dishonest.
Like it or not Trent, it’s a two party system. A vote for the tea party is a vote to cut spending and taxes and reduce the size of government. You want to label that something else so you can harumph about it, go ahead. That doesn’t change the tea party goals.
Rebranding is dishonest? Who knew? Have you ever seen how politics works?
I think the confusion here comes from the use of the word “party.” Trent, the “tea party” isn’t a party like the Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian parties are. In other words, it’s not a registered political party with an official agenda, a governing body, etc. Instead it’s a loose gathering of people from many different political and religious points of view — republican, conservative, libertarian, even some old-fashioned working-class Democrats — who have come to the conclusion that the Federal government has too much power, and has been abusing that power to tax and regulate in order to garner even more power. This is because the government has become both too large and too insular. Our government has become a body of people who have come to see themselves as separate and above the bulk of the population. This viewpoint is combined with a sense that they have a duty to “guide the ship of state” and that any objection by the crew — the American people — is mutiny. This overweening centralized nanny-statism and cronyism is seen as dangerous by conservatives because it threatens stability and prosperity, by libertarians because it threatens freedom, and by old-fashioned liberal democrats because the more powerful and unanswerable the government gets the less it is inclined to care about what the “little person” thinks.
The reason it’s called the “Tea Party” is a reference to the Boston Tea Party, which was a protest against arbitrary tax laws imposed by a faraway, unelected government that did not consider itself answerable to the colonist rabble. But it’s not a political party like the other ones I mentioned above. I hope this clears things up.
PS: I haven’t watched the video so I don’t know if Whittle is treating the Tea Party like a standard political party. If he is, then he’s wrong.
Or, possibly, since the available electoral history suggests that actual libertarians (as distinct from college freshmen pissed that they can’t get drunk at the titty bar, and thirtysomethings who want the Gestapo to not drag them off during Desperate Housewives) are a tiny fringe of negative cohesiveness and no import, neither the GOP nor the Tea Parties actually gives a damn about getting their three votes.
“I say it is the evil instincts of a man”
Man has no moral instincts. Or so Heinlein said.
Reading Andreas post I envisioned Obama in a red coat at the helm of an old sailing ship, “thirty lashes…” Yep, that’s his management style.