Flags, not crosses:
“If you take 1,000 so-called tea partiers and ask them what this movement is, you’ll get 1,000 different interpretations,” Mark Williams, a talk-radio host and chairman of the Tea Party, told the Post. “But they’re all waving American flags and speaking out against the galloping socialist agenda.”
This is actually just a version of “it’s okay to spend money on me, but not on thee.”
During the Reagan and Bush eras, Christian Right movement leaders such as the late megachurch pastor D. James Kennedy held rallies with names such as “Reclaiming America for Christ.” So far, it seems the Tea Partiers are mostly interested in reclaiming America for the Chamber of Commerce.
Bingo. But, that’s not the whole story. During the Bush II years the Republican Party lost even the pretense of representing libertarians. This Tea Party nonsense is how the Chamber of Commerce gets these folks back. Call it the Southern Strategy on steroids with a bunch of Bircherism thrown in for fun.
It has occurred to me that this whole Tea Party nonsense arises from people who missed out on all the “fun” of protesting in the 60’s. See? They get to dress up in costumes, carry signs and chant, feel bolstered by moving about with seemingly like-minded others.
BUT.
They don’t have lines of cops with billy clubs, clouds of tear gas, snarling dogs, the threat of being hauled off to jail. It’s another example of it’s okay if you’re supporting our rulers. We were “dirty, fucking hippies.” They are “passionate Patriots.”
I really hate how obvious it’s all become.
true. For a bunch of libertarians they are surprisingly mute about the wars we’re fighting, except to ask for more of them.
You do know that libertarians are just republicans who read SF&F and want to legalize pot and prostitutes, right? I say that as a former LP member. At every gathering, I would be one of the few women in a herd of nerds. I liked most of their “official” platform but when the spotlight speaker at our state convention was Newt Gingrich, I knew I was being scammed. And the one time the LP had power/was the deciding voting block in a state election, their candidate threw his voters toward the Republican… after careful consideration, of course.
I don’t see them as Libertarians (I assume you just forgot the cap “L” — the ACLU are libertarians. These people are far from that.) Seems like the anti-abortion crowd is right with them, and I haven’t noticed all that much anti-drugwar agitation. More like the Know Nothing aspect of populism. Behind it all the buck and the cross still loom as they always have, inextricably entwined.