"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Ten Quesions for Tea Partiers
Leftwing socialist Ralph Nader points out the hypocrisy of rightwing socialist teabaggers.
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I am actually kind of disappointed this piece was posted on STR. I DO consider myself part of the TEA Party Movement. I cannot speak for all of us of course, many of us joined the “movement” for many different reasons. We are not all automatons. I will answer these “questions” for myself.
1. I support ending the military budget entirely. In fact I support ending the government entirely.
2. That would indeed be impossible. I have never MET a member of the TEA Party who supported any of these things. That was kind of the point of the movement actually. We ALL opposed TARP for example.
3. Above all else I support INDIVIDUAL sovereignty. This includes recognizing an individual’s right to trade with another person on the other side of an arbitrary line.
4. Mr. Nader seems to think that the TEA Party movement is all about “law and order”. This indicates he does not understand it. What a surprise. Few elitists do. Tell you what Mr. Nader, I support decriminalizing all drugs and prostitution among consenting adults. Does that make me a “law and order” person in your book?
5. No, you can’t. I oppose that PATRIOT act. So do many TEA Party members. Not all, but probably a majority of us do.
6. Against GOVERNMENT regulation of such, yes. I can. In a true free market court system they would be held responsible for actual harm.
7. Give me a true free market and I can find competitors to these institutions if I so choose.
8. I am not for ANY system of politics, clean or otherwise.
9. I and an increasing number of TEA party members oppose the wars. As for eminent domain? I oppose it entirely. Most TEA Party people I have met would agree it has been “abused” and want the government to use it only in narrow cases like roads, bridges, fire departments and police stations. I have never met a TEA Party member who would support the kind of thing that was inflicted upon the Kelo Family.
10. This is the most absurd question of all. What is a “fair share” of theft? Even if one is a minarchist one would have to admit that the vast majority of what the federal government does is unconstitutional. What is one’s “fair share” of paying for things that are not even authorized by the Constitution?
PIRS
From reading these questions, it's clear that Nader knows nothing about the core of the Tea Party. A lot of the tea partiers are the same people who supported Perot in the 1990s, and they are well aware of these issues. All Nader is doing is reacting to the people who have attempted to ride the Tea Party surge - ie. the Palin & Hannity types. Nader's ignorance really shows with question #2 - those bailouts were what touched off the Tea Party to being with. I think most Americans were unaware of the government money handed to corporations until it was in such an extreme amount during last year's financial crisis
I think you are correct that many of them are former Perot supporters. I had just turned 18 in the election Perot first ran. I did not think of myself as "libertarian" at the time but I knew something was very wrong with both major parties. I voted for Perot as a protest vote.
I think Nader poses some legitimate questions because there are those that have co-opted the tea party movement and they are certainly not principled libertarians - they are just disenchanted conservatives. This is not what all tea party folks are, but it is a significant chunk of them. There are many people that associate themselves with the tea party movement that have absolutely no problem with the "war on terror" for example. It's important to point out the hypocrisy within that.