Patterico's Pontifications

5/14/2010

The Dark Side

Filed under: Politics — DRJ @ 5:26 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Al Qaeda terrorists have attacked America repeatedly, Iran may soon have nuclear weapons, Russia is forming new alliances, America and Europe face fiscal disasters, and Politico provides a forum for a San Francisco State University professor to lament … the Tea Party:

“Tea partiers proudly proclaim themselves conservatives. And rightly so.

Tea party protesters repeat the conservative catchwords of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, who built their careers fighting the “creeping socialism” of civil rights legislation, Social Security and Medicare.

Tea partiers also have echoes of a well-known grass-roots movement of the 1950s and ’60s — the John Birch Society. The JBS organized in upper-middle-class neighborhoods and among business groups for anti-Communist and conservative causes.

In tone and substance, tea partiers even sound like the JBS did. When they claim that a moderate American president is a “Communist,” it recalls the old JBS attacks on “Communist” President Dwight Eisenhower.

As today’s tea partiers shout their slogans to end the Federal Reserve, abolish the Internal Revenue Service and restore the gold standard, they seem to be lifting a page from the old JBS playbook.

For its part, the JBS followed in the tradition of the Liberty League, a right-wing citizens’ group organized by the DuPont family in the 1930s to overturn President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Yet commentators resist linking tea parties to this radical right.”

If by “commentators” the author means the mainstream media, they aren’t resisting very hard.

— DRJ

11 Responses to “The Dark Side”

  1. Not sure if anyone had posted the link to this, but it is outrageous that a moron like this is a LAUSD employee…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGqPo5ofk0s

    GeneralMalaise (fc86d7)

  2. I briefly flirted with the John Birch Society as a teenager. After some reading and cogitating, I found their political ideas, such as Richard Nixon serving as an insider pushing for a one-world socialist government to be crazy. (Individually, I found the JBS types to be good people, the kind you would like as neighbors.)

    OTOH, the Tea Party folks point to empirically verifiable facts, such as the growing tax burden and the need to reduce spending or consign the next generation to pauperism.

    From my experience, the Tea Party doesn’t even seem to be conservative, but tending libertarian. It’s not stressing social issues, but economic and personal liberty issues.

    Of course, most of the left has trouble distinguishing between libertarians and conservatives.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (9eb641)

  3. His dogma don’t hunt. When the entire premise of your article is based on a flawed understanding of the Tea Party movement, Mr. Postel winds up with a typical MSM EPIC FAIL. Sort like one of Myron’s comments regarding what conservatives should think.

    daleyrocks (1d0d98)

  4. Having been to several Tea Parties, having a Dont Read On Me hat and Tshirt, being for lower taxes and much lower spending, I guess you could call me a Tea Partier. However, what this guy is talking about is mystery to me. And to other people I have seen at gatherings.

    LYNNDH (8d8b19)

  5. Has Politico recently dropped their standards for what is considered quality journalism or is this something more recent?

    Because this guy should pay publications to print his drivel.

    MU789 (8034a8)

  6. Leave it to a lefty to make Birchers sound good.

    Ag80 (f67beb)

  7. social issues these days are quite complicated and often involves politics~*’

    Disco Lights  (2f7c27)

  8. there are many social issues that we face today but the biggest issue i think is poverty*,:

    Metal Cabinets : (71a07c)

  9. there are many social issues these days and we have different solutions for different social problems ;’`

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  10. you know, spambots would be harder to detect if they didn’t write like as if they were written in japanese and run through google translate.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  11. nice post ,thank you for your sharing , i’ll wait for your next blog.

    Jess Kluttz (33c908)


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