Mike W. had a great comment here at Joe’s:
The reference is to a lefty all butthurt that the supreme court stated that the Second Amendment means what it says, and somehow seems to forget the 13th Amendment of the Constitution….or the 18th and 21st for that matter.
If you don’t like the right to keep and bear arms, by all means work to repeal that Amendment, it can and has been done with other issues in the US Constitution.
But Mike touches on something I have a HUGE issue with political hackery. I can only support the tea party so far because the vast majority of these people were stone-silent when President Bush was doing most of the authoritarian crap that they’re bitching about now that President Obama is doing it.
That being said the other side of the hackery has people who now suddenly don’t seem to care that we’re still in a fruitless war, that domestic spying has been expanded, that taxes are going up, that our President is kinda creeped out by the gays.
And here are those of us with libertarian leanings struggling to convince EITHER side to wake the hell up.
Agree.
I disagree about the “Tea Party” movement.
Many people (including myself) were very vocal in opposition to some of GW Bush’s policies. A good number of Tea Party supporters voted for BO under the premise that he would live up to his promises and stop doing many of those things. The reason the Tea Party came into existence is not because they don’t like BO doing the same things that they supported when GW was President, it came into existence because BO is doing the same things, some of them even expanded by orders of magnitude, that he condemned about GW during the race.
The perception has always been in the past, if you don’t like what the Republicans are doing, elect a Democrat and those things will stop…and vice versa.
The Tea Party is nothing more than the manifestation of lots of “common folk” realizing what the politically astute have understood for years: It doesn’t matter which party is in power, they don’t represent the people, they represent the interests of increasing their own power through government. D and R are both just slightly different flavors of crap…but they’re both still crap. The realization of that is what is driving the Tea Party phenomenon, not necessarily the specific policies in place or who is in power.
In my humble opinion
There is certainly a part of me that agrees with you, Curt, and I was fully aware of Tea-Parties, and proto-tea parties (Hell Gadsden flags and people who speak about pre-revolution colonies in modern-day contexts, as well as the threepers aren’t exactly a foreign or new thing) but it certainly didn’t seem to get the momentum or numbers until Obama was in the front-and-center.
Of course it could be that simply Obama is doing more of Bush’s horrible shit, but harder, which is scaring a lot of fence sitters into action, but its hard to tell. Certainly there is plenty of bi-partisan support as well, but from all I read and see, as a general rule much of the Tea party is still Rs who voted for McCain, rather than Ds who voted for Obama and are pissed because of his actions.
Still I very much hope your opinion is 100% correct, and my more cynical view is incorrect, as it would be best for the country.
Hey, I’m kinda creeped out by the gays too. That doesn’t mean I don’t respect their rights.
I am only creeped out by them when they manifest their gayness to its full extent in public places….a-la the orgy the Mrs. and I stumbled upon in the Middlesex Fells.
Then again, in those circumstances heterosexuals creep me out too…..
I was quite vocal about what I disliked about the W presidency. The problem was when I expressed that dislike, I found myself defending him because he isn’t Hitler!
It started to seem like I liked him, but that was just because I didn’t despise him. I will give him one thing (really two) Alito and Roberts. without them we’d not have Heller or McDonald because Gore and Kerry most certainly would not have picked them.