Lost in the identity thickets

"Ten years ago, the Tea Party of the right and Occupy Wall Street of the left were both aiming at the power structure. 

    "Since then, the power structure has used identity politics to redirect their aim at each other."

          ~ Eric Brakey

QUOTE OF THE DAY: On David Brat

“I do not know David Brat and had never heard of him before he won the primary [against poster child for term limits, Eric Cantor].  I have looked at his Vita.  However, I am bothered by seeing him called a free market economist and a Randian.  Apparently one of the major issues distinguishing him from Mr. Cantor is Mr. Brat’s opposition to immigrants and immigration reform.  I cannot understand how someone can be a free market economist and opposed to immigration reform. Our immigration laws are a major limitation on free exchange, and anyone who really favours free markets must be in favour of major reforms, including allowing those who are here illegally to legalize their status.”
- Paul H.Rubin, TRUTH ON THE MARKET

So how much did the US election change?

Judge Andrew Napolitano hosts a couple of interesting discussions in the aftermath of last week’s US elections.

First, “The Election Didn't Change Anything!” says Reason magazine editor Michael Moynihan. It’s all still business as usual. Mostly.

And how about the argument over conservatives vs. libertarians in the Tea Party, that movement more responsible than any other for the Republican revival.  Conservative Mike Huckabee—barbs about being a RINO obviously having pierced his hide—takes on the libertarian viewpoints on drugs, taxes, and tea.

As Paul Hsieh says, the GOP had better “dance with the one who brung them, or be left standing by the wall for good. 

The Tea Party: Beginning to See the Light [update 2]

Now this is cool. Maureen Tucker—known to friends as Mo, and more widely as the drummer from the Velvet Underground—is also a Tea Partier.  An angry Mo told her local TV station she is “furious about the way we’re being led toward socialism” and the “incredible waste of money” being spent, and followed it up telling a disbelieving Riverfront Times she is against

• the government taking over the student loan program and car companies,
• bailouts
• the White House taking control of the census (what the hell is that all about?)
• any First Lady telling us (I know, I know, “suggesting to us”) what to eat
• the mayor of New York City declaring “no salt” (screw you, pal!)
• the mayor/city commissioners of Anytown, U.S.A. declaring you can’t fly a flag, can’t say the Pledge of Allegiance and can’t sing the National Anthem
• a President dismissing any and all who dare to disagree
• the water being turned off in (central) California to save a one-inch fish — turning that huge area of farming land into another dustbowl — the insipid start of food supply control methinks!
• the government deciding what kind of lightbulbs we can use (all you “think green” people, three objections to this b.s.: 1) Those bulbs give off the light of a candle; 2) They’re very expensive; 3)They have mercury in them – how the hell are we supposed to dispose of them?).

Maureen says.

  MT: My family was damn poor when I was growing up on Long Island. There were no food stamps, no Medicaid, no welfare. If you were poor, you were poor. You didn’t have a TV, you didn’t have five pairs of shoes, you didn’t have Levi’s, you didn’t have a phone; you ate Spam, hot dogs and spaghetti. .. 
    My anger stems from the unbelievable (criminal!) waste of money on pork and earmarks. It drives me nuts to see that X millions are being allocated to build a turtle tunnel, a donkey museum, a salamander crossing, etc, etc, etc. Billions spent every friggin’ year on totally unnecessary crap so that these Congressbums can tell their constituents that they “brought home the bacon” and get re-elected. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to pay for any Congress SOB’s vote buying, and sure as hell not in these very very worrisome times!
    RIVERFRONT TIMES: What specifically about the current administration do you disagree with?
    MT: I disagree with spending / borrowing / printing — damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!  I disagree with the “we won” attitude, which is the cowardly way of saying fuck you! I disagree with an administration that for twenty months blames Bush. If the President and his minions are so damn smart, why didn’t they know the severity of the situation? The president has actually said …. that they didn’t know!

(So, of course, have John Key and Billy Bob.)

Unsurprisingly, Tucker’s views went down like a bucket of cold sick with the trendies, leaving her.

stunned that so many people who call themselves liberal yet are completely intolerant. I thought liberals loved everyone: the poor, the immigrant, the gays, the handicapped, the minorities, dogs, cats, all eye colors, all hair colors! Peace, love, bull!
    Curious they have no tolerance whatsoever for anyone who doesn’t think exactly as they do. You disagree and you’re immediately called a fool, a Nazi, a racist.

She’s nobody’s fool, and never was.

Here’s how the Velvet Underground sounded in their prime.

This was the Velvets’ looked on their reunion in Paris in 1990, with Moe on drums.

And here’s the song that was Moe’s party piece, recorded (badly) at a 1993 Velvets concert in Prague requested by then Czech President Vaclav Havel—a Velvets fan who told the world on the fall of the Soviet Empire that it was a Velvet Underground record that inspired the Czech Velvet Revolution.

[Hat tip Russell Brown, who seems to think Tea Partiers are against free trade. How odd. Still, that’s twice today he gets a mention here.]

UPDATE 1: Sam P gets it right: Mo Tucker is “a canary in the coal mine of cool.”

UPDATE 2: And Greg Gutfeld [hat tip Sam P]:

If you don't know [Mo Tucker], she was the drummer for the hippest band of all time, the Velvet Underground - managed by Andy Warhol and home to Lou Reed, Nico and John Cale. An inspiration to disaffected slackers, no band was cooler, and just about every group you hear these days ripped them off…
    So what happens when the coolest cucumber rejects those precious values held by the vintage tee-shirt wearing, status quo left?
    Let the whining commence…

Check Greg’s post for some of it, which continues...

    But there's a bigger message here: what does it mean when a member of the most naturally subversive band of the last forty years, shows up at the most naturally subversive movement in recent memory? By witnessing the shocked reaction, you see where true rebellion lurks.
    It's wherever Moe's at.
    And if you disagree with me, you're a racist, homophobic melophobe.

Perigo on Beck’s “God thing”

Glenn Beck galvanized hundreds of thousands of patriotic Americans to show up in Washington for his 'Restoring Honor' rally, observes Lindsay Perigo. That’s the good part.

Though [Beck] was obliged to play down the political implications of the gathering, there is no doubt that this was the Tea Party out in force, giving The Anti-American President the message that his socialist agenda will soon be consigned to the ashcan of history.

Yay!

As Sarah Palin so succinctly put it, the task is not to transform America but
restore it.

Um, not so yay. Why her? And what exactly do she and he mean by “restore”?

The alarm bells of liberty-lovers from sea to shining sea should be ringing from every mountainside at Beck [and Palin]'s sloppy exhortation to 'try the whole turning back to God thing.'

Oh. So that’s what they mean!

"Let's try the whole turning back to God thing and see what happens," said Glenn Beck [again] on Fox News Sunday.

No, says Perigo.  "Let's not."

The greatness of America lies precisely in its constitutional separation between church and state. Though Beck denies he has a theocracy in mind, and claims to respect the right of atheists to their (dis)beliefs, it's hard to imagine that part of the Religious Right that does want a theocracy not being emboldened into pushing for one as part of a 'whole turning back to God thing.'

The ‘God thing’ and America—the ‘God thing’ and freedom—they just don’t mix well.

President Unpopular

In less than two years he’s gone from one of the most popular presidents of all time to being President Zero, and now President Minus 22 Percent.  That’s even less popular than Bill English.

Nile Gardiner gives ten reasons key reasons why the Obama presidency is in meltdown.  The best reason to celebrate? Number 5: “Obama’s Big Government message is falling flat.”

But there might be even more good news. Dislike for the Obama Administration doesn’t guarantee anything better on the horizon. (Just see what’s happened here in NZ!) Robert Tracinski, however, suggests a new political “camp” forming within the Tea Party movement might offer some hope for genuine political change.  It’s called “constitutional conservatism.”

Let's look at precisely what the phrase means, as I have gathered from how it is being used. A "constitutional conservative" is someone who wants to restrain the power of government within the original limits set for it by the US Constitution. Specifically, "constitutional conservatives" want to resurrect the doctrine of enumerated powers, which constrains Congress to stick to the small number of limited powers explicitly described in Article I of the Constitution. …One of the top agenda items of the "constitutional conservatives" [is] a requirement that all legislation proposed in Congress has to "point to where they are enumerated in the Constitution."
    The label "constitutional conservative" is based on the recognition that [the American] system of government, as originally conceived by America's Founding Fathers, would be radically smaller than it is today, that the Founders' vision is fundamentally incompatible with the majority of current government programs and with the vast array of current government controls on the economy.
    It is clear that the rise of this new term is a powerfully good trend. For the first time, there is a strain of "conservatism" that we can actually sign on to—though the use of the term "conservative" is still a misnomer. "Constitutional conservatism" is "conservative" only in the sense that it seeks to "conserve" the original meaning of the Constitution. But in today's context, it is actually a radical and ideological agenda that would require overturning the past one hundred years of political precedent…

It’s early days, but it sounds promising.

Jeff Perren: More Tea Party Smears

Guest Post by Jeff Perren

An editorial at the Seattle Post Intelligencer titled “A Mad Hatters' Tea Party?” begins thus:

A year after it turned Congress' August town meetings into battle zones, the Tea Party movement is battling for power -- in the Republican Party, and the nation -- in the 2010 mid-term elections. “

Note the subtle allusion to a non-incident in which a single individual (ill-advisedly but legally, mind you) carried a gun to a town-hall meeting. The story doesn't mention, of course, that his behavior was roundly condemned in Tea Party circles.

It's mostly downhill from there.

In outlining the Tea Party's views (as if there were such a thing as the Tea Party), the penultimate paragraph states:

ROUGH JUSTICE: ‘How many of you have watched the movie Lonesome Dove? What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd? He got hung. And that's what I want to do with Patty Murray.’ - a speaker, name never disclosed, at Asotin County Fairgrounds Tea Party rally.”

This could have been said by a plant, by a journalist, by a lone whacko, by anybody. The author doesn't know, and probably doesn't care.

And people say objective journalism is dead.

There are a few quotes mixed in that actually convey a flavor of real Tea Party sentiments, though the author obviously intends them to be damning. For example,

NEW DEAL: On Franklin D. Roosevelt: ‘His policies stripped the free market system and actually prolonged the Depression.- - Glenn Beck.”

Careful, there, Mr. Connelly. You might encourage someone to look into this and find it's perfectly true.

Most interesting, though, is what's missing from this list of 18 items: there's absolutely no mention of the essentials that characterize nearly every Tea Party organization around the U.S.: the desire for more liberty, an advocacy of limited government constrained by the Constitution, and keeping the government more out of citizen's pocketbooks. As usual, it's what Progressive journalists refuse to talk about that's the most important.

Well, one thing is clear. Progressives are running more scared than I've seen them in my entire life. Reagan during his candidacy didn't get this kind of low-life distortions (though some statements were close). You'd have to go back to the Big Lie about Goldwater's wanting to nuke the world to reach this depth.

The author does state at the end one true thing:

Will these folks populate the corridors of power?
We'll know in November."

Indeed we will. As Shakespeare said in Hamlet, "Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."

More pearls (but no swine) at Jeff’s Shaving Leviathan blog.

By smearing the Tea Party, what exactly is the NAACP advancing?

America’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has been crying “racist!” about the disparate elements that make up the Tea Party movement. Guest poster Gen LaGreca reckons there is better work the NAACP should be doing.

* * * *

After dredging up a dozen objectionable posters from the millions of people attending Tea Party rallies across the country, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People—on the basis of these few placards—is asking its members to sign a pledge to “repudiate racism within the Tea Party.”

Instead of addressing the ideas raised by the Tea Party, the NAACP has launched a gratuitous smear campaign. At the moment of the most crucial debate of our lifetime, a fervent debate over the role of government in human affairs, the NAACP has choked off intellectual discussion and placed itself in the anteroom of human thought, forfeiting ideas for smears.

What are the central ideas driving the Tea Party movement, ideas the NAACP neglects to mention to its members? Taken from the “Mission Statement and Core Values” of the prominent national group Tea Party Patriots, here’s an indication of what the movement stands for:

— The “Declaration of Independence” and our other “founding documents,” which means the unalienable rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

— A “constitutionally limited government,” which means a government that serves as the protector of the individual rights of everyone, and not as the provider of the needs and wants of some groups at the expense of others.

— “Free markets” and “freedom of the individual to spend the money that is the fruit of their labor,” which means the right to private property and freedom in the economic affairs of life.

— “Fiscal responsibility by government.”

These issues encompass the most pressing moral and political questions of our day. Does a person have control over his own person and property, or does the government hold a superior claim to someone’s life and possessions? What is the proper structure of government—freedom or controls, capitalism or socialism, private property or government redistribution? This is the debate that the Tea Party has launched, and the fate of all of our lives and those of future generations rests on the answer.

Instead of hurling baseless smears and stirring racial animus, the NAACP needs to carefully examine the ideas driving the tea party and hold its own opposition up to scrutiny.

— The Tea Party stands for an individual’s right to be the master of his own person and property. Does the NAACP stand for an individual’s not being his own master, but of some other entity having control over a person’s life and possessions? How is that an advancement of colored people or anyone else?

— The Tea Party stands for limited government. Is the NAACP for unlimited government? How would that be an advancement of colored people or anyone else?

— The Tea Party upholds a person’s right to keep the fruits of his labor. Does the NAACP instead want its members to have the fruits of their labor seized from them? How would that constitute an advancement of colored people or anyone else?

— The Tea Party calls for fiscal responsibility of government. Is the NAACP for fiscal irresponsibility? Wouldn’t that lead to higher taxes and a lower standard of living? How would that foster the advancement of colored people or anyone else?

If the NAACP doesn’t stand for the advancement of the individual—for the pursuit and enjoyment of one’s life, with the full exercise of one’s liberty and the protection of one’s property—then it must stand for the only other alternative, i.e., the advancement of government as the provider, regulator, intruder, and controller of the individual’s life. If the NAACP doesn’t stand with the Tea Party in upholding individual rights—the bedrock of our country and of any civilized, free society—then it does not stand for the advancement of its members or anyone else, but for the regression of all of us to a state of servitude.

Gen LaGreca is the author of Noble Vision, a ForeWord Magazine Book-of-the-Year award-winning novel about the struggle for liberty in health care today.  This post originally appeared at The Daily Caller, and is re-posted here by permission.

Paul the Younger

Even Radio NZ is now starting to discuss the victory of Tea Party candidate Randal Paul in the Kentucky Republican primary (perhaps the first time a winning candidate in a minor Republican primary has been mentioned on Radio NZ at all).  Clearly, there’s more than just the Tea Party connection that got Radio NZ interested enough to comment.

Just for the record, despite the popular contraction of his first name to “Rand,” Randal wasn’t named after novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, but he does enjoy her novels. It just Ayn’t true.

But what of his politics?  Is a man surfing the Tea Party wave like Paul good simply because he’s successfully surfed that wave? Well, maybe not. The intellectual banner of the Tea Party itself is mixed, and so too it is Paul the Younger. “Rand Paul, like his libertarian father Ron Paul, is a Christian-influenced ‘isolationist,’” argues Objectivist Scott Holleran, which is troubling news. 

It’s often said that, speaking in traditional pol-sci terms, libertarians are “fiscal conservative and social liberals”; in those terms, Randal’s father Ron is both a fiscal conservative and a social conservative—meaning he hardly deserves the freedom-loving applause he gets. So if Paul the Younger is cut from similar cloth then, Houston, we do have a problem.

We have a problem because both Paul Senior and Paul the Younger are not just another pair of faceless politicians.  Despite policies which frankly contradict the claims, Paul Senior achieved “growing public prominence as a self-proclaimed spokesman for the ideas of liberty,” and Paul the Younger has certainly capitalised on that widespread national prominence, even as he’s chanted the anti-concept of so-called state’s rights (an invitation, as Rand the Original once pointed out, simply to replace federal tyranny with local tyranny), and sought the backing of social conservatives like the far-Right theocratic group Concerned Women for America (allowing Paul the Younger to boast on his website that his "socially conservative views have earned the respect and trust of church leaders across Kentucky."

Not exactly exciting news for freedom-lovers, is it—nor for those eager to make the connection with Rand the Original, who would have been appalled.

    “Consider how Rand saw Reagan and his friendly relations with the Moral Majority:

            ‘The appalling disgrace of his administration [said Rand the Original] is his
        connection with the so-called ‘Moral Majority’ and sundry other TV religionists,
        who are struggling—apparently with his approval—to take us back to the Middle Ages,
        via the unconstitutional union of religion and politics.’

    “Rand said Reagan was trying to ‘arouse the country by some sort of inspirational appeal. He is right in thinking that the country needs an inspirational element. But he will not find it in the God-Family-Tradition swamp.’ So while Randal Paul was sucking up to the social conservative religionists, Ayn Rand had called their ideology a ‘swamp’ and wanted nothing to do with them.”

Vodka Pundit Steve Green’s expressed early concern about Paul Senior, about “the impact that his representations of those ideas are having [and will have] on a national audience.”  Given Paul the Younger’s name and his Tea Party associations, those concerns are even more relevant about Paul the Younger since his own performance has the potential to damage the former and derail the second.

It’s nothing personal. The concern is about the fate of those ideas, and not for Paul’s fate as a candidate for higher office—particularly since his choice to exploit the “Rand” name makes his mis-identification with Rand’s ideas so much the easier for the ill-informed.

The first week after Randal’s victory already offers further cause for concern.  It was a week mired for him in the hash he made of an ill-advised appearance on Rachel Maddow’s TV show, a week in which he went first one way on civil rights and property rights, and then another, until at the end of it no-one could be quite sure what his position was on race, on civil rights, on the rights of employers and property-owners—and even on Rachel Maddow. (Although his own confusion doesn’t justify the abject confusion of some commentators on almost everything).

So in summary,  until I see something both more principled and more substantial from Ron Paul’s son, I can only wish to see in reality the sentiment once expressed in the title of the Shayne Carter & Peter Jefferies song: “Rand(olph)’s Going Home.”

Why Leftists Hate Speech

Why Leftists Hate Speech
Advocates of Statism Cannot Tolerate Political Opposition
Guest Post by Robert Tracinski


When the left talks about "hate speech"—which they perpetually attribute to the right, and which they have dredged up again as their latest line of attack against the tea party movement—I've always thought the phrase carries an unintended but revealing double meaning.

Many people are not good at introspection or at identifying the real meaning of their emotions; it's an acquired skill that requires a lot of work, practice, and honesty. So people will often correctly identify which emotions and objects are involved—but not the correct relationships between them.

For example, when a leftist hears someone on the right speak, he is able to correctly identify the emotion, hatred, and the fact that it involves someone's speech. But he gets the relationship backward. The real relationship is: he hates our speech. It is the left that is convulsed with rage whenever anyone speaks up in defense of liberty.

As my friend Jack Wakeland sums it up: "hate speech" isn't a noun; it's a sentence fragment. It stands for "I hate your speech."

That's why the left has responded to the tea party movement—which has engaged in such violent activities as holding up signs, giving speeches, asking questions of congressmen at town hall meetings, sponsoring forums on the health care bill, and organizing congressional debates—by threatening to infiltrate the movement in order to fabricate incidents of racism and advocacy of violence that they will then use to discredit us.
As one tea party organizer responds to that threat, "They can't actually debate our message, and that's their problem."

Confirming that judgment, the left is busy working itself up into a campaign to suppress our speech by depicting us as a violent threat that has to be put down.

JEFF PERREN: David Brooks Reaches a New Gray

[Guest Post by Jeff Perren]

New York Times columnist David Brooks' reasoning powers have long been pretty much kaput. But now he has really outdone himself. After noting several stark differences between the New Left hippies of the 60s and the Tea Party movement activists of today, such as "One was on the left, the other is on the right. One was bohemian, the other is bourgeois. One was motivated by war, and the other is motivated by runaway federal spending. One went to Woodstock, the other is more likely to go to Wal-Mart." he immediately turns around and says "But the similarities are more striking than the differences."

Uh, it would be hard to find a starker difference than 'one favors individual liberty, the other collective slavery.'

His reasons only make his position look more ridiculous. Scattered among lesser gems is this 40 carat whopper:

    "The core commonality is this: Members of both movements believe in what you might call mass innocence. Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures. Because of this assumption, members of both movements go in big for conspiracy theories."

Right. It's just a conspiracy theory that Federal spending is out of control far beyond already horrendous historical norms. It's just a wacky theory that the Feds have already nationalized two-thirds of the American auto industry. It's delusional to believe they’ve already corrupted the financial markets with bailouts, stimuli, and meddling with executive compensation. A person is mentally askew if he believes they're trying to complete their control over all health care and insurance.

Still, set all that aside. What's most interesting here is that his brain is so awash with pragmatic, middle-of-the-road mush he would simply wash away the clear black-and-white differences between the 60's New Left and the '10s New Right to declare the Tea Party movement morally suspect. And why? Because the latter wants radical change (in this case in the direction of freedom), just like the New Left did in the '60s (in the direction of statism).

In short, what they have in common is a passionate – and more or less consistent — attachment to a philosophy. To a Pragmatist, such a thing is anathema regardless of the actual content of the philosophy. And how does he defend this position? By invoking an all-too-common conservative notion that is both misanthropic and inherently self-contradictory:

    "Conservatism is built on the idea of original sin — on the assumption of human fallibility and uncertainty. To remedy our fallen condition, conservatives believe in civilization — in social structures, permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages..."

The doctrine of original sin is not equivalent to a belief that humans are fallible or lack omniscience. It's the belief that we are innately evil, or (in weaker versions) that humans have a in-built tendency toward evil. The concept of "sin" (actions which violate a moral law) is closely related to that of "evil." But the concepts of good and evil can only be meaningful when one has a choice. Alleging we are born evil, therefore, entails a contradiction.

So, basing one's advocacy of "permanent institutions and just authorities, which embody the accumulated wisdom of the ages" is illogical (not to mention ahistorical, considering how often that alleged wisdom has been wrong).

Folks, this is the inevitable mental and moral dead end of living by the philosophy of Pragmatism. It makes you dumb.

Sussing out the SOTU [update 8]

Sarah Palin told Sean Hannity “the fact checkers … are going to be quite busy” after President Zero’s State of the Union passing-the-buck speech last night.

They were.  Here’s Cato’s fact-checkers now.

And here’s the New Zealand Herald’s cartoonist:

I think even my American readers will appreciate that.

UPDATE 1: And the person who bears a lion’s share of responsible for the waves of economic carnage which the ObaMessiah is failing to turn back, Ben Bernanke, still awaits reappointment to the job of Fed Chairman. Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute reckons Bernanke needs to get real.  He is “the last person qualified to address” the carnage he and his former boss did so much to create. “Get Real,” says Epstein at Fox News, “Bernanke Didn’t ‘Save’ the Economy”:

    “Because his economic philosophy hasn’t changed, his celebrated policies are simply a rehash of the folly [in 2001 to 2003] that created the housing bubble. The Fed is printing more money, lending it more cheaply than Greenspan did, and encouraging Americans (and their government) to borrow and spend far more than they can afford. That such a policy has laid the foundation for an enduring “recovery” has all the plausibility of President Bush’s 2003 ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner.”

UPDATE 2: Too late!

Senate Reconfirms; Bernanke Says, "Come to the Bar, Drinks Are On Dollar-Holders"

Still, as C.W. at Krazy Economy suggested before the reconfirmation was announced, maybe we should be grateful for small mercies. “Obama's appointee would be worse."

UPDATE 3: Cato’s Chris Moody has more good post-SOTU links (which I’m sure he won’t mind me pasting here):

• Cato experts give Obama’s State of the Union a video fisking.
  
  

• Are we watching the History Channel or something?  Because this new president sure does sound a lot like the old one.

• Time for the SOTU fact check:  Cato experts put some of President Obama’s core State of the Union claims to the test. Here’s what they found.

• Flashback to February 2009: Gene Healy on how “the president talks too much.“

• During this year’s SOTU, President Obama criticized the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case. Today’s podcast examines the Court’s ruling.

UPDATE 4: The Republican’s chosen official response to President Zero’s  SOTU speech came from new Virginia governor Bob McDonnell. It was wet, it was wooden, but it shows Republicans what like to at least look like they’re listening to Tea Party types. (Quin Hillyer calls it “by far the most effective SOTU response I have EVER heard in 30 years of listening to these things.” Crikey.)

But no matter how wet and wooden it was, and how little McDonnell really means any of what he says – you suspect much of it is said more to attract back Tea Party Independents than out of any real conviction --wouldn’t you like to hear John Boy Key invoking Thomas Jefferson, talking about freedom and liberty, and the urgency of reducing the size of government.

In A Declaration Of Independents Paul Hsieh said, "Politicians had better start listening to the independent voters who want "the Democrats out of their pockets and the Republicans out of their bedrooms." Maybe some of them are.  A little.

But this time, “can independents finally make it clear that they are for limited government?"

UPDATE 5: The Ayn Rand Center (ARC) summarises the State of the Union speech in one sentence.  That sentence:

“We need to rise above fear, hesitation, and partisan politics--to give the government all the power it needs to solve all our problems.

The President named dozens of problems in America, notes the ARC’s Alex Epstein, and not once suggested that individual rights, liberty, or freedom were the solution. From a quick reading of the speech, some statistics:

“Number of times President Obama said ‘I’: 105--mainly pushing for the government programs he seeks to pass.

“Number of times President Obama said ‘individual rights’: 0.

“Number of times President Obama said ‘liberty’: 0.

“Number of times President Obama said ‘freedom’: 1--but it was freedom for Afghanistan.”

UPDATE 6: That wasn’t a SOTU address, says Jeff Perren, it a STFU address:

    “Last night, Barack Obama decided to skip the SOTU Address and give instead the STFU Address. He told the American people in essence to STFU, that everything he's been doing the past year is the right thing, and then some, and that anybody who disagrees is an obstructionist, opposed to what's best for Americans.”

UPDATE 7: What if the president were to “discover the writings of people like Henry Hazlitt, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand?”  In that unlikely event, Richard Ebeling has the very piece he would have delivered, called,

 "The Address Obama Should Have Given - For a Change to Freedom."

UPDATE 8: There’s definitely been a tipping point in the global warming charade.  From Climate Realists comes this clip from the SOTU speech:

 

    “Watch as Obama is laughed at during his state of the union address after referring to the ‘overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.’ First the audience laughs, then Pelosi, next Biden and finally Obama himself smirks at the insanity of his remark.”

Google Shrugged

From Liberty Scott:

Google says no to the Communist Party of China
    “. . .  the announcement by Google that it will pull out of China unless it can provide a free open uncensored service is astonishing. It has justified it on the grounds that there have been hacking attempts at Gmail accounts from China, and presumably it has little recourse to the Chinese authorities to prosecute this. However, it is a brave move in the country that has now got the largest number of internet users in the world.
    “Google has apparently stopped censoring google.cn, which must be causing great angst amongst the Chinese government and the Communist Party. Previously censored articles and images of Tiananmen Square, critiques of Mao Tse Tung and support for Chinese dissidents, Taiwan and indeed much porn will now be easily accessible.
    “More important than that, Google has let all users in China know of its policy. It has called upon the 300 million or so Chinese internet users to note what their government is doing . . .   kudos to Google. It [has] declared its hand as being the search engine for a free world, it [has] shown how a private company can frighten the world's largest authoritarian government . . .”

Go Google.  Perhaps they’ve learned something from last year’s Tea Parties about saying “no” to government goons?

Just the facts, ma'am [Update 2]

Deborah Hill-Cone suggests in today's Business Herald that "bitter bloggers" who lambast the mainstream media for its manifest failings are duty bound to solve old media's problems for them, i.e., to shed some light on "how the [mainstream] media might turn a buck so we [the royal "we"?] can fund quality journalism." Ironically, her column is not online, so her audience have to rely on bloggers to retype it all for her, but here's her main beef, that

"all this old versus new media aggro is just a distraction from the fact that neither [bloggers nor] Rupert Murdoch . . . have an answer for the future of journalism."

Well, it's not like I'm duty bound to solve all the problems for the profession of journalism (there's more than enough problems in my own profession of architecture, thanks very much), but here's a simple enough solution for the old media to adopt -- so simple that even a journalist might understand.  Here it is::

            Recognise the division of labour, boys and girls, and just report the news!

We, the bloggers, can get on with commenting on the news, since that's what we do best; and you get on with finding and reporting the news, since that's what you're supposed to do best. In other words:

• don't editorialise;
• don't pontificate;
• don't ask how people feel, ask instead what they saw;
• don't report events as if people are outraged, just report the events themselves;
• dobn't report what everyone knows is transparent science fiction; report real science fact instead;
• don't report what "celebrities" do as if it matters a damn;
• don't report puff pieces about actors/musicians/writers as if they're not just puff-pieces for their new film/album/book;
• don't report what everyone knows is just spin) -- report instead what's being spun, and the news that someone is spinning, and who;
• don't assume the whole world has the same values as your friends;
• don't just rewrite press releases as if they were news;
• and don't create the news yourself.
• In short, just report the news. All of it. As if the truth actually mattered.

Your role model in this new endeavour should not be Woman's Day, which your front pages and the Six O'Clock News more and more resemble, but the classic private detective whose motto should be hung over your desk in copperplate lettering: "Just the facts, ma'am."

This week offers the perfect example of why people are switching off the mainstream. With 400,000 Americans taking up pro-freedom signs against their government, the mainstream media has either pretended they don't exist -- preferring instead to focus on the tough issues like the new White House dog -- or tried to suggest all the protesters are insane. Meanwhile, the issue of the week in New Zealand, according to every news report every time I switch on the local media, is the latest in the Tony Veitch saga -- giving numb-nut so-called journalists the opportunity to interview each other over how well they did (or didn't) handle the story, and Mark Sainsbury and John Campbell the chance to wring their hands over the courage/bravery/pluckiness [delete one] of the two protagonists.

No wonder no one can take mainstream journalism seriously any more. Instead of Philip Marlowe, we have to endure endless re-runs of Barbara Cartland.

UPDATE 1: Why do so many journalists blog, despite their apparent opposition to the concept? Simple, says one journalist cum blogger: "there’s a part of me that loves blogging because you’re allowed to break the journalism rules."

So read on here, journalists, for the top 10 journalism rules you should go right ahead and break on your blog. Do it, it's okay.

UPDATE 2:  Deborah Hill-Cone's blog column is now online.

Tea Party follow-up [update 2]

You won't be finding any commentary on yesterday's Tea Party protests in the local media (too much time spent talking about how they covered themselves in glory in the Veitch affair), and as Chris Richards at CATO points out, even the mainstream US media is doing its best to ignore them, or to smear them.

Fox News and MSNBC are having fun with the taxpayer tea party protests today [while the rest concentrate instead on Obama's new dog] . Fox News is playing up the protests, while MSNBC hosts are making jokes about “tea-bagging,” while pretending that the protests were all orchestrated by Sean Hannity. I’ll be attending the protests in D.C. today, and I’m hoping that the message isn’t just anti-Obama because the Republicans are every bit as guilty as the Democrats for the government’s fiscal mess. MSNBC hosts who think that the colonists didn’t mind taxes, but were just upset about the “without representation” part, should read Alvin Rabushka’s massive tax history leading up to 1776, Taxation in Colonial America.

So in the absence of local coverage, I'll try to do the job for you on the coast-to-coast Government-is-out-of-control protests by posting some related commentary, links and resourcers from people I like, or who are still doing their job (and don't forget all the pics and links I posted yesterday).

• Penn Jillette (from Penn & Teller) talks to Glenn Beck at the Alamo Tea Party, talks down Republicans, and talks up Atlas Shrugged.
  
  
• Rational Jenn talks to 16,000 people at the Atlanta Tea Party.
  
  
• Ari Armstrong has compiled pics and interviews with protesters at the Denver Tea Party, which gives you an idea of the sort of people protesting: the same sort of people, I think, who turned up in New Zealand last year at John Boscawen's Democracy Rationing protests.
  
  
• On Tax Injustice Day, Edwin Locke takes on the real enemy: Altruism vs. America.
  
  
• Walter Williams reminds readers "Democracy and majority rule give an aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny. The founders of our nation held a deep abhorrence for democracy and majority rule."
  
  
• Thomas Sowell writes on Tax Cuts and the "Trickle Down" Economics Straw Man. "Spending creates deficits -- and it is big spenders who fight hardest against cutting tax rates."
  
  
• Jeff Scialabba at the Ayn Rand Center reckons "supporters of the upcoming tea parties need to base their protest on a consistent intellectual framework.
  
  The protests are right in spirit, but are lacking the clear and consistent principles necessary to sustain a real change in the culture. I referred readers last week to an elaboration on what those guiding principles should be: avideo presentation, “Atlas Shrugged: America’s Second Declaration of Independence.” The Ayn Rand Center has added a new page to our website with content that explores these issues further.
  
  It looks great.
  
  
• A CNN reporter at the Chicago Tea Party is confronted by a protester about her style, her choice to highlight only the crazies and the wingnuts, and her claims that everyone there is nuts.
  
  
• Jeff Perren has a slogan he wishes he'd thought of: "Obama Economics, Chains You Can Believe In."
  
  
• Briggs Armstrong from the Mises Institute attended the Auburn, Alabama Tea Party and "for the majority of the time when Republicans were speaking, I couldn't help but think 'where were you for the last eight years?'."
  

What else have you got?

UPDATE: Is this the sign of the day? It is at least the short answer to all those who claim that Alan Greenspan was carrying out some sort of Objectivist agenda at the Fed:


And here's a couple of collections of links, the first from Noodle Food, the second from the Titanic Deck Chairs blog, which includes several plum Rand references from 'round the Tea Parties. I loved this one in particular from the Dallas Tea Party, where the organiser

concluded by quoting John Galt’s oath: I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.'

Stunning.

UPDATE 2: Terrific speech here by historian John Lewis at the Charlotte, North Carolina Tea Party.


And don't forget to check out the Ayn Rand Tea Party blog for more, including this post-speech interview with Lewis.

Quote of the day: Samuel Adams

The quote of Tea Party Day -- the Day of the 400,000 -- comes from Founding Father Samuel Adams, courtesy of Walter Williams: "The Tea Parties today were very impressive," says Williams. Remember,

"It does not take a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."

-Samuel Adams

Yaron calls for a REAL Tea Party! [Update 9]

Yaron Brook analyses the Tea Parties on Pajamas TV, calling for an intellectual revolution to back up the Tea Party activism out on the streets. (NB: You have to sit through a short ad bagging the MSM before the interview starts.)

On this point, the first Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution itself is germane. As they point out at Bureaucrash, the real revolution happened not in 1773 in the Boston harbor or in 1776 with the “shot heard round the world” at the Battle of Lexington and Concord but in the decades leading up to that date with the revolution inside people's heads. Take to heart the words of Samuel Adams, who during his retirement years was fond of saying that the War for Independence was a consequence of the real American Revolution. The real revolution, he declared, had taken place in the minds and hearts of the colonists in the fifteen years prior to 1776. According to Adams, the American Revolution was first and foremost an intellectual revolution.

That's what's needed now.

• NB: Feel free to send me more Tea Party links either by email or in the comments , and I'll post them below. After all, we're not going to read about them in the MSM, are we.

UPDATE 1: There's been Tea Parties all over, in around 500 different locations, people mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Roundup here at the Tax Day Tea Party, and more pics here. Daily Pundit reports on the SF Tea Party, held outside Fancy Nancy Pelosi's office. Favourite signs:


More signs here from the Tea Party in Al Bore's locale:

And from Springfield, Illinois:

Austin, Texas:

Hartford, Connecticut:

New Haven, Connecticut:

Flemington, New Jersey:

Gilbert, Arizona:


UPDATE 2: Don Boudreaux is tea-ed off with Paul Krugman and the New York Times:

Paul Krugman criticizes the anti-tax tea parties to be held around the country on Wednesday ("Tea Parties Forever," April 13). But Mr. Krugman's message never rises above tabloid journalism. Rather than address the issues, he merely rehashes absurdities spewed (mostly years ago) by right-wingers such as Tom DeLay and Karl Rove. The implication is that, because the likes of Messrs. DeLay and Rove oppose higher taxes, persons who attend these tea parties must be similarly crazy partisans. But is it really so absurd for ordinary Americans to be furious that Uncle Sam now promises to run up $9.3 trillion in debt during the next decade - an unfathomable sum that will inevitably lead to much higher taxes or higher inflation or both? Is it small-minded to oppose corporate welfare for automakers, banks, and insurance companies? Is it lunatic to fear further socialization of medical-care provision? Do these concerns really signal that those of us who hold them are, as Mr. Krugman alleges, "refusing to grow up"? One need not agree with the tea-partiers to concede that these worries are ones that reasonable people can, and do, have.

UPDATE 3: Obama responds to Tea Baggers: "I simply want to rule you," paraphrases the Rational Capitalist.

This is prime Obama pragmatism on display[says the Rational Capitalist]. Notice that he claims to start from a 'simple premise': Marxism. . .

UPDATE 4: John Hindraker of Powerline smacks down the MSM's insistence that Tea Party protestors are just "right wing extremists."

UPDATE 5: More cool signs, courtesy of Bosch Fawstin and Amy Peikoff:

UPDATE 6: Rational Jenn records a one-minute speech for Atlanta's big screens, and takes her kids along. (Go, Jenn.)

UPDATE 7: Mish has a couple more cute kids:



UPDATE 8: Some great pics from Sweet Obamatown Chicago, and a cool video of the action.





UPDATE 9: Rochester, NY: