Ayn Rand always maintained that capitalism's alleged friends, the conservatives, were doing more to undermine it than its avowed enemies.
This is why I will not be attending the July 4th Tea Party being held in Oklahoma City tomorrow. I have learned that Charlie Meadows, chair of OCPAC - Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee - will be a "featured" speaker. Mr. Meadows is an avowed theocrat and no friend of freedom: he is one of those who uses free market rhetoric to put over a religious agenda.
The fact that Mr. Meadows has been chosen for such a position seems to substantiate my concerns that the the Tea Party movement in Oklahoma is being taken over by the Religious Right. The Tulsa Tea Party has allowed itself to be used by openly theocratic candidates to promote their campaigns and the OKC Tea Party organizers are promoting the 912 groups of religious conservatives.
On top of this, the OKC Tea Party organizers have shut down their discussion board at okcteaparty.org and removed the discussion forums from their Facebook page.
The organizers of the July 4th event have not even announced a program for their event tomorrow.
These people are not friends of freedom and I want nothing further to do with them.
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Congratulations. The Tea Party organizations are not ad hoc groups with a single issue around which people of differing ideologies might gather for the short-term. (Opposition to a particular sales tax increase would be an example.)
ReplyDeleteInstead, based on what I have seen, the TPs are often broad and generally statist groups who use some undefined terms that "sound" good but dangerously lack definition. For example, they often say they support "limited" government -- but limited by what, God's word or a tradition-bound constitution?
There may be some local groups in some locations which are like forums for disparate approaches. I can understand participating in such events by speaking, for example, or handing out literature. I suspect as time passes that these open forums will continue coalescing into obviously conservative organizations.
Conservatism (valuing God, Tradition, Nation, and Family) is an enemy of Objectivism.
I don't think any Objectivists advocate going to tea parties for the sake of reaching a wider public audience and promoting the right reasons for. (The tea parties just don't have mass audience appeal.)
ReplyDeleteThe reason to go to tea parties is to reach the tea party protesters themselves. Sure there are plenty of unsavory people there. But not all of them are. The reason to attend is to find the better people and tell them about Ayn Rand.
There's no sanction of the unsavory types involved in going to such an event. Precisely because it is not well-organized, it's a motley crew of different characters, each bidding for the attention of the others. Nobody will confuse the Objectivists with the paleolibertarians and conservatives. The point is to go and distinguish Objectivism from the rest, and attract the better types to Objectivism.
NS
I attended the Tax Day Tea Party for many of the above reasons.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do not believe the "better" type of conservative would be attracted by speakers such as Charlie Meadows or Sally Kern.
Or Randy Brogdon for that matter.
So I'm skipping this event.
I have been attending the some of the westernmost Tea Parties in Maui Hawaii. The common thread is taxes being wasted on huge bills that our supposed
ReplyDeleterepresentatives don't even have the decency to read.
I also believe we all feel the Constitution is being watered down daily. Socialism and many already broken promises have a good number of the registered democrats I spoke to in fear of this administrations agenda. I personally have been greatly insulted and had expletives shouted at myself and my 5 year old daughter just for a peaceful demonstration of my views. If you disagree with this administration your either a redneck or the race card is pulled from the bottom of the deck. The first amendment among others is in jeopardy. Sometimes I feel like a lemming in the middle of the bunch that knows there's a
cliff ahead. Other times it seems as though I'm sitting in the bar of the Titanic as she goes down.
Wake up America Obama is not the Messiah!