Yeah, I’m just all kinds of sittin’ here coming up with stuff to yell at the world as it passes by my door. Blame the fact that I was up all night thinking and playing Epic Pet Wars.
I may agree with many things that many of the Tea Party people are trying to accomplish. But they’re not just making statements about how to change what’s different. They’re acting many times with hate. I’m all for limited government (ya think?!?) and better fiscal policy. But I’m not one for mean slogans scrawled on posterboard.
And I’m also over this whole “glorifying the terrorists of the past” thing. Because that’s what the Boston Tea Party was. Terrorism.
I do have one idea though. It makes a statement about the direction we’re headed with all these bailouts and government health care schemes. It poetically echoes the whole Boston Tea Party without being terroristic AND making a modern point.
You know they’re talking about a federal tax on soda to pay for health care, right?
Well, they are. And if you Tea Party People want to step up your game you’ll stop with all this Tea stuff and start doing demonstrations where you put Mentos in Diet Coke and talk about being overrun by hot air. And how government is boiling over with too much interference in private life. It’s perfect.
*Popular beverage of the day? Check
*Protesting a tax thereon? Check
*Making a statement about limited government? Check
*Slightly crazy looking? Check
*Cruel and violent ? No check.
So it’s a little bit messy, yes. Just hose down after you get everything all gross and sticky. You’ll do one better than any Congress in recent memory.
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I don’t know if the Tea Party crowd, and Republicans in general, have done a sufficient job of explaining why high taxes are bad. For all people know, they just hate paying higher taxes (since a large portion of society has determined that wanting to keep more of one’s money is greed), but high taxes are typically a symptom of big gov’t, they just haven’t communicated that well.
But I agree, Tea partiers could jump on the whole right to consume whatever we want bandwagon since the liberals aren’t.
I disagree with the Boston Tea Party was terrorism though. Maybe I’m misinformed on my history, but didn’t they just target tea, not innocent civilians? Sounds like just plain old vandalism to me.
Re: Chance — Yeah, but people call the ELF-type groups terrorists too and they just target construction equipment.
Frankly, I find the “Tea Party” nominative hilarious myself. The original chant of “No taxation without representation” replaced with “No taxation without -WAAAAAHHHH WE LOST THE ELECTION.”
Cooper, that’s true, maybe we should rethink the label then.
Yeah, the whole word “terrorist” is in the eye of the beholder, really. While I wouldn’t have put the Boston Tea Party in that category, a lot of stuff the Americans did during the Revolutionary War was painted that way by the Brits back home– ununiformed snipers and ambushes, the attack of Trenton Christmas Night, etc. Honestly I was always unsure about the IEDs and car bombs in Iraq being called “terrorism.” Not that I like it, but attacking uniformed foreign military personnel on your home soil doesn’t seem like “terrorism” to me. Rather, I would call that guerrilla warfare. *shrug*
I think the shorthand version for “terrorist” now means, “Any ideologically driven (as opposed to profit motive) person/persons that uses kinetic force without direct state sponsorship.” I supposed by some reading of that definition, you could put the Boston Tea Party in there too. But you could call, say, pretty much any popular revolutionary force (Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, the Contras, etc). At the end of the day, it still comes down to who is writing and whether their narrative ends up on the winning side of history.
Just following up from twitter. I started following some Nashville blogs when I was at Blog Nashville conference a few years ago. We have a 12 trillion dollar national debt that was created by both Dems and Reps. The best bet to change things is the Tea Parties. The next election is 2010 and I hope we get deficit hawks. I always enjoy your posts and hope you have a healthy 2009.
Mark