Teabaggers: More John Birch than John Adams

[cali]

Black Helicopters Over Nashville

Never mind Sarah Palin and the tricornered hats. The tea-party movement is dominated by conspiracist kooks.
By Jonathan Kay | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Feb 9, 2010

The tea-party movement has no leader. But it does have a face: William Temple of Brunswick, Ga. For months, the amiable middle-aged activist has been criss-crossing America, appearing at tea-party events dressed in his trademark three-cornered hat and Revolutionary garb. When journalists interview him (which is often—his outfit draws them in like a magnet), he presents himself as a human bridge between the founders' era and our own. "We fought the British over a 3 percent tea tax. We might as well bring the British back," he told NPR during a recent protest outside the Capitol.


It's a charming act, which makes the tea-party movement seem no more unnerving than the people who spend their weekends reenacting the Civil War. But the 18th-century getups mask something disturbing. After I spent the weekend at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tenn., it has become clear to me that the movement is dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality. It's more John Birch than John Adams.


<snip>

Steve Malloy, author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life, kicked off the first full day of conference proceedings by warning that Obama and his minions are conspiring to control every aspect of Americans' lives—the colors of their cars, the kind of toilet paper they use, how much time they spend in the shower, the temperature of their homes—all under the guise of U.N. greenhouse-gas-reduction schemes. "Obama isn't a U.S. socialist," Malloy thundered. "He's an international socialist. He envisions a one-world government."

<snip>

Perhaps the most distressing part of all is that few media observers bothered to catalog these bizarre, conspiracist outbursts, and instead fixated on Sarah Palin's Saturday night keynote address. It is as if, in the current overheated political atmosphere, we all simply have come to expect that radicalized conservatives will behave like unhinged paranoiacs when they collect in the same room.

That doesn't say much for the state of the right in America. The tea partiers' tricornered hat is supposed to be a symbol of patriotism and constitutional first principles. But when you take a closer look, all you find is a helmet made of tin foil.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/233331/page/2

[TexasObserver]

1. Recommend

[The_Commonist]

2. I'm sorry, cali...

I was trying to rec this, naturally, and accidentally hit unrec.
Computer glitchiness!
Here, have a heart...

[cali]

4. aw, thanks so much.

:hug:

[Blue_Tires]

3. I wish more of this had come out during the primaries

because most of these people are the remnants of the Ron Paul brigades, and the media gave them a surprising amount of legitimacy when any observation shows they are nuttier than the Larouche crowd...

[gratuitous]

5. Quelle suprise

But as the tea baggers never tire of telling us, just because they're chock full of racists and bigots, the Tea Party isn't racist, so stop saying that.

[UTUSN]

6. K&R #7 for another great O.P. topic!1 n/t

[bullwinkle428]

7. This tri-cornered douchebag doesn't know the FIRST THING about

the Boston Tea Party! It was a protest against a CORPORATE TAX CUT given to the British East India Company!

"The real Boston Tea Party was a protest against huge corporate tax cuts for the British East India Company, the largest trans-national corporation then in existence. This corporate tax cut threatened to decimate small Colonial businesses by helping the BEIC pull a Wal-Mart against small entrepreneurial tea shops, and individuals began a revolt that kicked-off a series of events that ended in the creation of The United States of America.

They covered their faces, massed in the streets, and destroyed the property of a giant global corporation. Declaring an end to global trade run by the East India Company that was destroying local economies, this small, masked minority started a revolution with an act of rebellion later called the Boston Tea Party."

http://www.thomhartmann.com/2009/04/15/the-real-boston-tea-party-was-against-the-wal-mart-of-the-1770s/

[pnorman]

8. Thanks for that Thom Hartmann excerpt!

I'll most likely be using it pretty soon.