What? No mainstream media covering this? Shocking!

[Jester]

First, I was pretty angry at what you wrote, and I wrote a pretty scathing reply, and my computer over heated and I lost that version... Probably a good thing. Now, I'm a bit remorseful, since I thought you and I were actually coming closer to agreement.

Perhaps you were radiating heat. Now I'm kind of curious as to what was in the flaming version. The current one is fiery enough.

The bottom line is that in this post you appear to be only looking at this from the lens of a far left wing extremist.

You caught me. I'm actually a Sandinista. Hasta la victoria siempre!

You don't even attempt to view your political opponents as human, or seem to believe other than the very worst about them. It would seem they are all ugly, hateful, racist, stupid, ignorant, bigots. I find that sad.

Is it your contention that humans are never ugly, hateful, racist, stupid, ignorant or bigoted? I try and call it like I see it. I didn't defend John McCain because I thought he was my political ally. I defended him because he genuinely tried, in his awkward way, to calm the beast being unleashed in the last days of his campaign.

And, by the by, as I said quite clearly in the very post you are replying to, not all, nor even most, Tea Party protestors are bigots or racists. But there is a solid core of anger that has boiled over again and again, in birtherism, in nonsensical attacks on Obama's religion (and I don't mean Jeremiah Wright), in warmed-over racism of the Mark Williams variety. It's not just a few wackos. There's no damn way it's 0.01%. Depending on how we're weighting for latent or subconsious, rather than overt, racism and bigotry, I might believe 10%, though I think the number is more like 25%. We're talking about a movement where only 40% of people will tell you Obama was born in the USA - and a full third will flat out tell you he wasn't. Tell me with a straight face there's no racial motivation in believing this ridiculous tripe, even if they don't recognize it themselves.

That's not even getting into the good solid hyper-godwinning of great oceans of signs calling Obama a communist, often in nonsensical conjuction with also calling him a fascist. We'll chalk that up to the same kind of hyperbole you find on the radical side of leftist protest culture.

Ok, so now you're going out to the right wing fringes.

Given that a major part of my thesis is quite explicitly that the too-right-for-the-Republicans fringe forms a key component of the Tea Party movement, this makes sense, no? Of course we're out on the fringes.

Well, the Progressive (government can make you better) movement and their muckrakers brought us Prohibition, Eugenics (with support by Marxist AF&L union leader Samuel Gompers), and Planned Parenthood (e.g. Margaret Sanger, the one that sought to limit the number of black babies born).

Yeah... eighty years ago. My views on prohibition are surely well known, and eugenics hasn't been even marginally acceptable by left or right since Hitler. The notion that this is the same "progressive" movement that exists today is Beckian paranoid nonsense. (Look out, the ghost of Woodrow Wilson is dragging the US towards oligarhy!)

The Klan, actually began as the underground organization affiliated with the southern Democrats that killed Republicans both black (freedmen) and white(scalawags). This was the mainstream in the late 1800's and earlier 1900's. If the Republicans erred then it was in compromising with the Democrats over reconstruction in the first place.

True. And, as someone from further north than the north, from a big city rather than a small town, as someone fairly high up the education curve, had I been alive and American in the late 1800s or the turn of the century, I probably would have been a Republican. Not that this means much of anything for me or for the Republicans, except that times have changed and so have politics.

Trent Lott, used to be a racist Democrat, when he made foolish statements at the University of Mississippi.

... along with Strom Thurmond, and other racist bigots who found the post-civil rights Democrats to be intolerable. Where, pray tell, did they go to? The Republicans, who were rebranding themselves as the supporters of... well, as Lee Atwater once famously put it, they couldn't say (and I do apologise - this is a direct and pertinent quote) "Nigger, nigger" anymore, so now they said "states rights" and "tax cuts". What used to be perfectly respectable intellectual positions about justice and the economy were now being grafted onto racist anger, as part of a political ploy to win the south. And boy howdy did it work - just look at the regional dispersal in Obama's numbers!

Funny how this overlaps with my thesis, that the Tea Parties are drawing almost exclusively from the right wing of the Republicans and beyond...

Robert Bryd, an actual former Klansman until his mid 30's, was in fact a Democrat his entire life.

Unlike his colleagues, he renounced his racist views, and called his time with the Klan the greatest mistake he ever made. This does not make him an untarnished good guy - far from it. But, unlike the Strom Thurmonds of the world, he tried to be a better person.

Yes, it was a big mistake for the Republicans to allow these racist Dixiecrat, blue dogs into the Republican party. They should have held strong to their principles as the party of Lincoln, and equality of justice for everyone.

I'm not a religious man, as you well know, but an Amen seems appropriate.

The fact remains, however, that they *did*. They abandoned their principles as the party of Lincoln in exchange for their pieces of silver - the votes of racists both overt and latent. That undercurrent in politics has not disappeared, and it is not restricted to an insignificant fringe.

Who is on the fringes of the Democratic party now? ALF, ELF, Marxists/Communists, M19CO, Revolutionary Action Movement, United Freedom Front, FALN, LARGO, etc. And, then I left unlisted, the racist paleoliberal fringe...

When you say "now", do you mean "thirty years ago"? M19CO hasn't existed for twenty five years. LARGO barely ever existed, and died almost as soon as it was born in 1970. The Panthers (whom I presume you mean by the RAM) died out in the late 1970s, though this hasn't prevented others from nicking the name. The United Freedom front died out in the 1980s. The FALN kicked the bucket in 1983. And so on.

Unnamed "Marxists/Communists" are surely out there (I've met some... strange people), but they usually have their own political parties, even in the US. But aside from some college flirtations with radicalism, their numbers are tiny, and their influence zero.

The ELF and ALF are certainly good examples of fringe groups with leftist causes. Pretty far beyond the outer limits of the Dems, though.

(Who the heck are the "racist paleoliberal fringe"? Paleoliberalism at the wiki seems to be distinctly unhelpful.)

Let's contrast that to what people like me want... That would be a small government (as small as is possible), which provides justice for all, and then gets out of our way and lets us thrive in peace.

If we're arguing about the Tea Parties, we're arguing about an existent group of people. If we're arguing about "people like you," not only will everything end up skirting the line of ad hominem, but it's impossible to nail down who we're talking about - we'll spend all day arguing about the truth of various Scotsmen.

The racism of the democratic party, and the beloved progressives has been to reinforce the class system. Yes, they make and keep people poor.

...

Yes, there is racism here built by both Democrats, and Republicans in reinforcing a system of unequal justice, which drives people onto government assistance in order to control them.

Are there anti-poverty policies that the Democrats have pursued that have backfired? Yes, absolutely. The big one is urban planning - what was intended to be housing, ended up as a ghetto. When the social infrastructure fell apart, the communities descended into crime and decay.

Is this because the Democrats wanted it that way? Yeesh, you accuse me of only seeing my opponents as monsters. Think about the motivation it would take to even consider such a strategy - to deliberately ruin the lives of millions upon millions in order to secure some votes. That's beyond cynical, that's into Orwell territory.

That this is a strategy that cuts across party lines is even more paranoid. Given that there are only two parties with a non-trivial share of the vote, why on earth do they require a dependent underclass? At least for the forseeable future, you gotta vote for one of the two, and if both parties are complicit, then the logic kind of collapses.

In a democratic republic, with a level playing field, the most industrious will rise to the top, regardless of where their origins were, their gender, their race, their age. And, yes, I see a difference between a free market system, and a free for all, market system.

Heartwarming. And no doubt, a country where interracial marriage was illegal, where lynchings were fairly common, where blacks and whites could not study at the same schools, where homosexuality was a crime, all within the memory of living people, is just going to hop aboard this meritocratic supertrain? Such that anyone suggesting any other policy is just race baiting, or trying to construct a dependent underclass?

I don't disagree with your ends. I don't even doubt that freedom is a very important component of the means. But history is not so easily cast off.

What is racist about trying to stop out of control government spending? Nothing... Which is why the rabid left and their press lap dogs are race baiting. Look at the angry, mostly white crowd... They must be racists!

It's what Lee Atwater said about the southern strategy. You don't talk about race directly. That'll just alienate people. Instead, you talk about things that people can tie back to race, things that incite racist anger without requiring racist language. You talk about welfare, knowing who your target audience thinks is getting all the welfare money. You talk about tax cuts, knowing who your audience thinks is getting the benefits of their taxes. You talk about states rights, knowing which federal laws your audience would like to see revoked. You talk about how illegal immigration is overrunning the borders, knowing who your audience is thinking of. You talk about Judicial activism, knowing which decisions your audience didn't like. You talk about how country has strayed from the constitution, you talk about "restoring" a lost order, you talk about how much more free people were so many years ago. You know that even if your audience doesn't put all the pieces together, somewhere in the back of the minds of enough of them to matter, the connections are being made.

Are these all perfectly acceptable positions, in and of themselves? Of course. That's the point. The strategy is to use the acceptable as code for the unacceptable. As Murray Rothbard correctly noted, if you just kind of gloss over the whole KKK bit, David Duke's platform isn't really so different from his brand of Libertarianism, and maybe there's a common cause to be made there. Y'know, definitely not racist, because Duke left all that behind him when he converted, surely. But an alliance nonetheless.

So, are you really trying to marginalize here? Your tactics are making my stomach turn.

Sorry. Might want to take some pepto-bismol, because the state of your stomach isn't convincing me.

Do we need to go back to the 70's, or the 30's to retrace the origins of fringes of Democrats, and fringes of Republicans.

The '30s are right out. But, then, I haven't brought up the '30s, at least as far as I can remember.

The '70s are only relevant insofar as strategies laid down then are still in use today. Aside from that, I'm happy to leave it to current events.

I'm sure the Democrats are friends with sewing circles, and local PTA's... While, their opponents choose cozy alliances with Stormfront, and the Klan. Very fair. How very objective of you.

I try.

First, if Don Black says, "I'm a Democrat", or donates money to the Hillary campaign what would you make of Democrats, and Hillary? She'd refuse it, and so would Rand Paul.

I'm reminded of the cheap Michael Moore trick of sending off cheques to candidates, to see which campaigns would cash them, even if they were from odious mortal enemies. My favourite was "Abortionists for Buchanan." That one actually did get cashed.

Obviously, it would say nothing about any of them, except perhaps that Don Black had finally lost whatever remaining marbles were rolling around in his skull.

Ever hear of Andy Stern? Are their alliances between the Democrats and SEIU?

No, actually, I hadn't. I'd heard of the SEIU, of course... where are you going with this? They're a union. He's an aggressive unionist. So?

Heard of SDS, the Weathermen, in Chicago? I don't need a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing...

Once again with the "groups that have not existed in my lifetime" meme? The Weathermen were bonkers, and rightly condemned in their time for political violence. But the group itself has not been in operation since forever. Their relevance to current events is pretty much zero, unless (as you have suggested in the past) you believe that Bill Ayers is still a dangerous crazy and profoundly in cahoots with Obama.

Are you intentionally attempting to make me angry? You know this is BS, so why do you try to peddle it here? Shame on you.

What is BS? That the Republicans pursued the Southern Strategy? That Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell decided in the 1990s to court "former" racists and paleoconservatives? That they were directly connected to the later Ron Paul movement? That the Ron Paul movement has been a vocal and active part of the Tea Party protests? That's all demonstrably true.

I can dig up the first Tea Party protest... In fact it was in NY, by some youngsters protesting the proposition of adding a hefty tax to soda pop. Then, Mary Rakivich, and my she seems *real* dangerous... not.

Were I claiming, as you seem to be suggesting, that all Tea Partiers are unreconstructed racists, then your existence claims would indeed refute my universal. However, I am not making any such claim.

Did you find any organized by David Duke? Lew Rockwell? Even Rothbard? Even Ron Paul? (In fact... the term limit loving Tea Partiers are looking to unseat the elder Paul. Shocking.)

Interestingly, one who agrees with you about Ron Paul is Dave Wiegel. And I agree that the two movements are far from identical, especially since the Tea Parties broadened out to embrace a large swath of conservative Republicans, rather than just the extreme anti-government Ron Paul crowd. Many of Paul's more Cato-aligned supporters are clearly not Tea Partiers. But much of the movement that gained steam as the "Ron Paul Revolution" has fed into the Tea Parties, and it's not hard to find Paul supporters, proteges, or even offspring in major Tea Party positions.

No doubt, the powers that be in the Republican party would rather a more pliant person in his seat, which may be driving some of these challengers. I would presume so. I seriously doubt the Tea Party could muster much enthusiasm to overthrow Paul, but he's a small enough fish that he could conceivably be eaten by the sharks.

David Duke clearly wants to be identified with the Tea Parties. How many there find him appealing, is an open question. I give no credence to anything David Duke says, so his word on the matter is worth zero. But that doesn't mean the opposite of what he says is automatically true. It only means we need to find out some other way.

Murray's been dead for 15 years, so clearly he's not organizing anything. Lew seems more ambiguous - he seems to delight in pointing out how statist and Republican the Tea Parties have gotten.

But it was never about the intellectuals themselves, but rather about their audience. Nobody honestly gives a fig who Lew Rockwell supports, and even Ron Paul is just a small player in a big game now. But their followers turn out to events, join up with Tea Parties, make shiny "Ron Paul Revolution" signs to hang.

No. You are tossing crap into their bed. Literally crap.

Are the beds and the tossing literal too?

In that Stormfront, or David "KKK" Duke are attempting to slip into the crowds, may or may not be true.

It's true. We don't need to guess at that - Duke is clearly interested in inserting himself into this movement.

But, it is wrongful repetition of false information, and why you are listening to the crap spewing from David Duke, or Frickin Don Black and repeating it as facts? Are they usual sources of information for the Left?

I don't believe anything David Duke or Don Black says. I haven't cited them, I haven't quoted them, I am not relying upon them for the tiniest hint of information, except at face value as evidence of the obvious, that they are both interested in associating themselves with the Tea Parties.

I could produce a long list of Democrats who've said racially hateful things in the past ten years. I could produce a list of hateful people who've contributed money to democratic candidates. Does this taint the Democratic Party, of course not. Any reasonable person would see the same relationship here. I can only surmise that you are being intentionally blind on this.

I believe I've made my position pretty clear. Not all Tea Party supporters are bigots. Not even most. And of those that are, I'm sure most aren't even consciously bigoted, they're simply influenced by the racial undertones without being directly aware of it.

It does mean they will need to be doubly vigilant, not only from the *real* racists who try to side show, but also the democrat operatives who attempt to manufacture negative press, and the leftist propagandists, yourself included, who use *any* pretext to undermine, marginalize, and demonize an activist movement where 99.99% of them are expressing their rights to peacefully assemble and speak their grievances.

If I'm a propagandist, I'm doing a pretty crappy job of propagating my message - I post here, and just about only here, to an audience of surely dozens! I'm certainly not a democratic (the correct adjective, rather than the pejorative "democrat") operative of any stripe. If I'll use *any* pretext, then I'm doing an even worse job of that - there are surely thousands of pretexts left unused!

Will wing nuts show up? I would guess, since they are public events, yes, they still will show up.

Less and less, no doubt. As the movement becomes more mainstream, more an arm of the Republican party than a motley crew, they'll take Karl Rove's advice and purge the crazies. It's already started, you can see it in the shiny mass produced signs with carefully messaged slogans on them replacing the older wacky outpouring free expression, good and bad.

This is totally low, even for you.

Thank you, I'll be here all year. Glad to know you think so highly.

Those people were booted from the protests, before they even started. Dale Robertson, Mark Williams, and the other four or five were chastised and booted. They are not welcome.

Y'know what? I'll give you Dale Robertson. Guy's a kook, and I'd buy that he was drummed out long before his racist sign became infamous.

But Mark Williams? That guy was regularly stepping over the lines for a whole year before anything was done about him - and even that only after he'd gone so far over the top in reaction to his previous racism. He was calling Obama (on CNN, no less) an "Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief" and claiming that Islam worships a "monkey god". (Which he later apologized for... to Hindus, for having offended their actual monkey god by association.)

He didn't get turfed the day, week, or month after making those comments. He got turfed a year later - and the movement isn't even 2 years old! I'm not saying he's in any sense typical, but as a big-time public spokesman for the movement, it sure didn't reassure me that they were seriously sensitive about racism in their midst.

But, you forget so quickly that at the RNC convention in the Twin Cities... Protesters were arrested before the event for plotting to toss bags of cement from overpasses onto buses. For filling balloons with urine, blood, and feces to hurl onto delegates. For making pipe bombs, smoke grenades, and other items of destruction. Police in riot gear dispersing crowds with tear gas, who tip over cars and set them on fire, throw rocks at the police, and through windows. Not to mention the hateful things on the signs they carry... But, that of course is A-OK with you, right?

Yes, of course it is, because those are lef...

Waaaaaait a minute. You're trying to trick me!

(Er... where did I say that I approve of leftist protest culture? I hate leftist protest culture.)

I fully support the rights of any group to peacefully assemble and protest whatever they want. I don't think protesting, in its modern incarnation, is a super useful tactic, and this is a large part of why - even if your intentions are pure as driven snow, the messaging is terrible. You get whatever you're saying mixed up with whatever the black booted anarchist next to you is saying. Heck, he may even be a provocateur, in which case, you're really in for a ride. Dumb way to make a good argument, great way to make a bad one.

-Jester

Afterthought: "I'm finished."