fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Your incessant demand for essay answers is tiresome and transparent.
Tea Party relevance revisited
- Thread starter fossten
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fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Did the Democrat victories in 2006 and 2008 change the structure of America?
And I am looking at the bigger picture shag - one election does not a seachange make...
2008 - perhaps - Health Care could be a game changer - like SS or the great society/johnson
For starters, the redefined the Democrat party (moving it farther left) as well as, over time, redefining academia, the entertainment culture, media and other social institutions. There are countless other ways that they changed not only American politics but society in general. It is no coincidence that the politics of JFK would, in many ways, be considered moderate if not even right-leaning by today's standards.
In many ways, the tea party movement is the culmination of the much slower rise of conservatism/libertarianism that was, in many ways, a reaction to the relatively quick rise of the new left in the 1960's.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Denial is more than a river in Africa. Keep telling your fellow travelers this...it helps us.
It is only to get shag to understand that the 'new left' wasn't relevant in 1980. A huge grassroots movement that just faded away...
What changes did they really make Foss - we got out of Vietnam - but did that change the structure of America - no. Look at any conflict of the last 35 years - we haven't learned a thing.
And you give me 10 years... Do you really think that the current tea party activists will remain active in politics - we will see... The new left became the establishment - the tea party will become politics as usual.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Yes, fox. Keep banging that chicken. The Tea Party is a fad. Repeat it loud and often. The Democrats lost because they have a 'messaging problem.' The American people just aren't smart enough to appreciate what the Dear Leader is doing for them. They're just angry, racist white male rednecks who don't want to pay their fair share.
Did I miss any talking points?
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
You still fail to acknowledge that your prediction that the Tea Party would not impact the election AT PRESENT was HORRIBLY and delightfully wrong. Why would you be right about the second half of your prediction? A: No reason.
Actually, it redefined the Democrat party as well as many cultural institutions. It hardly "faded away". It got absorbed into those institutions. In fact, the farther leftward tilt of the Democrat party since the 1980's can still be traced, ideologically and causally to the rise of the New Left.
Specifically, academia became dominated by those New Left who became professors and started premising their lessons on the leftist worldview and getting the young, who are typically more radical then the old by their very nature, to buy into and expand on those notions. Give that a few generations to cycle through and you get to how polarized the left is now.
AGAIN, the new left REDEFINED the establishment (especially in institutions already dominated by the left or easily dominated by the left). They DID get absorbed, but they did not simply "fade away" as you infer.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
She doesn't understand. The Tea Party is even now planning to primary several Senators in 2012 and 2014, including Lindsey Grahamnesty and Mitch McConnell (unless he gets the message). Lena Micklewhite or Leeza Warshawski or whatever her name is will be on the list again, as well as a few others. If the GOP doesn't fly right, the TP will nail them to the wall.
The democrat party is further left than Roosevelt - come on shag... And I love how the right wants to embrace Kennedy - he wasn't even close to moderate, he was left... very.
Media is different - really - read a newspaper from the age of Lincoln? How about some political news in the Chicago Tribune from 1920 - or the Washington Post from the 40s - you gotta be kidding shag - media is just the same... if anything it was less biased in the 60s than it had been in a long time.
So, if the tea party is the new 'goldwaterism' why do you think that the outcome will be any different than what happened then?
See any cycles yet shag...
What redefined - different than Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson... I don't see it shag -
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Because the country is in real financial trouble thanks to liberal policies. I guess you don't watch current events...
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
LOL Kennedy would be considered a Republican by today's standards...
Your fellow travelers would rip him a new one.fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
LOL Kennedy would be considered a Republican by today's standards...
This is an important election -- in many ways as important as any this century -- and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort. The reason that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad, and the United States in their time had it, was because they moved this country here at home, because they stood for something here in the United States, for expanding the benefits of our society to our own people, and the people around the world looked to us as a symbol of hope.
I think it is our task to re-create the same atmosphere in our own time. Our national elections have often proved to be the turning point in the course of our country. I am proposing that 1960 be another turning point in the history of the great Republic.
Some pundits are saying it's 1928 all over again. I say it's 1932 all over again. I say this is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960s.
He lowered taxes - fiscal conservative? But he wanted to expand government - even though he said one thing in the election - he pushed for medicare, expanding SS, and if you really want to understand how he felt about big government after he got into office read his commencement speech at Yale in '62
cammerfe
Dedicated LVC Member
Because you don't want to see it.
Truman would be a conservative by today's standards (likely a neocon). Kennedy held some (modern day) conservative positions and would be at most a blue dog by today's standards. LBJ, FDR and Wilson were, in many ways farther left then their party was at the time but even they held some positions that, by today's standards would be considered conservative (specifically in the area of foreign policy and self-defense).
You have not confronted any of the facts and means given to show how the New Left redefined the Democrat party and many key social institutions. Ignoring them only hurts your argument.
…without principles, all reasoning in politics, as in everything else, would only be a confused jumble of particular facts and details, without the means of drawing out any sort of theoretical or practical conclusion.
-Edmund Burke
Politics is not simply a hodge-podge of policy differences (as you are implicitly representing it).-Edmund Burke
Politics is first and foremost a conflict of ideas and, more broadly, of worldviews. When you lose sight of that, you end up with a random collection of facts from which any conclusion can be plausibly drawn. As Hamilton pointed out, "...it is extremely easy, on either side, to say a great number of plausible things."
In focusing on individuals instead of ideas, in looking at movements as isolated incidents you are implicitly refusing to see the forest through the trees. No grassroots political movement is an isolated incident. There are many factors that lead to the rise of that grassroots movement.
The Democrats you mentioned played a part in the rise of the New Left (specifically the administrations of Wilson and FDR), in part by bringing new, radical ideas onto the national stage. Those ideas were then refined in various venues and entrenched into the growing broader ideology. This all coalesced in the rise of the New Left which then became self-sustaining and overtook the Democrat party, pushing it farther and farther left through out the following generations.
In much the same way that Wilson and FDR set up the New Left, Goldwater and Reagan set up the Tea Party Movement. Bush and the Republican's deviation from those principles caused a disillusionment among the silent majority and the radical Obama agenda was the straw that broke the camel's back (much as Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement were the more direct impetus for the New Left).
In focusing on individuals and specific movements, you are missing the underlying thread of ideas and worldviews that connect these grassroots movements to longer term political movements.
Ignoring ideology is an effective way to mislead (both self and others) and to make any narrative seem plausible. In this instance, it is an effective way to make the notion of the Tea Party being nothing but a flash in the pan seem likely.
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
Sounds like GW Bush. Thanks for affirming my point, fox. Although you could have saved yourself a bunch of rambling, ranty typing and just said, "Yeah, you're right."
fossten
Dedicated LVC Member
You've swerved into another principle here. America should be more about ideas and achievements/inventions rather than about kings and politics. By virtue of her debating tactics, fox is unwittingly giving herself away as a big government statist.
The Rule of Law vs. the Rule of Man.