SWGA Politics

Listening To The People?

On April 15, 2009, hundreds of thousands of Americans literally took to the streets to protest the federal government.  The entire staff of SWGA Politics hit the tea parties, with Bill Waller serving as co-organizer of the Albany Tea Party and I as a speaker.  Jeff was conspicuous at the Leesburg Tea Party as well.  This was, in my opinion, one of the finest moments in American History.  It was the system of free speech at work.

However, I read time and time again about how the tea parties were astroturfing.  In a recent post on The Democratic Strategist, attacks were leveled against some core libertarian groups.

In the piece, the author attacks FreedomWorks by saying:

• The organization was started by top Bush administration and Republican Party insiders including former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and Carl Forti, long-time communications director at the RNCC and earlier this year Political Director for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

• FreedomWorks major funder has been Billionaire Sheldon G. Adelson, who is the biggest gambling casino operator on the planet.

• FreedomWorks is currently headed by Dick Armey, now a corporate lobbyist whose firm represents, among others, Sheikh Mohammmed Bin Rishid Ad Maltoum, Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates on oil related issues and (in 2006) the Senate of Mexico on immigration issues.

 

So what? I’ve said before that I don’t care who comes to the dance, just so long as they’re there to dance.

However, things get ugly a short ways down. An attack against Rep. Ron Paul is point one:

In the 1990’s , Ron Paul has had a variety of connections with militia groups and racial organizations (Paul’s connection with militia and racist groups in the 1990’s is detailed here.

I chose to link to the Daily Kos piece because frankly, there’s ridiculously little there. A piece with racial overtones was in Dr. Paul’s newsletter. However, he didn’t write them. Could he have edited them? Yes, but as a proponent of free speech, I suspect Dr. Paul chose to let the words stand as they were.

And as for his ties to “militia groups and racial organizations”? Yes, he laid down a lot of what those groups wanted to hear in regards to things like the Fed. However, there are no “ties” that anyone demonstrates in that piece.

Of course, even Ayn Rand couldn’t escape the crosshairs, and she’s been dead for almost 30 years. The author writes:

• Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy is bitterly anti-Christian (dismissing Christianity as ”superstition” and religious faith as “extremely detrimental to human life” ) and deeply contemptuous of average working people (“The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains.”)

First, the author is right about Objectivism’s attitudes toward Christianity. Truthfully, it’s a militant athiest-type philosophy and so be it. However, that’s where the truth comes to an abrupt halt. The “average working man” is not an object of contempt in Objectivism. Instead, the “man at the bottom” is actually referring to those who refuse to work and instead expect to be served by those who actually do through government programs.

In her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, Rand shows a great many working men actually at Galt’s Gulch, John Galt’s paradise away from the looters and moochers of the world. Rand believed that people were either looters, moochers, or producers. Producers could easily be the engineer who creates an amazing invention, or the schmuck who works on the assembly line building it. It was about an attitude, which was earning what you get, rather than having it given to you.

These assertions show me that, if the author speaks for other democratic strategists, that the tea parties are being easily dismissed despite the first few paragraphs that indicated an understanding of people actually at tea parties. Alas, that seems to have gone away.

Instead, it’s easier to characterize us as kooks and extremists for expecting our voices to be heard. Truthfully though, could we expect anything else? One or two days of April 15 are far from enough. We must maintain this pressure, and we need to do it for years. When Obama is gone from 1600 Pennsylvannia Ave, we need to keep going.

It’s time that the government listens to the people, whether they want to or not.