Liberalism as a political movement ... never made sense in spite of the fact that the majority of Americans since the War Between the States have been liberals, whether they knew it or not. It took what James Kalb calls advanced liberalism, coming in the last quarter of the 20th century, to bring the American public to a sort of political Great Awakening, in which they find themselves, somewhat groggily, shaking themselves and rubbing their eyes. Or rather, one half of the American public, the other having converted—as it seems, irredeemably—to the advanced-liberal ideology, which is really the old liberalism stretched and distorted and pummeled from its youthful naive falsity into senile surrealism. The arrival of advanced liberalism has divided the United States between the New and the Old America, a division that is unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future but is becoming, rather, more fixed and rigid ... Liberals blame an unenlightened reactionary mass for the divide, but in truth the fault is theirs, and all theirs. Advanced liberalism demands that people think, believe, and act in ways that it is simply unnatural for human beings to think, believe, and act ...
One take on the Tea Party movement is that it is essentially libertarian in character and therefore not such a departure from liberalism. Williamson prefers the idea that the movement reflects a divison in the US between those who do and do not accept an advanced liberalism (he does portray the Tea Party, though, as a largely unfocused, populist movement rather than one with a clear anti-liberal aim).
It's not easy to get a good understanding of the real character of the movement from here in Australia. I intend to write some posts in coming weeks looking at the different interpretations of the Tea Party.
10 comments:
As I mentioned in a previous post, the overall effect of modern liberalism is to create a society of representative egalitarianism, where each group in society has its own elite, at the expense of the majority.
From about 1890-1965, progressive liberalism was actually very popular because it followed the ulitarian principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, and cross-fertilised with populist movements.
Today, populism has withered away, and the liberal right supports the white commercial elite while the liberal left supports the new minority elites.
Note I'm talking about the effect of applying the principles of liberalism rather than its principles per se. Both the liberal right and left are anti-elitist in principle, but the effect of their policies differs from its intended effects as liberals fail to see the underlying realities of the society they are trying to change, as well as their own self-conscious motivations.
Sorry,that last line was supposed to read "unconscious motivations".
Trust me, the Tea Party in the USA is libertarian but also socially conservative. They despise gay marriage as a concept, abortion and one-world feel good internationalism. Most of the tea party are serious christians who just want to work hard for the country they love and raise their family in peace without progressives trying to tell them what to do.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/10/05/130353765/new-poll-tea-party-overwhelmingly-christian-and-socially-conservative
For me, this movement is clearly alihned with our human instincts, and in time, this worldview will dominante the Western world as it tries to regain its dignity.
One way to gauge the average tea party attendee is by looking at the people attending Glenn Beck's rally for 'restoring honor' on August 28. 500,000 people attended.
For those who don't know, Beck is a libertarian who wants to emulate the constitution as advocated by the founding fathers. He has a popular 5 o'clock show on FOX News.
Way off topic.
Frazer-Kirk has settled in the DJ's sexual harassment case.
So she said previously:
1: It wasn't about the money this was about raising the issue as a social concern. The large figure only helped raise attention.
2. Again it wasn't about the money she would donate it to charity.
So it clearly was about the money, um surprise. Apparently she has a history of sexual harassment claims. We have found the new way to get rich. I hope she goes down in history as the biggest gold digger of all time.
She clearly had them over a barrel there's no knowing how much she could have made. Apparently she previously rejected an 8 million dollar deal.
Davout wrote,
"One way to gauge the average tea party attendee is by looking at the people attending Glenn Beck's rally for 'restoring honor' on August 28. 500,000 people attended."
This is true, to a point. It is also instructive to read what Mr. Beck said and the Tea Partiers wildly cheered on.
Beck is a right liberal, now flirting with left liberal racial orthodoxy. As James Edwards has pointed out, Beck now thinks even our Founding was written by anti-black racists. The Civil Rights era/Martin Luther King is just about the only part of American history Beck wouldn't re-write.
It's kind of discouraging to see so many Tea Partiers (in my own family too!) look at this guy as some kind of messiah.
I've concluded two things about the Tea Party:
1. It has made Anglo-American discontent with Obama and Co. very public and very loud.
2. It is channeling that discontent into support for men like Beck, who are just a few steps shy of Obama and Co.
Yes its certainly channelling discontent and I think that's good/great. It's important that this is channelled into positive directions. If we look at a couple of the names big in the press at the moment, Palin and the woman from Delaware, they are both unusually ignorant for politicians about important elements of the political process, eg neither could name any leading recent Supreme court decisions. It can't just be a competition to say who's the most pissed off, there has to be competence there too.
Bartholomew,
I agree that Beck doesn't have his ducks lined up in a row and he is definitely not coherent, even as a libertarian. For instance, I recently heard him saying that Americans were right to persist in Afghanistan because 'of the plight of Afghan women'. However, I disagree that he is a few steps away from Obama and co.
He is an average joe who discovered how to think beyond his nose and is still on a learning curve.
I agree that his sucking up to the blacks is annoying. To say James Armistead won the war is ludicrous upon examination. He certainly provided valuable assistance at Yorktown, the pivotal battle, but the war would have likely been won ANYWAY because the French blockaded the port and Cornwallis would have run out of food and munitions. Beck hates the French and would rather credit a black spy than the French for winning the pivotal battle in the revolutionary war.
I keep getting E-mails from Americans who over-optimistically assume that Australia is going to acquire its very own Tea Party movement. In vain do I try to persuade such people that nothing could be less Australian than any sort of desire for freedom.
The Tea Party isn't socially conservative. Glenn Beck's, Sarah Palin's, etc are all part of the media representation of social conservatives. Aka:''Social conservatives are all lunatics!''. Remember that the MSM is dominated by left-liberals and in reality Glenn Beck's, etc are most likely posers, fakes or liars (or even liberals themselves).
If you want social conservatism go to MereOrthodoxy or something of the sort.
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