Do you think there is a difference between Tea Baggers and Libertarians?

For non US members, or just US members that don't follow bullshit politics here's a bit of background.

Tea Baggers are members of the Tea Party Movement, a self-styled "third party" of American politics. The name is used unironically as a reference to the Boston Tea Party, a historical US political protest. their originally rallying point was to oppose the governments using public funds to "bail out" major banks that were claimed to be facing bankruptcy as a result of debt foreclosure. They embrace conservative ideals such as opposition to gun control, illegal immigration, abortion and gay marriage.

The American Libertarian Party is a political party whose main purpose is to oppose the government interference of private business. They claim to take a neutral stance on social issues, but they have been known to associate with politicians representing both Leftist and conservative (right wing) views. They have gained popularity amongst young people, generally in an informal way (IE: as not official registered party members but self-proclaiming to be part of their cause) in particular around the embrace of legalization of drugs and proponents of political conspiracy theories.

I won't give any examples right now for why they are the same or different, but let some discussion on it first.

S'far as I've been able to tell, there's significant overlap, but the term 'libertarian' is much broader and this shapes perception (and therefore use) of the term even when used with a capital letter, and the two remain separate organizations?

I think you're defining both slightly unfairly and mostly on those points where you object to them, but it's your discussion to polarize, I guess.

That is a good point. I think there is a considerable difference between the American Libertarian Party, the average American's perception of what a Libertarian is, and the philosophical notion of libertarianism as it's been used historically. Maybe that's a different discussion, but it seems relevant to me.

I dunno, I tried to describe those groups without leading as much as possible. it's a tie off between trying to give a quick but inclusive summary with being accurate. I can't only say nice things about them, that wouldn't really be fair would it?

Sounds to me like libertarianism the ideology has it's focus spread more evenly over personal and economic freedoms, while the political party probably suffers from the focus on business interests that comes with their need/want for party funds.

And well, I'm a cultural outsider here, but I'm almost certain they don't call themselves 'Tea Baggers'.

No, they really do. haha. It seems that people over 40 are not aware of that phrase as a euphemism.

lol.

well, looks like the tea party might have been crashed

"The President of the Grand Strand Tea Party has been arrested by Horry County Police after allegedly selling several counterfeit programs. According to a police report, the victim told officers he purchased six Rosetta Stone programs from Anthony Jack Trinca, 61, between May 29 and May 30 for $125 each through Craigslist." http://www.wmbfnews.com/story/151508...nterfeit-goods

There is some overlap but as a political movement the Tea Party is extremely young and hasn't seemed to really find it's center yet. Adding to that, it appears choc full of bafoons from all over the political spectrum wrestling for control and inclusion of whatever their agendas happen to be. There seems to be a bit of a land grab with all sorts of organizations attempting to indicate that they have massive 'Tea Party' support, even if those agendas by and large are not compatible with one another. Any new political movement will have some degree of this sort of problem, but it does seem particularly rampant within this one.

Personally, I think it was essentially invented in the right wing think tank community to steal thunder from the politically unsettling amount of support that had previously been growing behind Ron Paul. They have effectively been able to muddy the waters around his fiscal libertarian message. The dust may eventually settle and they may adopt a more cohesive platform, but for now, I feel like the Tea Party is too internally chaotic, from an ideological standpoint, to really get behind. They are being used as a tool by both the right and the left to obfuscate their own attacks on what they perceive to be 'the other side'.

To make fun of them is to miss the point. They were built to be kind of an ideological joke while also being designed to carry un-ignorable crowds.

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Originally Posted by ForrestBlack

Personally, I think it was essentially invented in the right wing think tank community to steal thunder from the politically unsettling amount of support that had previously been growing behind Ron Paul. They have effectively been able to muddy the waters around his fiscal libertarian message. The dust may eventually settle and they may adopt a more cohesive platform, but for now, I feel like the Tea Party is too internally chaotic, from an ideological standpoint, to really get behind. They are being used as a tool by both the right and the left to obfuscate their own attacks on what they perceive to be 'the other side'.

To make fun of them is to miss the point. They were built to be kind of an ideological joke while also being designed to carry un-ignorable crowds.

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Sounds about right... From a yes/no, checklist point of view, I would bet most Tea Party people would be against legalization of drugs, as many civil libertarians are, since they would view them as a threat to the well-being of the people. "Tea Party" started out as a one-issue group - Taxed Enough Already... Kinda like the "Rent Is Too Damn High" guy, but with quite a bit more gravitas... and no white gloves. It will be interesting to see what direction they go. I like Ron Paul, but his "end the Fed" strategy is a little extreme for most politicians. Anyone read his book? Anyone know if his appearance in "Bruno" was staged with his foreknowledge? He was awesome in that movie!

Also, I doubt the entire Tea Party movement has been crashed because some tool in Fla. was selling warez. Trinica doesn't look like he was about to make a move on a Congressional seat anytime this century. Now if Marco Rubio got busted for smuggling Mexicans, there might be a problem.

They're both just political groups that blame everything on another political party. I just like the fact that the TEA Party seems like it was a bunch of rich people who just didn't want to pay more in taxes instead of raising taxes for lower to middle classes.

heh......I'm running as a candidate for the libertarians this fall........libertarians are pretty mellow bunch of people who really just want to work/do thier own thing/have a choice of what they want to support, and think that, beyond defending the rights of the individual (as long as he or she is respecting the rights of other individuals) a government really isn't required for anything.................people are capable of dealing with thier own stuff, why should the government tell them how it should be done

As far as teabbagging goes.........we don't do that in canada

Interesting points here. I think that your analysis Forrest is pretty astute.

For me the whole muddying up of the issue centered around what I see is a middle class youth movement that wants adolescent rebellion... by further empowering rich old white dudes. It really makes no sense to me, but maybe that's just a backlash from people who were born in the 90's to yuppie liberals and their childhood memory of politics is of GW Bush as the guy who said funny things.

Ron paul is a great example of this and he goes back and forth between the groups. It's like a guy who is anti-union, anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion... in other words he's a typical Republican, but he's cool because he says smoke pot and don't pay taxes.

The other big thing is Jared Loughner the guy who shot congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Presumably because she voted for the bailout and Obamacare. The guy hung out with White Power, pro-militia, Zionist conspiracy theorists and talked about government mind control. He called himself a Libertarian, but the media attributed it to the Tea Baggers and Sarah Palin.

It's also the Zeitgeist, Loose-Changers who strike me as veiled anti-semities. They also got behind the "Birther" movement: the people who demand to see Obamas birth certificate believing that he
is not a US citizen and potentially a Manchurian Candidate. That stupid idea seems to be a source of solidarity for many right-wing and other anti-government groups.

You may notice my "Illuminati" avater. That's because, as you can see, i find peoples politcal paranoia an d historical revision to be telling and interesting, not because I agree with it. As I said, the whole thing is rooted in anti-semitism.

yeah, your politics down there are really convoluted...........well, you have got ten times as many people too..................we're vauguely interested in what Ron Pauls up to....but he's not really my thing, or it seems anybody else either, but, vauguely interesting.......We just don't like that our taxes are close to 50% of what we make, and, for what?......and how can we be in debt unless the government is getting in invovled in way too many things that it shouldn't even want to touch, what it is involved in must obviously doing it incompetantly............when businesses are run incompetantly they just don't exist anymore, they go away and something else comes in to fill the void.........

hmmmm...interesting word, zeitgeist.....I actually looked it up....and duh, I'm German, I should have realized what it was being used for......like most german that word could have a convoluted concept

In my opinion:

The problem with this country is that you have the choice of one or the other parties, both of whom are fiscally liberal (the Republicans borrow and spend on missiles and weapons, the Democrats on expensive entitlements) and socially conservative (they practically had to twist Obama's arm to get him to suggest he might support gay marriage, pot is STILL not legal, etc.)

The libertarians are working on the social liberality - that if someone wants to smoke pot, read dirty books, etc. that they should be unfettered in their attempt to do so.

The original tea party types were working on the financial conservatism - tax less, spend less and have less government intrusion.

hmmmm.......up here libertarians are basically both those things.....in the end all the goverment is really there to do is to protect you from external aggression...leaving you free to make your own choices on how you want to live your life

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Originally Posted by Mr Karl

hmmmm.......up here libertarians are basically both those things.....in the end all the goverment is really there to do is to protect you from external aggression...leaving you free to make your own choices on how you want to live your life

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Sounds good... I would probably vote for you as a candidate here, but I doubt you would have many followers. People here are too addicted to government services and libertarianism requires that people take care of their own shit or suffer the consequences. Keeping lower taxes and ending deficit spending means 1) no military adventurism, 2) fewer services for low income people, 3) fewer government bureaucrat jobs with incredible pension plans that are simultaneously union-protected, 4) more state and local responsibility for encouraging business, jobs, and funding education (please END the Dept. of Ed! What a waste!).

Just me, but I am not sure that Americans can handle that kind of America anymore. We are more than happy to let the Chinese and India have the Moon, as long as we can get a cheap college loan (for a useless B.A. in Psych or Queer Studies) and a guarantee of a paper-pushing job with health care at the end of the day and leave the fruit picking, fish gutting, and widget making to the illegals. Pretty soon, the North American Union will be a reality - not because Canada and Mexico need U.S. dollars, but because the U.S. will need further value created by Canada and Mexico to support its worthless fiat, debt-drowned currency.

And hey... I thought this was a site about bondage pics and punk/industrial bands? This topic is way too serious :cool:

Of course, cheap college loans for psych and queer studies (really? did you actually say that?) also means more college loans for engineers, scientists, doctors and other professions that let us compete on a world stage where the rest of the world is stepping up education. More state and local responsibility means eroded infrastructure. And no military adventurism means serious damage to the texas economy, which relies heavily on military and energy production.

Not that libertarianism is wrong as such, but like any ism, it seldom works in a pure form. Like any good chef, I think taking a little from each category and applying it well is the way to go. Libertarians go too far one way, socialists too far the other, so i guess I am a libertarian socialist, or a socialist libertarian. Depends on when you ask me.

But the tea party, originally their only concern appeared to be taxes, but truth be told they really don't seem to have a solid, strong, central ideology ideology. There is a strong mix of local activism, astroturfing, anti-this, pro-that that makes it very difficult to isolate a core belief. i have seen everything from tax protests, to protesting a muslim women's center in their name and this group will disavow that group. They seem to be right leaning despite claims of not preferring a party, but other than that, it is difficult to pin them down. From an outsiders point of view it looks like republicans who are sick of republicans, but again, that is coming from a crazy-left-wing-commie-queerlovin-athiestocrat, so what do i know.

why do college loans have to come from the government? If your smart enough to know if you'd make a competant engineer or scientist, or doctor then you'll have no problem raising the cash. also without government loans maybe people will actually look at the market and see if there's an actual return on such an investment of money time and energy.........try being born in Canada where half of everthing you earn is taken from you to give to everyone else so that everyone has a half ............bah, government

They only take half of the money you earn. All in all not that much of a worry, although I wouldn't need money if the government didn't have all these rules making it necessary.... like property law.

the money I earn is the result of me going through hell...........if I only had to go through hell half as much..........that would be nice

I actually don't understand what your actually going on about when you mention 'property law'...........I don't have any problem with it, I just would like to understand how you see that whole picture.............I have my own views on that subject, but it would be nice to learn how someone else views it

Well, capitalism as we know it is the product of property as we know it. Capitalists like to picture their system as the natural product of ungoverned interaction - which insofar as it is true, makes a pretty good argument - but the fact is that there are a couple of laws at its core that our culture views as so obvious that they barely bear mention as such... property law the most fundamental among them.

To me, it's not so obvious at all that property should work the way it does. It should probably exist, sure... the concept is highly intuitive to us, possibly hardcoded in at least some of our minds, so I'll not pull my usual 'let's forget about it altogether and see what happens xD'. line of argument. But it's current form, where anyone can own anything in any quantity so long as it is formally transferred to them by the former owner according to the terms set by a government? I see some major problems with that.

The first being that capitalism can't claim that their system affects everybody equally. Sure, the rules of transfer of property affect everyone the same, but the original capital of the world was never divided equally (or intelligently, or in any way other than simply letting powerful people keep what they could protect) among the system's participants. If property is supposed to decide who has 'just rights' to what, that seems like a pretty big thing to forget. I think a good system of property right would require an ongoing, decentralised, inherently defined way of distributing natural resources (as in, things that don't exist by virtue of human effort) among its participants as they become available - or at the very least have that done once at the very beginning. (A clause that sets up new participants with some starting capital out of the world's resources could flow from this, but would be a good idea even if it didn't) I also think the fact that this 'initial distribution of capital' was skimmed is a pretty clear indicator that our current brand of property law was never intelligently designed to be the most reasonable and beneficial system of its kind... it just grew from dictators and land owners with indentured servants trying as best they could to hold on to what they had throughout ages of political change.

My second problem is with the 'own anything, in any quantity' aspect. Not only is that option responsible for the gargantuan disparity in the distribution of wealth that we know today, I also don't find it nearly as intuitive as the concept of owning something in the first place. I think property should be decided by an algorithm of personal association between a person and an object, where people own what they use (and cannot own more than they can use, nor not own something they regularly do use), and transfer of property is respected automatically only long enough for the new owner to form this bond with his own use. Unused items would revert to being public property (which is what everything starts out as)... items that get shared automatically become shared property, etcetera. The only thing that'd need defining is the equation for Claim over Time, and the rights and exclusivity granted by any a given amount of Claim.

However, our governments protect property in its current, lazy, serve-the-established-order form. Now me, I never voluntarily follow rules I disagree with, but the fact is that there's an army of law enforcement dudes out there ready to enforce that shit with violence. Hence, what need I have for playing the game of capitalism as we know it stemming from the government's rules on the subject of property.

I don't think that capitalism is the game being played in the world these days.......or more a bastardised version of...something else

We're playing something that calls itself capitalism.

If it turns out to be an impostor and my complaints are misadressed, please forward to the responsible parties.

I'll let the corporatists know

The problem with ANY new party is that the freaks, weirdos and nutcases rush to it.

Ron Paul has a serious anti-Semitic base.
Just about every lunatic who wants everything from no abortion at all to curbing immigration to no gay marriage to any of a number of neocon bullshittery claims it's all "tea party" activism.

The original tea party people quit the whole movement in disgust as they saw, legitimately, it go from being a lower taxes and spending initiative to being a label the whackjob element of the Republican party uses to get votes.

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Originally Posted by Cafe_Post_Mortem

Of course, cheap college loans for psych and queer studies (really? did you actually say that?) ...

Like any good chef, I think taking a little from each category and applying it well is the way to go...

There is a strong mix of local activism, astroturfing, anti-this, pro-that that makes it very difficult to isolate a core belief... From an outsiders point of view it looks like republicans who are sick of republicans, but again, that is coming from a crazy-left-wing-commie-queerlovin-athiestocrat, so what do i know.

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First, I DID really say Queer Studies because that is not only a legitimate field of study, but a real major at many universities and colleges. Is it legitimate enough to warrant government funding? That's not for me to decide.

Secondly, I completely disagree that good chefs (or politicians) should take a "little of everything" approach. I don't eat arsenic because it's bad for me. A little arsenic or a lot - it's still arsenic. Those political groups don't "go too far" - they simply do what is in their nature. Statism, Fascism, Communism, etc. do what they do by design.

Your perspective on the heterogeny of the Tea Party seems pretty accurate. It is still one of those labels that cannot be owned by any one group. One group's actions don't seem to apply to all of the others because there is no central organizing power. Fiscal conservatism was the original uniting issue, but you never know who else is going to come along and co-opt the title.

BTW, did YOU really say "crazy-left-wing-commie-queerlovin-athiestocrat"? You are an intellectual powerhouse and I know you can come up with something better than that mish-mash ;) :thumb:

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Originally Posted by Bikerpunk

Ron Paul has a serious anti-Semitic base.

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Really? I didn't know that. Got a link to anything specific? Is he anti-Semitic himself? I'll ask this again since Ron Paul came up - Does anyone know if he was in on the joke in the movie "Bruno"? He was fucking hilarious...

Socialism, capitalism, communism, anarchy, democracy, and even authoritarianism they all have some important points and values. They are all means to an end, and not an end in and of themselves. People keep trying to grind perfection out of one when they all have flaws.

For example, if democracy can vote away someone's rights without compelling cause, there is a flaw in the system. Likewise if capitalism can buy away someone's rights then it is not working. And I have yet to see a libertarian plan that deals with the legacy of financial inequity that dates back generations.

So yeah, a sampling of each.

And queer studies. they still use that? It seems so, 70s. I thought they would be using more scientific language by now. Apologies on that one.

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Originally Posted by BiggTruxx

Really? I didn't know that. Got a link to anything specific? Is he anti-Semitic himself? I'll ask this again since Ron Paul came up - Does anyone know if he was in on the joke in the movie "Bruno"? He was fucking hilarious...

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There've been accusations of anti-Semitism, even by conservatives like Ben Stein: http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/pol...itic-arguments

and Michael Medved, pointing out a huge Neo-Nazi support base http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/...n_and_its.html

I'm not saying that the Senator HIMSELF is an anti-Semite.

HOWEVER, there's a certain way, if you're a nutcase (and most anti-Semites are) to string together some of his policies to put together a narrative:

Ron Paul wants us OUT of the Middle East and no longer being the policeman to the world/military support to Israel.
He wants the Fed DISBANDED and our fiat currency replaced by a gold standard.

This has been "interpreted" as "hooray! he's one of us! One of us who dares to remove the Jew influence from American government and stand up to ZOG! No more will the Jew bankers be making eternal interest off our money and bankrupting our country, getting us involved in wars all over the Middle East just to protect their little patch of sand because they'd rather we die than them."

You can imagine how much of a thorn in the side of Ron Paul himself these people are. It, and his pro-life stance, are the two reasons he'll never be elected.

Eric Erickson (Sp?) of redstate.com and a political commentator for talk radio will pretty much immediately unfollow ANYONE who even MENTIONS Paul. Turns out he's had his site flooded with Paulite supporter anti-Semitic vitriol, and they went so far as to call his house and threaten his wife, calling him a "dirty Jew f*cker" and worse.

RE: Socialism, capitalism, communism, anarchy, democracy, and even authoritarianism they all have some important points and values. They are all means to an end, and not an end in and of themselves. People keep trying to grind perfection out of one when they all have flaws.

You missed the most important one - a Republic.

Recent events have shown us just what's wrong with democracy. The unions think that they have the "right" to vote themselves as much of the public's money as they can collectively bargain for.

Likewise, in Califuckingfornia, with the Initiative system. "Here's my initiative demand - Do we want free ice cream for everyone?" YAY! I VOTE FOR THAT! YAY! "The meany mean government wants more TAXES to pay for all that free ice cream. Do you want to vote to kill the tax?" YAY! I VOTE FOR THAT! YAY!

For my money, the absolute BEST system of government was (and wait, WAIT til the end here) a pre-Civil War US government. Small, regional, limited in scope, not interested in a huge bureaucracy. System couldn't be gamed cause nothing could ever get large enough to be corruptible, and as a Republic was forced to stay within the Rule of Law. I realise that the moment you mention antebellum America everyone goes AWK ACK OOK SLAVERY SLAVERY SLAVERY SLAVERY SLAVERY and any attempt to point out what was RIGHT about that system gets lost in the "yeah, but what about the poor downtrodden slaves you must hate people of color and be racist and be for slavery what about slavery I hate bigotry herp derp those inbred Southern people I wish they'd all been killed let's go down there and kick their ass again squawk honk" nonsense that we've been DELIBERATELY CONDITIONED to go into every time someone suggests rewinding that little federalist, mercantilist, central banking system Lincoln wanted.

Lincoln wanted the American system broken and a LOT of people disagreed STRONGLY with him. So he pushed a divisive, hot-button issue (and for the record, I shouldn't HAVE to say this, but bigotry sucks, racism is wrong, slavery should have ended a long time ago for ANY of a number of reasons, but my top one is the humanitarian reason, etc.) and started a war. By the time the surrender took place people hadn't really noticed that now:

- there was a FEDERAL income tax
- Illinois, who'd fucked up their budget, had passed their losses on to the Federal Government (e.g. taking money from the other states to pay for their mistakes - hey! don't worry, TOO BIG TO FAIL)
- no longer was the United States a confederation of independent states, who, having voluntarily signed in to the Union, could sign out, a good and necessary brake on power grabs - if you signed in, it's like being in a gang or the Mafia - we'll kill you rather than let you leave.
- Lincoln found broad powers in the Constitution that weren't there. Kind of like a certain president we have now that thinks that making it mandatory to buy private health insurance is Constitutional.


For example, if democracy can vote away someone's rights without compelling cause, there is a flaw in the system. Likewise if capitalism can buy away someone's rights then it is not working. And I have yet to see a libertarian plan that deals with the legacy of financial inequity that dates back generations.