Anger and indignation were served up in giant helpings outside the Bi-Lo Center on Saturday as several thousand Tea Party activists cheered speakers who attacked President Barack Obama as a lying, taxing, foreign-born, anti-American socialist. Waving signs and flags with slogans including, "It's the Constitution, stupid" and "Vote them all out," people gathered around a stage where keynote speaker Tom Tancredo, former Colorado congressman and 2008 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said Americans have reached the point where "we're going to have to pray that we can hold on to this country."If this isn't fascism, people, then what is? This is not a rhetorical question. Seriously, how can anybody be blind enough not to see this exactly for what it is? Just observe the logic: the lying Bush (who got this country into a bloody and meaningless war) is good and acceptable. And Obama (who lied about something they can never specify) is bad because he is - oooh, scary - "foreign-born." These people are beyond disgusting.
As for Obama, Tancredo said, "If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don't we just send him back?"
It's funny that they claim to be the followers of Ayn Rand, who - surprise, surprise! - was "foreign-born" and spoke with a thick Russian accent her entire life.
What a bunch of sad, pathetic, stupid, and angry idiots.
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“It's funny that they claim to be the followers of Ayn Rand, who - surprise, surprise! - was "foreign-born" and spoke with a thick Russian accent her entire life.”
Ayn Rand actively rejected the Russia of her birth. She did not view Russia as her homeland. Russia was a historical accident that she was grateful to fix.
I know all that, Izgad. Still, none of this changes the fact that she was "foreign-born." Every single word she wrote was profoundly influenced by her experiences during the revolution and its aftermath. But tea-partiers wouldn't know any of that because it's not like they read a lot.
“But tea-partiers wouldn't know any of that because it's not like they read a lot.”
What would your response be to someone who used this same sentence and replaced tea-partiers with Ukrainians?
The analogy is worng, Izgad. You do not choose to be Ukrainian, it's something that happens to you. You do, however, make a choice to join a political movement. People should bear the responsibility for their choices, wouldn't you say? Like if one idolizes an illiterate Sarah Palin, people might assume that one is not a huge friend of literacy either.
Don't be ridiculous, of course I read. Why do you think I'm protesting?
An incomplete summary of my reading list since last July:
Pretty much the entire works of Ayn Rand (7 books)
Capitalism and Freedom
Freedom to Choose
Son of Hamas
Empire of Lies
Radicals for Capitalism
Creature from Jekyll Island
A Nation of Victims
Dumbing Down our Kids
Audacity of Hope
Goddess of the Market
Generation Me
Biography of the Dollar
Gideon's Spies
The Closing of the American Mind
Plato's Republic
The Federalist Papers
Liberal Fascism
End the Fed
The Vision of the Anointed
Intellectuals and Society
The Housing Boom and Bust
The Return of Depression Economics
Economics: Making Sense of the Modern Economy
And that while working on my masters degree in aerospace engineering. So who's uneducated and illiterate again?
Sarah Palin might be an anti-intellectual populist demagogue, but I assume she is literate otherwise should would not be able to read her teleprompter speeches. Fair enough about a country being something that happens to you, but what about people who actively identify with their country of birth. As a Jew, the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Ukraine is a nationality of people more eager for Jewish blood than even the Nazis. This is not to attack individual Ukrainians. Should I give the active ethnic Ukrainian the benefit of the doubt and assume that for him being Ukrainian means something different from what being Ukrainian means to me?
Good for you, Brianna! I hope that this extensive reading does allow you to explain the contradictions within the Tea Party movement to me. I am dying to hear what an actual admirer of Ayn Rand has to say about all this. Especially the things I discussed in the post about Rand Paul.
I've been eagerly awaiting some objectivist who would come here and offer some answers to all these issues. Although the posts about the Tea Party have been wildly popular, I am yet to hear a single response explaining the things I wrote about from a Libertarian point of view.
Izgad: this is not about what people believe This is about actual historical facts. There is no need to give anybody the benefit of the doubt. The historical facts speak for themselves.
The level of anti-semitism in the Russian Empire was, indeed, horrifying. However, when the first independent Ukrainian Republic was proclaimed in 1918, its prime-minister, the famous writer Volodymir Vynnichenko, proposed the creation of a Jewish quota for the parliament. The parliament simply would not go into session unless a representative number of Jews were in the parliament. During World War II, Nazis put him in a concentration camp for refusing to cooperate with them.
The Independent Ukrainian Republic only existed for a short number of years, but while it did, it was very friendly towards the interests of the Jewish people of Ukraine.
As to people who actively identify with a country, I cannot recommend "Imagined Communities" by Benedict Anderson and "Banal Nationalism" by Michael Billig strongly enough.
As I tell my students, nationalism was an ideology created by XVIII century thinkers to make people die enthusiastically and for free motivated by an allegiance to a piece of painted fabric. How that piece of fabric was invested with emotional significance is the fascinating story of the birth of nationalism.
I've been conteplating a detailed Rand post on opinion-forum for a long time, and considering that your interest does seem to be more-or-less sincere, I will therefore commit to getting it done in the next week. That said, I'd really apprecate it if in return, you'd tone down the "racist, fascist" rhetoric. I'm sick of reading about how evil I am, especially as most tea partiers are not racist and I highly doubt you even know what fascism is (I'll do a post on that, too; read it if you dare).
You don't need to worry, Brianna, I just finished teaching my students about fascism, si it's very fresh in my mind (and hopefully in theirs, too). It's great that you decided to write about this. You, however, have to admit that saying "Tea Party is fascist" and "Brianna is evil" are two very different things. I promise never to write the second type of post. I will write about evangelical fascism in the US right now.
For you, Brianna, my recent post on Evangelical Fascism:
http://clarissasbox.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-is-fascism-evangelical-fascism-in.html
Part II is coming soon.
Clarissa
You will be happy to know that I just made a slide of Vynnichenko for my Russian Revolution lecture. I figure I should have at least one good thing to say about Ukrainians.
As a historian you should know better than to claim that facts speak for themselves. In terms of nationalism, I recognize that it is, like most human creations, artificial and arbitrary. That being that I do not understand how you can point blank condemn it, considering the crucial role it played in democratic revolutions from the French Revolution down through the fall of Communism. I am not saying that nationalism is a good thing in of itself, but I see cause to at least have mixed feelings about.
I'm so glad I could help. :-) I am dying to know what you told your students about the October Revolution in terms of Jewish history. Do tell!
Nationalism for me is not an object of feelings. It's an object of research. It has been my area of specialization for years, and I wrote my Master's thesis on the creation of the idea of national identity in the XVIII century. It is from my research - and not from my feelings - that I know just how artificial this ideological construct is. Of course, it played a very positive role and still does in many cases, I am not denying that. What bothers me, though, is how easily people buy into the wide-eyed, unquestioning, unthinking side of nationalism, how deeply emotional it becomes for them, and how utterly unreasonable their approach often is. I'm not talking about you here, of course. I'm talking about those who kill and get killed happily in the name of a painted fabric or a touching song.
I have not taught Modern European History in over a year and I am not sure when the next time will be. I wanted to do something on the Russian Revolution for the Modern Jewish History class I was teaching, but never got around to it.
If a student were to identify Nationalism on one of my quizzes as a way to trick people into dying for a piece of cloth I would fail them. Nationalism is an emphasis on the State as being the representative of the will of a given people and that therefore people should be loyal to the State and that the State should serve the interests of the people. It is neither bad nor good. It is just a way that people have looked at a political issue.
If someone said that government healthcare was socialism, I would fail them as well.
I have to say that I have never encountered this definition of nationalism and I do not think it is borne out by the facts. Russia today is fiercely nationalistic, but nobody seems to care much about the will of the people. The elections are rigged to the degree where nobody even questions whether it's normal. Franco's Spain was nationalistic in the extreme but to imagine Franco caring about the will of the people is very hard. The Soviet Union practiced an extreme brand of Russian nationalism since right after WWII. The will of the people? Yeah, right.
If the nation-state did indeed work as you say, that would be great. But in many cases it simply doesn't.
The definition of nationalism that I gave is not really mine. :-) It belongs to a line of theorists of nationalism started by Benedict Anderson. I wish I were half as knowledgeable as that to come up with it. :-)
I have to say that I have never encountered this definition of nationalism and I do not think it is borne out by the facts. Russia today is fiercely nationalistic, but nobody seems to care much about the will of the people. The elections are rigged to the degree where nobody even questions whether it's normal. Franco's Spain was nationalistic in the extreme but to imagine Franco caring about the will of the people is very hard. The Soviet Union practiced an extreme brand of Russian nationalism since right after WWII. The will of the people? Yeah, right.
If the nation-state did indeed work as you say, that would be great. But in many cases it simply doesn't.
The definition of nationalism that I gave is not really mine. :-) It belongs to a line of theorists of nationalism started by Benedict Anderson. I wish I were half as knowledgeable as that to come up with it. :-)
Whether those who advocate nationalism actually practice what they preach. Christianity might preach abstinence outside of marriage, but that does not seem to stop many Republican politicians. Dictators like Stalin and Franco loved to talk about the will of the people even if they ignored actual elections.
Nationalism, at least in minor doses, is critical for any liberalism as it assumes that political authority comes from the people as opposed to God.
In minor doses, absolutely. Especially when there is no excessive fanaticism and/or emotional attachment.
I knew we would reach a point of agreement eventually. :-)
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