Although the government shutdown was a political disaster for the Republican Party, the reaction on the Left gives one pause.
Typical of responses to the government shutdown and debt ceiling coinfrontation is the New Jersey Star-Ledger's editorializing about The Tea Party's Tantrum. The paper used terms like "extortionist tactic" and "bomb-throwers like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)" and "hostage-taking." The editors lamented that "the Republican Party is in a state of dysfunction that will haunt the nation again soon," thanks to the "stridency" of the Tea Party "extremists." This "political crises . . . won’t change until the Cruz faction of the Republican Party is put to rest for good."
One wonders if the editors realize that their editorial is itself a tantrum over the Tea Party.
I left these comments:
While I think the Republican political strategy in this budget battle was ill-conceived, the shutdown did highlight the broader issues involved.
The question any concerned citizen should be asking is: How is it that a partial government shutdown and a freeze on federal borrowing can have such a devastating impact on so many American individuals and businesses? The answer to that question contains an important warning: The government has accrued enormous rights-violating powers over our economic lives, and it is the Left-wing statists that is primarily responsible.
Another message is that the Tea Party resistance is a major threat to the Left's fascist-socialist designs on America. This explains the hysterical vitriol leveled against the Tea Party—coming from power-crazed people who have no respect for individual rights. The Left loves a "moderate" me-too Republican Party that will pave the Leftward road with compromise. The Tea Party—admittedly a fractious, often contradictory movement—is the only political/cultural force, spawned at the grass roots level, that is at least taking a stand against rampaging statism. The Tea Party is a long-term threat to the Left, and the Left fears it.
This Fall's budget battle highlights just how much control the state has gained and just how dependent Americans have become on government spending—spending financed by Americans themselves. It should motivate any liberty-loving, compassionate American to sit up and take notice—and listen. As long as one political faction believes it can wage economic aggression against their fellow Americans, with the government as its hired gun, we can only hope that the Tea Party will regroup and continue the fight.
Related Reading:
Ayn Rand: Tea Party Voice of the Founding Fathers
9.12.09 - Here We Go
Some Post - DC Observations
Government Shut Down and All I Got was This Blog Post—Ari Armstrong
4 comments:
I think this, and your post of Oct. 17, hinges on how much time we have. The just concluded circus will give the leftward push still more speed. Peikoff says we're already 'teetering' on the edge of dictatorship and the push has been much faster than he thought when he recently published his book, DIM Hypothesis.
Leonard Peikoff may be right, or he may be a little too pessimistic. I lean toward the second view. But he's right on the trend and the inevitability of dictatorship if current trends continue.
New Jersey just legalized gay marriage, based on the principle of equality before the law. There is still a respect for basic American principles, albeit selectively applied. People still respect "rights" in the abstract, albeit not knowing concretely what they are—and are not. So, there is something to build upon.
I'm not so sure the Left's celebration will be long-lived. Remember the Left's first overt attempt at universal healthcare (HillaryCare) flopped miserably. Yet here we are, with ObamaCare. We'll see if the Republicans can learn from this debacle and build toward success in the future. The consensus seems to be that the Tea Party has had its day. I'm not so sure.
What do people think rights are in the abstract? Whatever it is, is that something to build on? If they don't know what they are concretely, can they discover it from the abstract, from what they think they are in the abstract?
If people are told what rights are concretely, or if they discover them from the abstract, or see the concretes perceptually anyway and induce them as rights, will they accept them as right or moral, and so like them and start pursuing them? I think what there is to build on is quite tenuous.
Plus, I think altruism and religion must be acceptable in the realm of strictly freely chosen mutual relationships among all parties, except for those directly involving law & gvt., from which they must be walled off. These things can be practiced without initiatory force, in some reformed version at least. I think people will never give these things up, so they must at least learn to practice them without initiatory force if we are to build on whatever there is to build on.
And I think the Republicans' learning depends greatly on all this. They've been needing to learn from debacles for generations now. Quite tenuous is how I describe this prospect, too.
If people, religious or otherwise, want to live and not die, we must assume they'll come around while there's time, get the flak outa their heads and start thinking and choosing right.
Oh, it certainly is all tenuous. We have a lot of work to do.
As to "altruism and religion must be acceptable in the realm of strictly freely chosen mutual relationships" and "practiced without initiatory force," that's true but won't happen until people reject altruism and accept egoism.
This sounds contradictory, but only because altruism and religion are irrational. In a free society, an individual must accept that "I have a right to be altruistic or religious, but no right to force my beliefs on others." But that statement implies an acceptance of egoism, as any statement that begins with "I have a right" is inherently egoistic.
In essence, the fight to extract altruism (and thus initiatory force and thus tyranny)from politics is a fight to extract altruism from men's private lives.
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