Utah's Republic

Good speech, but the liberating Auschwitz part was puzzling. Prager is right in that military people liberated Auschwitz, but they were military people of the communist persuasion.

Good speech, but the liberating Auschwitz part was puzzling. Prager is right in that military people (he infers Americans) liberated Auschwitz, but in reality they were military people of the communist persuasion.

I think he got it wrong. The greatest threat to America is a right wing extremist movement. In the late 1800s and early 1900s it was the KKK, in the 30s it was the industrialist and union-buster nazi sympathizers, in the 60s the southern racists that are the backbone of the Republican establishment, and now it is the “tea party”. Scum all of them.

BB: So the people who are for reducing federal spending to not saddle generations to come with debt, and returning to the constitution are more of a threat to America than people who are loading us with debt and intentionally moving toward a collapse of our economic system? Riiight… Tea Partiers come from all political parties. They are common sense Americans that love the country and want to see it survive as a free nation.

What part of the constitution are you talking about?

All of the constitution. How about free speech? Obama just got a kill switch on the internet. Are you in favor of having ANY president have the power to turn off the web just because they think there is a cyber-threat? That's a Chinese government tactic.

There are tons of violations of the constitution that have been happening for years under both major parties. The public tolerates it because the public no longer reads the constitution or understands that a Constitutional Republic is government by law, not of men. We no longer hold public “servants” accountable to the law. They trample it and amass power to themselves. In the process, we've been dumbed down and abdicated our responsibility to preserve liberty.

Free speech is good. I agree with you. Almost all Tea Party rhetoric I have heard is reactionary rather than liberty-based. Basically John Birch stuff. Convince me I am wrong.

Why don't you convince me you're right? I've been to a Tea Party rally at the capitol. The Governor spoke. Candidates for congress spoke. Organizers spoke about an out of control federal government. Nothing reactionary. No call to arms. Just sharing concerns.

Ok, let's suppose the Tea Party is about fiscal responsibility, no entitlements, personal liberty, and sticking to only what the Constitution outlines. Here are some policies that should logically imply: get rid of social security and medicare, legalize drugs, reduce military spending to be perhaps 10% of the world's military spending rather than 50, and stiff opposition to warentless wire tapping, torture, and racial profiling by police (Arizona). In addition, in Utah in particular I would expect a constitutional change to get rid of public schools which have HUGE wealth transfers, and to make alcohol sales part of the free market these people pretend to respect. There is no evil Washingtonians preventing that last two. Let's take the Tea Party's Utah darlings: Wimmer and Lee. I am not aware of either of them publicly advocating any of the above. Instead they stick with reactionary and mostly vague talking points. Note that Obama is a more qualified constitutional scholar than any of the Patrick Henry self-promotion club, so without specifics talk of “getting back to constituyional principles” is just so much hot air.

There might be a few Tea Party people that come from the Democrat Party, but for the most part it is made up of Libertarians and Republicans. If you look at who is speaking at Tea Party Events, they are usually Republicans. I'm also not sure that all the Democrats are purposely moving the country towards economic collapse, but I do believe they are misguided.

I don't think liberals love their country any less than conservatives, they just have different philosophies of government. This federalist vs. anti-federalist and loose constructionist–strict constructionist argument has been going on since the U.S. was founded. We all have our personal viewpoints. I agree with Republicans on some issues and I agree with Democrats on some issues. Regardless, we will never be the same country we were in the 1790's. We have about 300 million more people and our economy is post industrial revolution. There will be a need for some social programs just to maintain order in a complex, post-industrial society. This is not a society where if you lose your job for instance, you can just go pick berries and kill a few deer and elk in order to survive. Our Constitution must remain intact as much as possible, but it must be recognized that there has to be some tweaking in order to meet a changing society. Our founding fathers were smart enough to see that, the question is: are we?

That was all the beer hall speeches started out as in the Weimar Republic, just a sharing of concerns.

In addition, do we get rid if the FDA, NASA, NIH, NSF? These all seem to be against the principles the Tea Partiers claim to have. Also as ObamaCare is now law, why are the focusing on that relatively small insurance regulation rather than the massive socialist Medicare? Note that shouting “liberty” and “take our country back” is just content free without a consistent set of proposals that stem from principles. I see none so far.

Definitely John Birch stuff. The 5,000 Year Leap was written by John Bircher, Leon Skousen, also famous for writing the Naked Communist. Both interesting reads but with a specific bias like most anything you read anyway. I would agree that the Tea Party movement does espouse many of the platforms of the John Birch Society, however, federal spending is out of control and as much as I don't like some of the platforms of the Tea Party movement, they are the only voice calling attention to reckless government behaviors.

I agree Lewis. The spending on the Drug War, Military, and Entitlements is out of control. We'll see if the Tea Party people have anything but John Birch garbage and soon. I have seen zero so far.