We have a problem in America with morality. It's not just because of moral relativism, or what conservatives like to call 'secular humanism' which is their catch phrase for 'socialism'. We have become a morally bankrupt country. I say this as a person who is a reformed Catholic, but who spent my entire childhood and adolescence indoctrinated in the teachings of Christ. I was never a WWJD kid, nor was my family ever conservative in their religious beliefs or practices. In fact, the Christ I was raised to believe in was a loving and forgiving God who befriended the leper and prostitute, was humble in the face of poverty and preached the the values of charity and compassion to all. Also, as far as I know the ordination process for Catholic priests involve vows of Charity and Humility as well as Chastity and Obedience.
All of that translates into a firm believe in the dignity and equality of all people. Those are inalienable rights, aren't they, that all 'men' are created equal? And just as our country has lauded itself on its freedom and equality it has practiced horrible acts of degradation against people who were 'other' or different. This is a problem that's been pervasive in our society and still saturates every level of citizenry. I'm not just talking about slavery, and overt and institutionalized racism. I'm also talking about the subjugation of women, the oppression of ethnic and religious groups, and the demonetization and vilification of sexual minorities and the differently abled. This system of oppression and discrimination only becomes more complicated when considering the structures of political and economic power and their interaction with those minority groups. Add to that the regional cultural differences in all of those things and you have a overwhelming matrix of complexities in social interaction and in our understanding and advancement of civil rights and freedoms.
Perhaps always there has also been an underlying opposition force that is an anathema to those fundamental ideals we have enshrined in the Declaration of Freedom, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. That oppositional force might vaguely be understood as the thirst for power. That thirst is greater in those who already have some, thus leading them to seek more and requires them to control more and more of the political and social system in order to acquire it. In itself this could be defined in part as hubris, certainly it is antithetical to the teachings of compassion, charity and humility embodied in the Christ story. None of us are immune to that thirst, even if it comes from a place of absolute altruism and hope, because especially for those who seek some kind of political recognition or some ability to fulfill the American purpose of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, true freedom and equality seem so far away without power.
Politics is, of course, about power. I think those who are entrenched in politics, especially those with the expectation of significant gains or losses, lose perspective on the consequences of their actions and of the quality of their actions. Those with a lot to gain or lose, or those who have invested significant resources in the pursuit of a political outcome, the more desperate they get to achieve their end the more likely they are to compromise or outright disavow their supposed principles and beliefs. Hypocrisy is among the most common embodiments of this. It is perhaps one of the most insidious symptoms of the pursuit of power and results in the spread of lies, untruths and the inspiration of cruelty.
The problem of Hypocrisy has become so pervasive in our social and political discourse that there are large groups of people who cannot recognize it even when it is pointedly exposed across our diverse media outlets. There is a large minority in this country who are so indoctrinated in the belief of their own righteousness and who have gone so far in shaping their worldview to justify their own hypocrisy that they refuse to acknowledge or believe it when confronted in the most truthful and thorough way. Those who practice hypocrisy and most often are conscious of it at least in some small way, but their desire for power and their own hubris prevent them from correcting it. In fact many of those who regularly practice hypocrisy and the spreading of falsehoods and untruth have no interest in correcting those errors and merely plow forward continuing those practices.
What are the results of hypocrisy and lies in the pursuit of power? A political system and social situation where those too self-assured of their own righteousness select out those things most comfortable to their self-righteousness and ego, which don't challenge their world view and absolute determination to excuse their own core failings. They create, promote and support organizations and commercial entities that encourage and propagate untruths and which represent provable and irrefutable falsehoods as fact. They believe stories and arguments based on fictitious evidence and outright lies even when they contradict their own supposed values while excusing and justifying that belief through even more hypocrisy and lies. They allow their better judgment and their sense of compassion for fellow human beings to be overridden by the atmosphere of fear and intolerance created for them by those in control of power and who seek to acquire more.
The Tea Party is an example of all of this. The Tea Party, at least in theory, is a libertarian collection of individual groups around the country who represent themselves as 'grass-roots' and as concerned singularly with taxation and the role of the federal government in our society. In reality this 'movement' is a propaganda machine of several small and very well funded organizations commandeered by elements of the radical Christian Coalition and Christian right which we saw rise to power during the 1980's and 90's. While chest thumping about taxation, the size of government and its spending habits those same candidates and leaders were reaching out to their core social conservative base with the same regressive messages and policy positions we've seen over and over again. They won because they were able to weave fiction after fiction of a government out of control, politicians too concerned with power and unconcerned with the will of their constituents, and of a black socialist consumed with destroying America. So much of that is exemplified by the slogan 'It's Time To Take Our Country Back'. Take it back from whom? Who has stolen it?
While polling data from multiple polls illustrated the racial and religious/ideological position of the Tea Party, it also illustrated that the majority of Americans were most concerned about the economy and jobs. Not debt, but jobs. Republicans wove the fiction that somehow out of control spending and too much regulation were choking businesses, hampering the creation of new businesses and killing jobs. That lie is apparent to anyone who can access the internet and read. The true culprit in preventing the expansion of small businesses were the banks who wouldn't give out business loans or lines of credit so businesses could expand. These were the same banks whose blind greed lead them to create instruments for tremendous profit at high risk. The same banks who then were bailed out by the government, and taxpayer, with little oversight or accountability and vastly loosened regulation only to continue the risky practices and hoarding of wealth. Not one of the executives responsible for the creation of the instruments and subsequent crash of our economy has been held criminally responsible.
Even more galling, however, is the crass disregard shown by politicians who represent themselves as Christians and whose messaging and political persona advocates 'traditional family values'. These politicians make careers on demonizing and marginalizing whole groups of people. They make money on the fear and prejudices of others by spreading falsehoods and encouraging the un-education of their constituents. Meanwhile these politicians have proven themselves again and again to be unable to stand the scrutiny of their own rhetoric. Even when Democrats do become embroiled in sex scandals they rarely come under as much media examination or suffer as many public consequences as Republicans. This isn't because the media is so biased towards liberals. It is about hypocrisy and lies, and about the desire to retain power. That's why we have Republican senators who are publicly scrutinized for extramarital affairs resulting in bribery and cover-ups, or for patronizing prostitutes. It is why representatives choose to resign rather than suffer the backlash from their online sex activities or sexual misconduct with underage male pages.
Most galling of all, however, are the national leaders who represent themselves as the vanguard of some fictional 'moral majority' about to sweep away the rot of secular humanism, again, codeword for socialism. These people make enormous sums of money speaking on the topic of morality and its role in shaping our core values, on pressing a radical political position that has little to no basis in reality but which draws together the fears and prejudices of people too purposely uneducated about the world around them to be able to make the distinction between truth and untruth. They take advantage of the ignorance of people too willing to justify their own failings in their Christian beliefs and personal values to examine those messages with any sense of justice beyond its application to themselves.
I don't mean to place all the blame on the conservative politicians and pundits, however. Their voter base and those who blindly agree with their lies and aggressively and purposefully ignore their hypocrisy are just as culpable. Many of these people, as far as I can tell, make no effort to investigate the veracity of the lies bile these people spew. They are so convinced of the truth of their own convictions, in their own righteousness and of their own self-concerned worldview that they allow the politicians and pundits to prey upon their legitimate anxieties over the economy and an increasingly complex and dangerous world. They allow themselves to be manipulated and to twist those values we supposedly hold so dear beyond all recognition or rational understanding. They buy into the rhetoric that we are somehow exceptional just because. That American is somehow the freest, greatest and morally purest nation in the world. They pay no attention to the flaws because they need the comfort of that ignorance so badly in order to cope with their own failings and the failings of their beliefs. They then promote candidates and causes that are grievous violations of those 'American values'.
Also to blame are 'liberal' politicians and Democrats for failing to take a greater role in determining the rhetoric of the public discourse. The idea that Republicans could perform such a complete con on the American people as to make 'entitlements' the common nomenclature for Social Security and Medicare is an indictment of their failure. While they may be the party most concerned with the working and middle class, and with the general welfare, failing to sell the message is as big a problem as failing to act on it. It is a problem when the far-right is able to take nearly complete ownership of the words 'patriot' and 'liberty' when they are neither patriotic nor believe in real and genuine and true liberty. When they do not recognize the reality of liberty and the reality of its honest application. This is perhaps an indication of the extent to which hypocrisy and the pursuit of power has taken hold in that party as well.
Ultimately, after all of that, I have this to say: We deserve better, we deserve more, we have the right to to BE more than this. We deserve politicians who don't just listen to the people and run in fear from necessary and important work because of polling. We deserve politicians genuinely willing to make a case for and take action in the interests of all of the American people. We deserve a land where no one is made to feel less than simply because they do not resemble, either in look, belief or relationship, those around them. We deserve a nation where we make honest steps to live up to the commitments we espouse of educating our children and giving everyone the opportunity to achieve, not just because of some quota or affirmative action, but because they work hard, have talent and have earned it. We deserve a nation where compassion and charity towards others aren't just hollow words used in a church, but result in real action and substantive change to the benefit of the poor, the vulnerable, the disabled and the oppressed. We deserve to become the nation we have always wanted to be by the fruits of our own labors, the achievements of our own talent, and the quality of our spirit.
We deserve better, I deserve, you deserve it, and our future deserves it.
Showing posts with label Conservative Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conservative Politics. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Friday, December 10, 2010
Southern Poverty Law Center, Family Research Council and the Rhetoric of Hate
Recently the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization with its roots in the civil rights struggles of the African American community published a list of organizations it identified as hate groups. These groups were actually added to an already existing list compiled by the SPLC which was made up of white supremacist organizations like the KKK. Included was the organization the Family Research Council, which has since fired back at the SPLC by saying they are simply representing Christian values and a perspective shared by the majority of Americans. This is in fact patently false.
It is important to recognize the nature of the FRC and its activities. They are known among many mainstream groups as a far-right advocacy organization that specializes in two issues, gay rights and abortion. Not only is the information they put out not widely considered legitimate research, but they are known to in fact be heavily committed and involved in political campaigns. Most recently they partnered with the National Organization for Marriage, who themselves are widely recognized for their far-right political views, in committing a virulent and riotously bigoted campaign to vote out of office the three justices of the Iowa Supreme Court who were up for election this past November. Those justices included the chief justice and were part of a unanimous decision by the nine judge panel that LGBT citizens in Iowa were constitutionally endowed with the right to marriage. They have since been very public about their intentions to continue their crusade in the next election cycle until all of the justices who participated in that decision are removed from office. I say committed a campaign because the campaign against these three justices was not only fraught with the use of the most virulent and bigoted rhetoric against members of the LGBT community, but it also included outright harassment of those justices by members of their organizations, which were summarily recorded on video and circulated on the internet.
While the rhetoric of the FRC is presented as 'research' which has been somehow independently vetted and verified, it is nothing but that, rhetoric. This far-right organization does their best to present a public face of reasonableness and rationality in the media, however it only takes a cursory investigation to see the depth of bigotry ingrained in their message. All of this is while representing themselves as tolerant Christians who are not anti-gay, but merely seeking to protect the welfare of children and society through the institution of marriage.
The research and statements of this organization are actually categorically false and the list of organizations or news outlets who present them as even remotely possible is short and telling. Recently FOX News interviewed Tony Perkins, the president of the organization, in response to the SPLC's labeling of them as a hate group and he firmly declares that organization as a far-left fringe group desperately trying to hold on to being relevant when their leftist platform of promoting a homosexual agenda is losing soundly, as represented in the last election, he alleges. Not only is this not true, but it presenting a lie as fact to a large portion of the public who watch FOX News and consider it a legitimate news organization.
The Facts:
According to a 2009 USA Today/Gallup poll, while the majority of Americans are opposed to gay marriage, those numbers swing dramatically when you consider how they break down, with 60% of people under the age of 30 thinking gay marriages should be legally recognized and have the same rights and status as heterosexual marriage. The majority of self-identified liberals and moderates support gay marriage, with only self-identified conservatives representing an overwhelming majority against gay marriage.
While the country remains split pretty evenly on the issue of gay-marriage, recent polls show that the majority of Americans do believe that there should be some sort of legal recognition for same-sex couples, including legal rights and protections similar or equal to those of heterosexuals. It is interesting, however, to note that while those polls are pretty evenly split in general, Republicans and self-identified conservatives still strongly oppose gay marriage.
The country, though, isn't evenly split over the issues of LGBT people serving openly in the military. That same page on PollingReport.com shows that the majority, ranging from two-thirds to three-fourths, of Americans believe gay people should be able to serve openly and would vote for open service if it was on a ballot.
So, when the FRC represents themselves as being in step with even a large number of Americans, they are either lying, or they are really referring only to self-identified conservatives. Even among those conservatives, or among Republicans, polled there isn't a unanimous consensus. This is the same fallacy touted by pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and even Bill O'Rielly. These people state as fact that the 'liberals', or according to O'Reilly the 'leftist pinheads', are losing this imaginary culture war they have concocted over the years. To them it is just an easily recognizable truth that their political ideology is the majority opinion, which means that they have the right to impose it on all of us by encoding it into law, and that somehow because they believe they are a part of the majority that that somehow makes them right and that the reasoning behind those opinions are factual and moral truth.
Here is the truth: In another ten to twenty years same-sex marriage will be a reality in this country. In fact if the court case against Prop 8 continues on to the US Supreme Court and is successful there, which is the inevitable ruling if it is ruled on its merits, then gay marriage will be a reality in this country far sooner. As far as I know, the striking down of a state constitutional amendment, which Prop 8 was, by the SCOTUS would then overturn all of the laws, statutes, and constitutional amendments set in to law across this country. While this may create an outcry among people for a host of reasons and would, of course, be labeled as legislating from the bench or judicial advocacy by the right-wing, and then likely thought of as that by much of the rest of the country, within a short period of time it would become a non-issue, as it has in MA. In that state, despite all of the anti-gay energy poured in, the constitutional amendment did not make it through the legislative process in time to stop marriage licenses from being issued and then has subsequently, since 2004, not been a serious ballot issue. Once the majority of Americans see how much of a non-issue gay marriage will be in their daily lives, how it will in fact not significantly impact their freedom of religion or the operations of their churches, and how it won't lead to the indoctrination of their children by public schools, all of the uproar will go away and any continued opposition will be relegated to the far-right fringe, as has opposition to legalized abortion.
In conclusion, there is a reason that the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the Family Research Council, among other anti-gay organizations, as a hate-group. Despite the exterior it likes to present of a moderate Christian organization devoted to researching issues related to families and its positions and research suggesting that civil rights for gay people somehow negatively impacts society, it is actually a far-right organization who are motivated by continuing to impose their religious doctrine on our political process. One need not look past the rhetoric used in their campaigns, in their literature, and its political affiliations to see that. They raise money for the purpose of affecting public policy through political campaigns and do so with rhetoric that the majority of Americans, as evidenced by legitimate polling data, disagree with, and I would assert would be disgusted by. For any news organization to represent them as anything but a conservative, if not arch-conservative far-right, political organization is both a lie and an injustice to the majority of Americans. An organization that presents them as a reasonable and rational contributor to our political process and its discourse truly identifies that organization, or news channel, as part of or pandering to that far-right fringe.
It is important to recognize the nature of the FRC and its activities. They are known among many mainstream groups as a far-right advocacy organization that specializes in two issues, gay rights and abortion. Not only is the information they put out not widely considered legitimate research, but they are known to in fact be heavily committed and involved in political campaigns. Most recently they partnered with the National Organization for Marriage, who themselves are widely recognized for their far-right political views, in committing a virulent and riotously bigoted campaign to vote out of office the three justices of the Iowa Supreme Court who were up for election this past November. Those justices included the chief justice and were part of a unanimous decision by the nine judge panel that LGBT citizens in Iowa were constitutionally endowed with the right to marriage. They have since been very public about their intentions to continue their crusade in the next election cycle until all of the justices who participated in that decision are removed from office. I say committed a campaign because the campaign against these three justices was not only fraught with the use of the most virulent and bigoted rhetoric against members of the LGBT community, but it also included outright harassment of those justices by members of their organizations, which were summarily recorded on video and circulated on the internet.
While the rhetoric of the FRC is presented as 'research' which has been somehow independently vetted and verified, it is nothing but that, rhetoric. This far-right organization does their best to present a public face of reasonableness and rationality in the media, however it only takes a cursory investigation to see the depth of bigotry ingrained in their message. All of this is while representing themselves as tolerant Christians who are not anti-gay, but merely seeking to protect the welfare of children and society through the institution of marriage.
The research and statements of this organization are actually categorically false and the list of organizations or news outlets who present them as even remotely possible is short and telling. Recently FOX News interviewed Tony Perkins, the president of the organization, in response to the SPLC's labeling of them as a hate group and he firmly declares that organization as a far-left fringe group desperately trying to hold on to being relevant when their leftist platform of promoting a homosexual agenda is losing soundly, as represented in the last election, he alleges. Not only is this not true, but it presenting a lie as fact to a large portion of the public who watch FOX News and consider it a legitimate news organization.
The Facts:
According to a 2009 USA Today/Gallup poll, while the majority of Americans are opposed to gay marriage, those numbers swing dramatically when you consider how they break down, with 60% of people under the age of 30 thinking gay marriages should be legally recognized and have the same rights and status as heterosexual marriage. The majority of self-identified liberals and moderates support gay marriage, with only self-identified conservatives representing an overwhelming majority against gay marriage.
While the country remains split pretty evenly on the issue of gay-marriage, recent polls show that the majority of Americans do believe that there should be some sort of legal recognition for same-sex couples, including legal rights and protections similar or equal to those of heterosexuals. It is interesting, however, to note that while those polls are pretty evenly split in general, Republicans and self-identified conservatives still strongly oppose gay marriage.
The country, though, isn't evenly split over the issues of LGBT people serving openly in the military. That same page on PollingReport.com shows that the majority, ranging from two-thirds to three-fourths, of Americans believe gay people should be able to serve openly and would vote for open service if it was on a ballot.
So, when the FRC represents themselves as being in step with even a large number of Americans, they are either lying, or they are really referring only to self-identified conservatives. Even among those conservatives, or among Republicans, polled there isn't a unanimous consensus. This is the same fallacy touted by pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and even Bill O'Rielly. These people state as fact that the 'liberals', or according to O'Reilly the 'leftist pinheads', are losing this imaginary culture war they have concocted over the years. To them it is just an easily recognizable truth that their political ideology is the majority opinion, which means that they have the right to impose it on all of us by encoding it into law, and that somehow because they believe they are a part of the majority that that somehow makes them right and that the reasoning behind those opinions are factual and moral truth.
Here is the truth: In another ten to twenty years same-sex marriage will be a reality in this country. In fact if the court case against Prop 8 continues on to the US Supreme Court and is successful there, which is the inevitable ruling if it is ruled on its merits, then gay marriage will be a reality in this country far sooner. As far as I know, the striking down of a state constitutional amendment, which Prop 8 was, by the SCOTUS would then overturn all of the laws, statutes, and constitutional amendments set in to law across this country. While this may create an outcry among people for a host of reasons and would, of course, be labeled as legislating from the bench or judicial advocacy by the right-wing, and then likely thought of as that by much of the rest of the country, within a short period of time it would become a non-issue, as it has in MA. In that state, despite all of the anti-gay energy poured in, the constitutional amendment did not make it through the legislative process in time to stop marriage licenses from being issued and then has subsequently, since 2004, not been a serious ballot issue. Once the majority of Americans see how much of a non-issue gay marriage will be in their daily lives, how it will in fact not significantly impact their freedom of religion or the operations of their churches, and how it won't lead to the indoctrination of their children by public schools, all of the uproar will go away and any continued opposition will be relegated to the far-right fringe, as has opposition to legalized abortion.
In conclusion, there is a reason that the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the Family Research Council, among other anti-gay organizations, as a hate-group. Despite the exterior it likes to present of a moderate Christian organization devoted to researching issues related to families and its positions and research suggesting that civil rights for gay people somehow negatively impacts society, it is actually a far-right organization who are motivated by continuing to impose their religious doctrine on our political process. One need not look past the rhetoric used in their campaigns, in their literature, and its political affiliations to see that. They raise money for the purpose of affecting public policy through political campaigns and do so with rhetoric that the majority of Americans, as evidenced by legitimate polling data, disagree with, and I would assert would be disgusted by. For any news organization to represent them as anything but a conservative, if not arch-conservative far-right, political organization is both a lie and an injustice to the majority of Americans. An organization that presents them as a reasonable and rational contributor to our political process and its discourse truly identifies that organization, or news channel, as part of or pandering to that far-right fringe.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Surviving Republican
Dear Republican Party:
You have won back the House of Representatives in an election year rife with unrest over the economy and jobs. To do so, however, you activated the farthest reaches of the right wing electorate and by doing so gave legitimacy to a kind of crass disregard for truth and facts that is outright dangerous for this countries future. Even more than that you have given legitimacy to candidates and a movement that actively spurn the value of education and being or becoming educated. You have demonized and marginalized large groups of minority voters, minorities who statistically are fast growing parts of the electorate. All of this in the name of politics.
It would be unwise, however, to believe the rhetoric of your recent victory speeches in saying that this was a referendum on the overall policies or agenda of President Obama. You should also not think that it is somehow a show of support for your own party agenda. While it is politically expedient to posture in front of the media, polls say that more of this country supports the Democratic Party than they do your party, that most people like the individual policies of the president and the Democrats more. What you should take this election as a referendum on is job creation. Tax cuts are nice, and they are important, but without putting people back to work, it doesn't matter to them what their tax rates are. They want a job or want to not fear over keeping their job.
Another mistake would be to waste time talking about 'Obamacare'. If the Democrats had done an effective job selling the message of the legislation to the American people from the beginning, you would never have gained the upper hand in the media. Much of what the bill does is supported by the American people. Of those who do not support the overall legislation there is a significant number who think it did not go far enough. It would be dangerous for your party to mistake the slogans and spin of Rush Limbaugh and FOX News as fact or as the prevailing sentiment of most of the country.
What is also a mistake is not to listen to moderates like Rudy Giuliani. It is time for your party to stop allowing candidates to run racially divisive campaigns. It is time for you to ease up on the social agenda that has dehumanized and degraded gays and lesbians. You have already lost the culture war on those issues. The country is becoming more diverse rather than less and more accepting of LGBT people and their civil rights. You will loose this part of the debate and history is already attesting to that. As Meghan McCain says, if you want to be relevant as a party in the future you have to not alienate massive portions of the electorate in the minority and young voters in order to guarantee the vote of a proportionally smaller group of white heterosexual Christian voters.
So what's the solution? For now, concentrate on the message of fiscal conservatism that was supposedly the hallmark of the Tea Party. If you think you can balance the budget and get the economy going again with conservative policies, do it. Set aside the social agenda many of the arch-conservatives in your party are proposing and really just concentrate on budgets. One of the other things that was consistently of concern to voters was the gridlock in Washington, which means the stalling and partisanship. You cannot complain about partisanship and point fingers if you have an opportunity for true compromise.
Does that give you cover with the Tea Party? For many it would, as fiscal issues is a #1 topic on everyone's mind. What will be more problematic, however, getting nothing done except trying to make Obama a one term president or getting something done that you can actually run on as an accomplishment? The choice is yours, but 2012 is not going to be all about tearing down the Obama agenda and administration, nor will it be all about the Tea Party, which prevails in a midterm but can't hope to rally the entire party for a presidential election. But either way, don't choose the few, choose the many, choose all of us.
You have won back the House of Representatives in an election year rife with unrest over the economy and jobs. To do so, however, you activated the farthest reaches of the right wing electorate and by doing so gave legitimacy to a kind of crass disregard for truth and facts that is outright dangerous for this countries future. Even more than that you have given legitimacy to candidates and a movement that actively spurn the value of education and being or becoming educated. You have demonized and marginalized large groups of minority voters, minorities who statistically are fast growing parts of the electorate. All of this in the name of politics.
It would be unwise, however, to believe the rhetoric of your recent victory speeches in saying that this was a referendum on the overall policies or agenda of President Obama. You should also not think that it is somehow a show of support for your own party agenda. While it is politically expedient to posture in front of the media, polls say that more of this country supports the Democratic Party than they do your party, that most people like the individual policies of the president and the Democrats more. What you should take this election as a referendum on is job creation. Tax cuts are nice, and they are important, but without putting people back to work, it doesn't matter to them what their tax rates are. They want a job or want to not fear over keeping their job.
Another mistake would be to waste time talking about 'Obamacare'. If the Democrats had done an effective job selling the message of the legislation to the American people from the beginning, you would never have gained the upper hand in the media. Much of what the bill does is supported by the American people. Of those who do not support the overall legislation there is a significant number who think it did not go far enough. It would be dangerous for your party to mistake the slogans and spin of Rush Limbaugh and FOX News as fact or as the prevailing sentiment of most of the country.
What is also a mistake is not to listen to moderates like Rudy Giuliani. It is time for your party to stop allowing candidates to run racially divisive campaigns. It is time for you to ease up on the social agenda that has dehumanized and degraded gays and lesbians. You have already lost the culture war on those issues. The country is becoming more diverse rather than less and more accepting of LGBT people and their civil rights. You will loose this part of the debate and history is already attesting to that. As Meghan McCain says, if you want to be relevant as a party in the future you have to not alienate massive portions of the electorate in the minority and young voters in order to guarantee the vote of a proportionally smaller group of white heterosexual Christian voters.
So what's the solution? For now, concentrate on the message of fiscal conservatism that was supposedly the hallmark of the Tea Party. If you think you can balance the budget and get the economy going again with conservative policies, do it. Set aside the social agenda many of the arch-conservatives in your party are proposing and really just concentrate on budgets. One of the other things that was consistently of concern to voters was the gridlock in Washington, which means the stalling and partisanship. You cannot complain about partisanship and point fingers if you have an opportunity for true compromise.
Does that give you cover with the Tea Party? For many it would, as fiscal issues is a #1 topic on everyone's mind. What will be more problematic, however, getting nothing done except trying to make Obama a one term president or getting something done that you can actually run on as an accomplishment? The choice is yours, but 2012 is not going to be all about tearing down the Obama agenda and administration, nor will it be all about the Tea Party, which prevails in a midterm but can't hope to rally the entire party for a presidential election. But either way, don't choose the few, choose the many, choose all of us.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Thoughts about the Second Amendment and it's 'Remedies'
The title, obviously, refers to the famous quote by Sharon Angles, a candidate who I hope won't win her campaign to take Harry Reid's seat in the US Senate. She proudly sides herself with the right on the right to bear arms. This brings into play the conservative movement dream wedge issue, one of several they dip into whenever they have tough elections ahead, and that is the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.
One of the things that is disturbing about the rhetoric that Angles uses, which allies her with the explicit language used by militia and anti-government paramilitary groups around the country, is the idea that one of the principle reasons for us to be able to own and use weapons as private citizens is to overthrow a 'tyrannical' government. Of course this endears her to the radical fringe that has been a primary source of energy for the Tea Party, but it also brings to the mainstream the perspective of those people who agree with that premise and illustrates exactly how fringe their overall political views are.
As with all the articles and amendments in the US Constitution, the Second Amendment has received review and interpretation by the courts and especially by the Supreme Court. The high court has dealt with a number of aspects of this issue regarding regulation and detailing legal uses of guns. It also has had a handful of landmark cases which set important precedents in the way we interpret constitutional rights as a whole.
I think it is interesting, however, to think about the understanding of warfare and the vision of a civil society that the founders had when designing the Constitution. I think that it is important for us to recognize our necessary participation in shaping our democracy, in determining those who would represent us and in providing a balance through our votes against those who would radically alter our society to all our detriment.
It is important to consider the vision of those founders when we are in a post-nuclear age. A professor of mine in college described the change in the literature and art of the late-Victorian to early modernist periods at the end of the 19th and early 20th century as arising out of the effect industrialization had on the world. In particular, the effect that the horrors of 'modern' warfare had on a whole generation of young people during WWI. That war was famous for millions of miles of trenches, and the development of trench warfare, which would often create 'killing fields' between trench positions where enemy forces could be held in stand still for months.
This modern war also saw mass production of machines that had been developing as weapons during the previous decades and their use across the theater of war. These machines put horrifying and inhuman faces on a world changing far more quickly than people could have imagined. That inhumanity of war-machines and weaponry only continued to develop so that by the time of the Pacific campaigns of WWII, we had developed weapons with the potential to kill millions with a single bomb.
There are also some very important differences between the facts around gun ownership now as then. For one, the standards of weaponry were such that a single-shot rifle was high-tech. Also, at least during the Revolutionary War and sometimes afterward, members of the military were usually required to provide their own arms. Neither of these things are true anymore. We no longer use single-shot guns, and the process of reloading the gun is quick. And while there are weapons that are legal only for members of law enforcement or for those in active military service, the technology of the arms available to the civilian population is remarkable.
That, more than anything, is what gives me problems with the idea of the right to bear arms. Why would someone, for the purposes of home protection or for hunting, need any kind of automatic weapon? If the right to bear arms was intended for and still is of a purpose to provide personal protection, how does an Uzi accomplish that anymore than a simple handgun? Considering the potential for 'accidents', which often means children finding a parent's gun and setting it off, doesn't the state have a vested interest in providing some standards of regulation? If the argument is that a responsible gun owner would teach their children not to handle the weapon or to handle the weapon safely, isn't teaching them how to use the weapon inviting them to use it? One could argue that point all they want but it is a commonly true generality that if you forbid a child something they will want it or do it.
People always seem to want 'freedom', or at least lack of government involvement, until something goes wrong and then they want to know why the government didn't step in. They don't want the government regulating their right to gun ownership, but then when their children are killed by gunfire, especially in the frighteningly frequent episodes of children bringing guns to school and opening fire, or when the same thing happens with adults in the workplace, there is always an outcry for why the shooter was allowed access to a gun.
The most famous school example is of course Columbine, the high school in Colorado where two disturbed teenagers held hostage and killed numerous classmates before killing themselves. There are obviously many other issues revolving around the two youths choosing to take such action, but ultimately the mantra that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people,' is little comfort for the families of the teens killed that day. The fact is that if those two hadn't had access to guns they wouldn't have been able to shoot up the school. Psychological and social issues aside, which of course played a role but were far more complex in trying to address, the simplest and most expedient solution would have been taking away their guns.
So, as a society, we've tried to argue back and forth between what we feel is right and what we feel are our rights. Do we allow private citizens to own weapons that a could be considered military-grade? If we do that, how do we decide what weapons are appropriate for military and law enforcement use but not for civilian use? And then how do we convince people who think that's a decision they should make for themselves that it is actually for all of us to decide? If we are going to argue about whether society should approve of same-sex marriage or on issues of immigration, why can't we insist that we as a society gets to decide on whether or not everyone should have access to automatic firearms?
I was watching tonight/s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show and she stopped by a prominent gun shop in Las Vegas, trying out several automatic weapons. For some the main argument for having automatic weapons is for the purposes of sportsmanship. If a hunter needs to be able to spray multiple rounds a second at an animal, they are a terrible hunter and should be doing target practice and not hunting with an Uzi. And it is a problem, to me, when I see what is basically a quasi-paramilitary culture being promoted or proliferating through gun culture. Are they enthusiasts because they romanticize the idea of owning a gun and being a soldier when for whatever reason they did not enter service themselves?
To me it is simple. If you are a hunter, there are weapons that are appropriate, even with advanced technology, for sportsmanship/hunting purposes. They do not include automatic assault rifles. My family owns hunting rifles, I know people who hunt, and there is nothing wrong with a gun with an easier reload or less jerk back or a better scope or site or with the ability to shoot several rounds in a quick succession. That's not the same as hunting with an Uzi.
I also don't necessarily have a problem with the idea of guns among law enforcement and military personnel. They are trained, and their behavior and psychological situations under some scrutiny so that we have few renegade cops, though the Army's recent standards seems to have led to an increase in number of disturbed people entering service or with criminal assaults and murders among service members. But either way, they are trained and understand the idea of appropriate and inappropriate use of weapons.
Weapons are for killing, pure and simple. While there may be design elements to them that are appealing, I find swords, knives and historical weaponry to be very interesting, and while there is some collectible or aesthetic value to antique firearms, even these were designed for the purpose of harming others and can be of some danger. If we treat weapons with a cavalier attitude, especially if someone with children treat them with such, than we pass that cavalier attitude on to others and help to foster this concept that somehow it is 'safe' to use them. Weapons are never safe, maybe they are safe for the user as they don't backfire, but they are never 'safe'.
Returning to Angles and the idea of 'Second Amendment remedies', it is clear she's talking about violent overthrow of the government, or acts of domestic terrorism like taking out legitimately elected officials. This is a danger to our democracy and is the kind of sponsorship of civil strife you see among many of the nations we consider 'Third World'. That is one reason why the woman and why the conservative Tea Party members are so dangerous.
In a time when anxiety is so high and people are suffering across the country, they scapegoat groups like Latino people and the issue of illegal immigration, or they scapegoat LGBT people and the issue of same-sex marriage, then paint all people who sympathize or are even rational about those groups and issues as 'enemies', using rhetorical devices to identify them as illegitimate like 'socialist' or 'communist', and then describe solutions involving violence, they are fueling the fires of domestic terrorism and civil unrest. They are encouraging those among them who send toxic substances to Congressmen, try to cause an explosion by cutting the gas line at the home of another Congressman's family member, and go armed to political rallies held by the president. All of this has been documented as happening this year.
For the rest of us, who are legitimately upset about the political process, who are afraid of our personal financial situations and those of friends and family, and who see the rhetoric of this election cycle as one more step to total anarchy, it is frightening. Most Americans do not feel the extreme anger of those lashing out with violence. While we sympathize with the sentiments, the vast majority of us choose to exercise our rights through voting, through protest and free speech. We know that if we get worked up that we can yell and shout about the issues important to us. We do not, however, believe in the kind of physical violence that extremists in this country want to promote as normal, rational, understandable, excusable and mainstream.
Our founders fought against a true tyrant, the kind of tyrant that very few in this country could really recognize. They were given no representation and were being drained of revenue by a foreign power that took direct military action to enforce its policies. Those who identify Obama with this type of dictator belittle the efforts of our founders. They also belittle the lives of so many in nations that still suffer under true dictators today, who have no freedom of speech or religion, who cannot gather in protest, and who are not allowed to oppose the government's policies in any way. These people should go and try to live in one of these many other countries to see how bad it really gets. They should suffer under dictators who would imprison, torture or even kill them for their opinions. Then they would have a legitimate understanding of what it means to be an American.
One of the things that is disturbing about the rhetoric that Angles uses, which allies her with the explicit language used by militia and anti-government paramilitary groups around the country, is the idea that one of the principle reasons for us to be able to own and use weapons as private citizens is to overthrow a 'tyrannical' government. Of course this endears her to the radical fringe that has been a primary source of energy for the Tea Party, but it also brings to the mainstream the perspective of those people who agree with that premise and illustrates exactly how fringe their overall political views are.
As with all the articles and amendments in the US Constitution, the Second Amendment has received review and interpretation by the courts and especially by the Supreme Court. The high court has dealt with a number of aspects of this issue regarding regulation and detailing legal uses of guns. It also has had a handful of landmark cases which set important precedents in the way we interpret constitutional rights as a whole.
I think it is interesting, however, to think about the understanding of warfare and the vision of a civil society that the founders had when designing the Constitution. I think that it is important for us to recognize our necessary participation in shaping our democracy, in determining those who would represent us and in providing a balance through our votes against those who would radically alter our society to all our detriment.
It is important to consider the vision of those founders when we are in a post-nuclear age. A professor of mine in college described the change in the literature and art of the late-Victorian to early modernist periods at the end of the 19th and early 20th century as arising out of the effect industrialization had on the world. In particular, the effect that the horrors of 'modern' warfare had on a whole generation of young people during WWI. That war was famous for millions of miles of trenches, and the development of trench warfare, which would often create 'killing fields' between trench positions where enemy forces could be held in stand still for months.
This modern war also saw mass production of machines that had been developing as weapons during the previous decades and their use across the theater of war. These machines put horrifying and inhuman faces on a world changing far more quickly than people could have imagined. That inhumanity of war-machines and weaponry only continued to develop so that by the time of the Pacific campaigns of WWII, we had developed weapons with the potential to kill millions with a single bomb.
There are also some very important differences between the facts around gun ownership now as then. For one, the standards of weaponry were such that a single-shot rifle was high-tech. Also, at least during the Revolutionary War and sometimes afterward, members of the military were usually required to provide their own arms. Neither of these things are true anymore. We no longer use single-shot guns, and the process of reloading the gun is quick. And while there are weapons that are legal only for members of law enforcement or for those in active military service, the technology of the arms available to the civilian population is remarkable.
That, more than anything, is what gives me problems with the idea of the right to bear arms. Why would someone, for the purposes of home protection or for hunting, need any kind of automatic weapon? If the right to bear arms was intended for and still is of a purpose to provide personal protection, how does an Uzi accomplish that anymore than a simple handgun? Considering the potential for 'accidents', which often means children finding a parent's gun and setting it off, doesn't the state have a vested interest in providing some standards of regulation? If the argument is that a responsible gun owner would teach their children not to handle the weapon or to handle the weapon safely, isn't teaching them how to use the weapon inviting them to use it? One could argue that point all they want but it is a commonly true generality that if you forbid a child something they will want it or do it.
People always seem to want 'freedom', or at least lack of government involvement, until something goes wrong and then they want to know why the government didn't step in. They don't want the government regulating their right to gun ownership, but then when their children are killed by gunfire, especially in the frighteningly frequent episodes of children bringing guns to school and opening fire, or when the same thing happens with adults in the workplace, there is always an outcry for why the shooter was allowed access to a gun.
The most famous school example is of course Columbine, the high school in Colorado where two disturbed teenagers held hostage and killed numerous classmates before killing themselves. There are obviously many other issues revolving around the two youths choosing to take such action, but ultimately the mantra that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people,' is little comfort for the families of the teens killed that day. The fact is that if those two hadn't had access to guns they wouldn't have been able to shoot up the school. Psychological and social issues aside, which of course played a role but were far more complex in trying to address, the simplest and most expedient solution would have been taking away their guns.
So, as a society, we've tried to argue back and forth between what we feel is right and what we feel are our rights. Do we allow private citizens to own weapons that a could be considered military-grade? If we do that, how do we decide what weapons are appropriate for military and law enforcement use but not for civilian use? And then how do we convince people who think that's a decision they should make for themselves that it is actually for all of us to decide? If we are going to argue about whether society should approve of same-sex marriage or on issues of immigration, why can't we insist that we as a society gets to decide on whether or not everyone should have access to automatic firearms?
I was watching tonight/s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show and she stopped by a prominent gun shop in Las Vegas, trying out several automatic weapons. For some the main argument for having automatic weapons is for the purposes of sportsmanship. If a hunter needs to be able to spray multiple rounds a second at an animal, they are a terrible hunter and should be doing target practice and not hunting with an Uzi. And it is a problem, to me, when I see what is basically a quasi-paramilitary culture being promoted or proliferating through gun culture. Are they enthusiasts because they romanticize the idea of owning a gun and being a soldier when for whatever reason they did not enter service themselves?
To me it is simple. If you are a hunter, there are weapons that are appropriate, even with advanced technology, for sportsmanship/hunting purposes. They do not include automatic assault rifles. My family owns hunting rifles, I know people who hunt, and there is nothing wrong with a gun with an easier reload or less jerk back or a better scope or site or with the ability to shoot several rounds in a quick succession. That's not the same as hunting with an Uzi.
I also don't necessarily have a problem with the idea of guns among law enforcement and military personnel. They are trained, and their behavior and psychological situations under some scrutiny so that we have few renegade cops, though the Army's recent standards seems to have led to an increase in number of disturbed people entering service or with criminal assaults and murders among service members. But either way, they are trained and understand the idea of appropriate and inappropriate use of weapons.
Weapons are for killing, pure and simple. While there may be design elements to them that are appealing, I find swords, knives and historical weaponry to be very interesting, and while there is some collectible or aesthetic value to antique firearms, even these were designed for the purpose of harming others and can be of some danger. If we treat weapons with a cavalier attitude, especially if someone with children treat them with such, than we pass that cavalier attitude on to others and help to foster this concept that somehow it is 'safe' to use them. Weapons are never safe, maybe they are safe for the user as they don't backfire, but they are never 'safe'.
Returning to Angles and the idea of 'Second Amendment remedies', it is clear she's talking about violent overthrow of the government, or acts of domestic terrorism like taking out legitimately elected officials. This is a danger to our democracy and is the kind of sponsorship of civil strife you see among many of the nations we consider 'Third World'. That is one reason why the woman and why the conservative Tea Party members are so dangerous.
In a time when anxiety is so high and people are suffering across the country, they scapegoat groups like Latino people and the issue of illegal immigration, or they scapegoat LGBT people and the issue of same-sex marriage, then paint all people who sympathize or are even rational about those groups and issues as 'enemies', using rhetorical devices to identify them as illegitimate like 'socialist' or 'communist', and then describe solutions involving violence, they are fueling the fires of domestic terrorism and civil unrest. They are encouraging those among them who send toxic substances to Congressmen, try to cause an explosion by cutting the gas line at the home of another Congressman's family member, and go armed to political rallies held by the president. All of this has been documented as happening this year.
For the rest of us, who are legitimately upset about the political process, who are afraid of our personal financial situations and those of friends and family, and who see the rhetoric of this election cycle as one more step to total anarchy, it is frightening. Most Americans do not feel the extreme anger of those lashing out with violence. While we sympathize with the sentiments, the vast majority of us choose to exercise our rights through voting, through protest and free speech. We know that if we get worked up that we can yell and shout about the issues important to us. We do not, however, believe in the kind of physical violence that extremists in this country want to promote as normal, rational, understandable, excusable and mainstream.
Our founders fought against a true tyrant, the kind of tyrant that very few in this country could really recognize. They were given no representation and were being drained of revenue by a foreign power that took direct military action to enforce its policies. Those who identify Obama with this type of dictator belittle the efforts of our founders. They also belittle the lives of so many in nations that still suffer under true dictators today, who have no freedom of speech or religion, who cannot gather in protest, and who are not allowed to oppose the government's policies in any way. These people should go and try to live in one of these many other countries to see how bad it really gets. They should suffer under dictators who would imprison, torture or even kill them for their opinions. Then they would have a legitimate understanding of what it means to be an American.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Conservative Agenda
It's really interesting how much of the rhetoric of the conservative political movements and Tea Party surround the idea of limited size of government, limits on government power, restricting government's involvement in the private business sector and then removing the government's involvement in our private lives and our 'liberty'.
This last bit is a complete falsehood. The conservative politicians and Tea Party movement doesn't want the government out of OUR lives, they want it out of THEIR lives. What this means in some practical terms is that they want to be able to be free to do and say what they please, to believe what they want and to be free to act on those beliefs without any infringement. They want to be able to deny gay people and Muslims the right to rent apartments, they want to be able to fire people for 'lifestyle choices'. They want to be able to say whatever they want wherever they want, including at work, and not be afraid of others being offended or suffer any consequence for hurtful or outright hateful things they say. They want to dictate what is legally acceptable in our society based on THEIR beliefs and not be forced to deal with the 'special interest groups', which really means minority people.
This last is an especially hypocritical part of their rhetoric. They say they want to restore individual liberties and freedoms, which is actually the above, but they want to outlaw all abortion via constitutional amendment, as well as gay marriage. Some visible conservative activists, and leaders in the Tea Party movement, have actually said on television that they think we should outlaw the building of any new mosques in this country. I think that some of them would actually outlaw interracial marriage again if they could.
How do you justify having these above beliefs when you profess the principles of freedom of religion and rights to privacy? They hate it when they are called racists, yet they continually proclaim the illegitimacy of President Barak Obama. They don't do this by using a situation like the Florida recount of 2000 when George W Bush was elected because those 'liberal activist judges' upheld ballots some said were questionable based on the principles of voter rights. No, instead they use language that, though they claim it isn't racially motivated, isn't even subtle in its racial implications, such as saying he's a 'Kenyan tribal anti-colonialist'. They have no problem claiming that that isn't racially motivated or racist language, which is incomprehensible to me.
Some among the conservative candidates running in this year's mid-term elections have even publicly taken the position of being anti-abortion, with no exceptions made for victims of rape or incest. Rachel Maddow claims that this kind of stance on abortion used to be totally off-limits for all but the extreme fringe. Obviously that fringe has taken to the mainstream. The idea that making it illegal for women to have access to reproductive health resources ISN'T a right to privacy issue is ludicrous. If there are any circumstances in which we should absolutely have a right to privacy it is in our most intimate relationships and the right to control our own bodies. While they are claiming the Obama administration is part of a socialist/communist conspiracy to control the minds and bodies of everyone in this country, ironically not recognizing any difference between socialism and communism, they would do EXACTLY that and are completely unapologetic about it.
The same principle of hypocrisy holds true for their stance on gay marriage. While they have a right to believe whatever they want to believe, and are free to practice their religion, it is bizarre to think that their values of 'freedom of speech' and individual liberty wouldn't extend to the governments interference in the private relationships of same-sex couples. If they were truly for individual freedom and liberty they would make every effort to ensure that the government doesn't make any laws to restrict the rights of any of its citizenry. And while some conservatives might say that they aren't restricting gay people's rights to marry, they could marry a member of the opposite sex any time they want, no one can deny that this is exclusive of the types of loving relationships gay people do enter into. Those same people who would reinstate sodomy laws if they could share that same sentiment of not seeing any conflict between their stance of individual freedom and being anti-gay marriage.
Ultimately it comes down to this, and I've said it before: the conservative political movement isn't about freedom for all citizens, it's about freedom for themselves and asserting control over everyone else in the country so that theirs is the only system of beliefs and values that are legal in this country. They may rail against the current administration and against progressive politics in general, but when any rational, thinking person thinks through the issues surrounding these social values, they will see that progressives, many of whom are Democrats, some of whom are Independents and moderate Republicans, are the only ones looking to protect the 'liberties' that those in the Tea Party most enjoy and take for granted.
This last bit is a complete falsehood. The conservative politicians and Tea Party movement doesn't want the government out of OUR lives, they want it out of THEIR lives. What this means in some practical terms is that they want to be able to be free to do and say what they please, to believe what they want and to be free to act on those beliefs without any infringement. They want to be able to deny gay people and Muslims the right to rent apartments, they want to be able to fire people for 'lifestyle choices'. They want to be able to say whatever they want wherever they want, including at work, and not be afraid of others being offended or suffer any consequence for hurtful or outright hateful things they say. They want to dictate what is legally acceptable in our society based on THEIR beliefs and not be forced to deal with the 'special interest groups', which really means minority people.
This last is an especially hypocritical part of their rhetoric. They say they want to restore individual liberties and freedoms, which is actually the above, but they want to outlaw all abortion via constitutional amendment, as well as gay marriage. Some visible conservative activists, and leaders in the Tea Party movement, have actually said on television that they think we should outlaw the building of any new mosques in this country. I think that some of them would actually outlaw interracial marriage again if they could.
How do you justify having these above beliefs when you profess the principles of freedom of religion and rights to privacy? They hate it when they are called racists, yet they continually proclaim the illegitimacy of President Barak Obama. They don't do this by using a situation like the Florida recount of 2000 when George W Bush was elected because those 'liberal activist judges' upheld ballots some said were questionable based on the principles of voter rights. No, instead they use language that, though they claim it isn't racially motivated, isn't even subtle in its racial implications, such as saying he's a 'Kenyan tribal anti-colonialist'. They have no problem claiming that that isn't racially motivated or racist language, which is incomprehensible to me.
Some among the conservative candidates running in this year's mid-term elections have even publicly taken the position of being anti-abortion, with no exceptions made for victims of rape or incest. Rachel Maddow claims that this kind of stance on abortion used to be totally off-limits for all but the extreme fringe. Obviously that fringe has taken to the mainstream. The idea that making it illegal for women to have access to reproductive health resources ISN'T a right to privacy issue is ludicrous. If there are any circumstances in which we should absolutely have a right to privacy it is in our most intimate relationships and the right to control our own bodies. While they are claiming the Obama administration is part of a socialist/communist conspiracy to control the minds and bodies of everyone in this country, ironically not recognizing any difference between socialism and communism, they would do EXACTLY that and are completely unapologetic about it.
The same principle of hypocrisy holds true for their stance on gay marriage. While they have a right to believe whatever they want to believe, and are free to practice their religion, it is bizarre to think that their values of 'freedom of speech' and individual liberty wouldn't extend to the governments interference in the private relationships of same-sex couples. If they were truly for individual freedom and liberty they would make every effort to ensure that the government doesn't make any laws to restrict the rights of any of its citizenry. And while some conservatives might say that they aren't restricting gay people's rights to marry, they could marry a member of the opposite sex any time they want, no one can deny that this is exclusive of the types of loving relationships gay people do enter into. Those same people who would reinstate sodomy laws if they could share that same sentiment of not seeing any conflict between their stance of individual freedom and being anti-gay marriage.
Ultimately it comes down to this, and I've said it before: the conservative political movement isn't about freedom for all citizens, it's about freedom for themselves and asserting control over everyone else in the country so that theirs is the only system of beliefs and values that are legal in this country. They may rail against the current administration and against progressive politics in general, but when any rational, thinking person thinks through the issues surrounding these social values, they will see that progressives, many of whom are Democrats, some of whom are Independents and moderate Republicans, are the only ones looking to protect the 'liberties' that those in the Tea Party most enjoy and take for granted.
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