Ron Rosenbaum has a long article at Slate criticizing the historical perspective present in the Tea Party movement. It's worth reading, at least most of it, but I think a few points bear mentioning again.
Tyranny
Common rhetoric in the Tea Party movement (including when a well-educated tea partier went on the Daily Show) is that Obama and the Democratic Party are running a "tyrannical" government. Such people, of course, confuse tyranny with losing an election or losing a vote. The fact that your opinion is no longer the prevailing one does not mean the government is tyrannical.
Governments are tyrannical when they force people to be part of a political system that they don't want to be in. That is clearly not the case in America. All of these "well educated" tea partiers have chosen to be and remain in America. They just aren't happy with the result.
Fascism v. Socialism
Fascism is not socialism, and socialism is not facism. Right wing rhetoric often confuses these two extremes (fascism is extreme right-wing, socialism is extreme left-wing.) While it's true that once movements become extremist in either direction they start to take on some similar characteristics, the two are based in very different rationales.
Fascism is extreme nationalism and patriotism. Fascists believe that the state itself should be venerated and protected. Recent aspects of American culture that approach fascism are the USA PATRIOT Act, indefinite detention of "enemies of the state," etc.
Socialism, on the other hand, is extreme charity and compassion, not for the state but for other human beings. Socialists regard the state as a tool to redistribute wealth in a way that creates the best possible world and gives everyone as much as possible, but they don't see the state as inherently deserving of protection.
Marxism v. Leninism and Stalinism
Many people who watch Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly but have never actually studied Marx, Lenin or Stalin think that Russian communism is "Marxist" in nature. This is partially due to Lenin and Stalin co-opting Marx's name and reputation to legitimize their own proposals, but it can only really be blamed on historical ignorance.
Marx predicted the inevitable and universal rising of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. He then predicted the temporary dictatorship of the proletariat (a dictatorial democracy is the most reasonable interpretation) followed by the withering away of government.
Lenin and Stalin (really, their ideologies should also be looked at separately but that's more detail than I'll go into here), on the other hand, saw it as their duty to force the proletariat revolution in Russia. Instead of being a spontaneous and universal event, then, it became a forced and limited one. And the government that Lenin and Stalin set up was a dictatorship of the elite, not of the proletariat.
The conflation of Marx with Lenin and Stalin and the idea that Russian communism was an experiment with Marxian philosophy is thus unfortunate and historically unfounded.
Anyways, read the Slate article fore more good points about how the Tea Party would benefit from historical perspective.
Tyranny
Common rhetoric in the Tea Party movement (including when a well-educated tea partier went on the Daily Show) is that Obama and the Democratic Party are running a "tyrannical" government. Such people, of course, confuse tyranny with losing an election or losing a vote. The fact that your opinion is no longer the prevailing one does not mean the government is tyrannical.
Governments are tyrannical when they force people to be part of a political system that they don't want to be in. That is clearly not the case in America. All of these "well educated" tea partiers have chosen to be and remain in America. They just aren't happy with the result.
Fascism v. Socialism
Fascism is not socialism, and socialism is not facism. Right wing rhetoric often confuses these two extremes (fascism is extreme right-wing, socialism is extreme left-wing.) While it's true that once movements become extremist in either direction they start to take on some similar characteristics, the two are based in very different rationales.
Fascism is extreme nationalism and patriotism. Fascists believe that the state itself should be venerated and protected. Recent aspects of American culture that approach fascism are the USA PATRIOT Act, indefinite detention of "enemies of the state," etc.
Socialism, on the other hand, is extreme charity and compassion, not for the state but for other human beings. Socialists regard the state as a tool to redistribute wealth in a way that creates the best possible world and gives everyone as much as possible, but they don't see the state as inherently deserving of protection.
Marxism v. Leninism and Stalinism
Many people who watch Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly but have never actually studied Marx, Lenin or Stalin think that Russian communism is "Marxist" in nature. This is partially due to Lenin and Stalin co-opting Marx's name and reputation to legitimize their own proposals, but it can only really be blamed on historical ignorance.
Marx predicted the inevitable and universal rising of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. He then predicted the temporary dictatorship of the proletariat (a dictatorial democracy is the most reasonable interpretation) followed by the withering away of government.
Lenin and Stalin (really, their ideologies should also be looked at separately but that's more detail than I'll go into here), on the other hand, saw it as their duty to force the proletariat revolution in Russia. Instead of being a spontaneous and universal event, then, it became a forced and limited one. And the government that Lenin and Stalin set up was a dictatorship of the elite, not of the proletariat.
The conflation of Marx with Lenin and Stalin and the idea that Russian communism was an experiment with Marxian philosophy is thus unfortunate and historically unfounded.
Anyways, read the Slate article fore more good points about how the Tea Party would benefit from historical perspective.
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