No, the Tea thing started ramping up in early '09, long before we had any concrete details on the AHCA. They were screaming at townhalls that summer, while congress was still wrestling with the bill’s content. By the time the president signed the final draft, the Tea to-do was over a year old. So it really is not correct to say that healthcare reform legislation sparked the rise of the tea party, there was some other pot-stirring going on there.
Ah, yes, there was. Well, not so much pot-stirring as astroturfing. But health-care reform certainly gave the bastards a ball to carry. (Lurves me sum mixed metaphors! :D)
more young americans favor socialism:
www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/29/young-people-socialsim_n_1175218.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_(politics)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_line_of_the_party
[[DELETED LINK TO 1984]]
Yes, I’ve seen that poll before. It gives one hope . . . except that the poll does not define “socialism” or “capitalism,” so they’re really just polling for the popularity of the words.
Exactly. It’s a meaningless poll - partly because conservatives have been defining every liberal position as socialist for decades without regard to what socialism means.
:rolleyes: Yes, yes, we know what the phrase “party line” means. That doesn’t mean there is any clear party line, in either major American party today.
:dubious: And what was that in aid of? Sure, I’ve read Nineteen Eighty-Four, I’m sure most GD-Dopers have read Nineteen Eighty-Four. For my part I have an extensive collection of the fiction, journalism and essays of George Orwell (who remained a self-ID’d socialist until the day he died, by the way). I post extensive quotations from Orwell’s essays quite frequently in this forum (this is a good online source).
More concrete terms connected to capitalism are doing quite well.
Also, no one disputes that the concept of a party line exists. I dispute your claim that:
Open dissent is in its golden age, not being suppressed.
In fact, the Internet is unprecedented fertilizer for it.
Have you stopped beating your wife?
We’re going with blogs now? Not only that, the blogger is a paranoid moron:
He’s lazy, too. Here he is on guns:
Except…
Not an exact quote, I admit, but he’s acknowledging the stuff this guy is talking about. The bit that’s merely 100% wrong and not completely nuts, that is. Do you think this is bolstering your cause, wildorchid?
I never said that American values no longer exist.
what i’m saying is that they are under attack, and being replaced by collectivist attitudes and values via the public schooling system all the way up through the university level.
I see individual people displaying the opposite of American values all the time:
] dependancy, on government or otherwise
] governement is to be worshipped
] moral relativism ; right and wrong is negotiable.
] austerity/ poverty is cool; ‘we must sacrifice’ for the greatest good…
] people tripping over themselves to give away their rights for security out of fear [acceptance of the patriot act/ homeland security/ TSA, which resembles the german enabling act of 1933]
] science is garbage, but new age mysticism is the way…
this is what i’m seeing, anyways.
the tacit denials of these trends only indicate that the denier is an ostrich…
In reality, there are only individuals, and all a ‘collective’ is is a fiction; a mental construct to describe a bunch of individuals, of which any group must necessarily consist of. The individuals are real…
It’s not like one day all americans have X values, and they wake up the next day and they all have B values. thats not what i’m saying…
I’m not saying that traditional American values have 100% disappeared. (which you seem to be arguing against, although i never claimed this, i’m talking about the direction that things are obviously moving in if one opens ones eyes.
what i *[am/I] saying is that they are eroding, and the collectivist mind-set (very un-american value-wise, btw) is on the increase…
it’s a process of attrition, as individuals one by one are influenced, not to adopt their parents, and grandparents values, but those of collectivism being promoted by public schooling/ the media.
Of course, this extent of this process varies depending on where in the country you are, who you come into contact with. (peoples values today in Oklahoma, and California will be quite different, which only supports what i’m saying here; California is at the forefront of this process, ie. is more ‘progressive’…
Austerity is the opposite of a collectivist policy. It’s the idea that the government needs to drastically cut its spending on social programs.
Meh. There have always been people who reject science and there always will be, but proportionally there are fewer of them than there were in the past. This isn’t related to the issue you say you’re interested in.
I don’t think you’re seeing anything remotely close to reality.
like i said, it depends on where you are, and the individuals you run into, but i see the collectivist mind-set and philosophy displayed constantly…
not only that, but i see american values being treated as something you should be ashamed of having…
( i’ve been called selfish for valuing my family, sexist for saying that kids are better off w/ 2 parents, and racist for being proud of my american heritage…are you suggesting that i imagined that??)
on what basis are you implying that i am delusional??
i can cite tons on material on this trend… I just cited a poll that shows the majority of young people favoring socialism; read that again… not old people, young people.
denying it is just beyond ridiculous…
] austerity means more taxation… what could be more collectivist than that? straight out of Marx.
Okay, wildorchid, I would like to remark that citing a Pew poll about people’s opinion of the word socialism is a much better approach than citing Agenda 21 or the Fabians, so thanks for stepping up your game, so to speak.
The blog piece did make one point I agreed with, sort of:
It’s not so much “defending individuality and freedom” as it is “pushing for cultural change in the underclass”, but the idea that treating said underclass as helpless victims with no agency in their lives is a destructive one, and a legacy of the 1960s.
That’s a tangent, though. His broader points are furiously illogical and aren’t falsifiable; the claims are are presented as revealed truth, with no evidence or coherence.
I’m not implying you’re delusional. I’m saying you are completely wrong. That blogger appears to be delusional, but that’s another story.
Already responded to it. We see surveys like this all the time, and they’re just impressions of a word, not any specific policies.
No, it doesn’t. First and forecast, austerity means drastic cuts in government spending and services, which is un-Marxist to say the least. Saying an increase in taxes is Marxist is ridiculous. You keep saying Marx was stupid, but it doesn’t sound like you have a firm understanding of what he said or thought.
“Anyway, here’s the thing about Collectivism. It’s basically a movement to wipe out the very idea of the individual. The human of the future will only be visible as a member of a group. Otherwise, no one will see him, except to report him to Homeland Security.”
I agree with this^^^
its an anti-individual movement by definition…
so, please go ahead and mention various aircraft, use ‘guilt by association’ fallacies, single out anyone who happens to a different opinion other than the one sanctioned by the party, which is: “what socialism?; what collectivism? where? theres no such thing… pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, move along, theres nothing to see here”
you hear that all the time: ‘who are you with?’ … ‘what group do you belong to?’
people identify themselves more and more by the role they play, who they are affiliated with, not by who they are as an individual…
its about how they fit into the group.
You don’t think this guy sounds extremely paranoid, not to say crazy?
There isn’t a fact or citation anywhere in this rambling entry, not that that’s a surprise.
look at #2 plank: “progressive heavy income tax” ie. re-distribution.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity <<< ‘increase in taxes’; first sentence.
of course Marx is stupid… with followers like Lenin, Stalin (i know he tweaked Marxism , but its still basically Marxism), and Mao, and the legacies they spawned, and the massive failures and cruelty that went along with them.
are you defending Marxism??