lolgaxe wrote:
gbaji wrote:
3. The Tea Party has clearly defined for/against positions. Against "big government". For individual liberty and responsibility. They are for the free market in absence of the government intervening constantly. This alone is a huge difference. They have a fully formed "cause". The Occupy people don't.
To draw a little cross-thread shenanigans, I've got to ask: Why is it you say they're uniformly against "big government," for individual liberty and responsibility, and against constant government intervention when they've demonstrated (
lol cwutididthar?) on several occasions they they want
more government intervention and less individual liberty and responsibility when it comes to the armed forces?
Because "big government" isn't just about the dollars, or the number of people. It's about the expanding scope of the government (usually federal) into new areas. Thus, universal health care is an example of big government. Funding our military is *not* an example of big government. I'm sure I've explained this to you many times in the past. Perhaps you should pay attention one of these times?
Also, you kinda left out the part about opposition to government intervening
in the free market. Obviously, the government should be directly involved in managing our nations military. It should not be so directly involved in managing our markets.
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There's also the whole "We're for individual liberty and responsibility" when you're adamantly pro-life
You're conflating "religious" and "conservative". The two positions share some commonalities, but are not strictly identical. The conservative position on abortion is that it should be determined at the state level, and not the federal level (that's consistent, right?). Thus, the conservative position is about how the law is determined and applied, and not necessarily about the result (kinda like not having a problem with Mass choosing to employ Romney care but having a big problem with the same thing applied nationwide).
The religious view is specific to the issue itself. They oppose abortion. Those positions happen to align because in our current legal state, religious people can't fight to overturn current abortion laws unless conservatives can first overrule Roe v. Wade and return the power to make those decisions to the states. That's how the two are aligned. They're also aligned in more broad terms because the current left happens to be increasingly secular and anti-religious (specifically anti-Christian).
If the liberals of today were instead fighting to expand government in ways that benefited existing religious institutions, you can bet that we'd have a "religious left" and conservatives would be opposing them. It's a mistake to assume that conservative and religious are synonymous, or that all conservatives hold the same specific set of issue position as all religious people. There are a whole hell of a lot of pro-choice Republican voters (like me!) out there.
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("They should take the responsibility and not be in that position in the first place!" Certainly don't disagree with that, but if you're going to take away an option I certainly don't see many solutions put on the table either. How many Tea Baggers are actively adopting?).
Taking out the spoiler tag. Um... Michelle Bachmann? There are a whole hell of a lot of religious conservatives who do practice exactly what they preach. I'm not sure what you thought you were trying to prove here.
Oh. But just to be clear, the conservative position on abortion is that there is a balance of individual rights. That of the woman over her own body, and that of the unborn child to live. We recognize that this is an incredibly complex and difficult issue and that we should not therefore just declare one solution by fiat from the highest point of the law and think that we've ended it. Clearly, Roe v. Wade did not end the debate, but it did make it harder for us to explore different solutions on a state by state basis and allow the people to decide on their own what laws they feel the most comfortable with.
The conservative position on Roe v. Wade is a whole topic by itself. But I think the point here is that there is a consistent set of positions with a consistent set of principle pushing them. The Tea Party platform is *not* about abortion. It's not about prayer in school. It's almost exclusively about government imposing greater control over our markets and our economic lives. The left tends to attack members of the Tea Party on other positions they may hold that aren't part of the Tea Party platform. I can only assume because they can't effectively attack the common positions Tea Partiers hold.
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I'm no fan of the "Occupy: (City)" movements, since I've been personally assaulted by both groups now, but to say one is clearly defined and the other isn't is a bit misleading. At best Tea Party is better defined.
It's a hell of a lot better defined. If there's any confusion about what they stand for, it's because of every liberal pundit in the country desperately attempting to paint the Tea Party as being about anything and everything *except* what they are actually about. Conflating of multiple positions which are not common to the Tea Party is how that's done. The contrast to the Occupiers, is that if you ask 10 random members what they think the movement is about, the only common thing is not liking banks and rich people. That might be a start, but it's hardly a cohesive set of positions on any issue.
When they get some common positions, then they get a bit more respect.