Fat Freddy,
You’re a big Libertarian, aren’t ya, buddy?
Let’s get back to the topic featured in this article.

Here’s one for you, Freddy, and your cat.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/26/paul-stomp/

Speaking of thuggish behavior, in general…

Would our oligarchs have traded FDR for Hitler?  Why don’t we ask the ghost of Prescott Bush?  Who do you think the oligarchy would support now?
*****************

eir: Can’t argue with this.  No, Stresemann, never was a “popular” or charismatic figure the way Rathenau was—he simply was at least as good, if not better foreign minister.  (Ironically, which I never knew, Stresemann’s wife was Jewish, so his sons were as well).

The viciousness of the SA was, like the KKK in the South, tolerated by a kaiser-era judiciary who HATED the social democrats and DETESTED the communists—and were generally anti-semitic.  So acts against the Left or Jews were either ignored or given light sentences where the reverse got the heaviest possible.  So the killers of Rathenau were not executed or given life sentences.

Germany WAS more divided that the USA is…so far. They had little tradition of democracy and free speech, and no respect for the government formed out of WWI. While the KPD could be wild, the SA set whole new orders of magnitude for savagery.  Yes, this we haven’t seen since the Klan fell out of favor.

But we don’t need to parallel the Weimar Germany experience to descend into dictatorship.  Each system of democracy and freedom that has fallen has been attacked in different ways, as ours is being attacked.

Inherit The Wind, I read this passage by Haffner differently.  He is describing the “beyond” to which Rathenau belonged and the “beyond” to which Hitler belonged.  He is taking poetic licence to get to an emotional truth about how one appealed to the best in people and one appealed to the worst. 

I don’t know about Stresemann vs. Rathenau, but here is how Sebastian Haffner, who was a young, intelligent, engaged German citizen describes Rathenau:  “Never before or afterward did the German Republic produce a politician who so deeply stirred the imagination of young people and the masses.  Gustav Stresemann and Heinrich Bruning who enjoyed longer periods of power…never radiated the same kind of personal charisma.  Hitler alone can be compared to Rathenau….Even the murder of the thousand workers in Lichtenberg in 1919 had not inflamed the masses as much as the murder of this one man….For some days there prevailed what I have never since experienced—a genuine atmosphere of revolution.  Without threat or compulsion, people attended his funeral in hundreds of thousands.  Afterward they did not disperse, but paraded for hours through the streets, in endless processions, silent, wrathful, and challenging.  One felt if they had been invited to finish off those who still passed for ‘reactionaries’ but were in fact Nazis, they would have done the job with swift and energetic thoroughness.  The invitation was not forthcoming.  Instead, they were told to maintain discipline and order.

Haffner states of Stresemann “The strongest feeling he ever aroused was by dying: sudden, cold horror….The newspapers carried the headline ‘Stresemann Dead.’  As we read it we were seized with icy terror.  Who was there now to tame the beasts?...The era of peace was at an end….His death was the beginning of the end.”

Then entered Heinrich Bruning who sounds so much like today’s Democrats.  “Anyone who takes the trouble to study Bruning’s rule in depth will find all those factors that make this sort of government the inevitable forerunner of the very thing it is supposed to prevent:  its discouragement of its own supporters; the way it undermines its own position; its acceptance of a loss of freedom; its lack of ideological weapons against enemy propaganda; the way it surrenders the initiative; and its collapse at the final moment when the issue is reduced to a simple question of power….Bruning had no real following.  He was ‘tolerated.’  He was the lesser evil….Bruning had nothing to offer the country but poverty, the curtailment of liberty, and the assurance that there was no alternative.  At best it was a call to austerity….He gave the country no purpose, no inspiring leadership; he only covered it in joyless shade….Meanwhile, the forces that had lain low for so long gathered noisily.”

Thus it seems that timing is everything as well understood by the Nazis.  By the time Sebastian Haffner was writing his memoirs about the rise of fascism and the totalitarian state in the late 1930s, each dissenting German was on his own, as had been puposefully designed by the Nazis.  Whereas, earlier, there would have been outrage and street battles about the news of a “Social Democratic Trade Unionist [who] defended himself, with the help of his sons, against an SA patrol that broke into his home at night to ‘arrest’ him.  In obvious self-defense he shot two SA men.  As a result, he and his sons were overcome by a larger troop of SA men and hanged in a shed in the yard that same night.  The next day, the SA patrols appeared in Copenick, in disciplined order, entered the homes of every known Social Democrat, and killed them on the spot.”

Would our oligarchs have traded FDR for Hitler?  Why don’t we ask the ghost of Prescott Bush?  Who do you think the oligarchy would support now?

FiftyGigs:  “We need to fight for our institutions.”
Yes but—“fight” implies killing—liteally war locally, war on a “small” scale.  I’m against that.
There have to be better ways than killing your (ignorant, frightened) neighbors.  What are they?
  First, refrain from jumping to conclusions. Think what you can do to prevent further separation, to engage them somehow in a mutual project for understanding each other.  What?  Really?  Impossible!  Not really.  Just sounds impossible because it hasn’t been tried. On the contrary, everything is being done to prevent it. Lines are drawn in the sand. Sand?  Yeah, sand—and a new wind is blowing somewhere nearby. (Metaphor for discovering or creating practical methods for healing rather than inflicting more wounds.  Ergo, don’t respond to threat, fear, insult, ignorance.
Create courage, compassion, understanding, knowledge.
  How?  Every day everybody has the chance to do it.
We (liberals?) can refuse to join the “teaparty thug” true believers and try something different.
Yeah, it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be different. We are going to make mistakes and “fail”
sometimes. But out of such a massive, deep-rooted effort to sustain truth and honesty, some good things would emerge. 
  Trouble is, not enough people believe in the possibilities. Not enough people can imagine their way into a whole different scenario.  Yet.
  There are people here and there already working along such lines. There is some history on it. They need help.  Think alternatives to violence. Think alternatives to ignorance, alternatives to fear and loathing, alternatives to death by hatred and blind rage.  Think. Peace is something you make—as everybody knows who has ever settled a personal fight before too much damage has been done.
  It is not something somebody tells you how to do. It comes from your own decisions, your own manner, your own ideas, your own willingness to understand the “other”. 
  You know all this.  Why am I reminding you? Why don’t I just shut up? Who am I anyway?
what right have I got?

Very nice quote, Eir.  But not too accurate.
1) Hitler was a middle-class son of a bureaucrat.  He was a failed art student (less by his fault than a bizarre and illogical admission system) of mediocre talent, a decorated WWI vet, and a lover of Wagnerian opera.  Not quite Gorky’s “The Lower Depths”

And we do know where Rathenau’s policies would have led. Gustav Streseman continued them, pretty much.  The fact that Germany had BOTH a Rathenau and a Streseman was rather amazing. Streseman, though died in, I think, 1928, and was, more than anything responsible for Germany’s descent into international madness.  He was respected by everyone from the left to the far right. One neo-nazi group even published in its journal at his death “The soldier has fallen on his shield.  Lower your swords in respect” despite their hating his policies.

As great as Rathenau was, Streseman was even greater.

From Defying Hitler: A Memoir, by Sebastian Haffner.  This manuscript, written in 1939 by the author who escaped to England, and was posthumously published by his son.  (Read excerpts via a google book search).

We had FDR, who was opposed by the oligarchy that was in support of the promise of fascism.  It asks questions of us today—we who would never fall for the things the Germans did.

“...Strange to say, Rathenau has not yet found the great biography he deserves.  He belongs, without a doubt, to the five or six great personalities of this century.  He was an aristocratic revolutionary, an idealistic economic planner, a Jew who was a German patriot, a German patriot who was a liberal citizen of the world….He combined within himself qualities that in another person would have been dangerously incompatible.  In him, the synthesis of a whole sheaf of cultures and philosophies became not thought, not deed, but a person.
Can such a man, you ask, be a leader of the masses?  Surprisingly, the answer is yes….If my experience of Germany has taught me anything, it is this: Rathenau and Hitler are the two men who excited the imagination of the German masses to the utmost; the one by his ineffable culture, the other by his ineffable vileness.  Both, and this is decisive, came from inaccessible regions, from some sort of ‘beyond.’  The one from a sphere of sublime spirituality where the cultures of three millennia and two continents hold a symposium, the other from a jungle far below the depths plumbed by the bases penny dreadfuls, from an underworld where demons rise from a brewed-up stench of petty bourgeois back rooms, doss-houses, barrack latrines, and the hangman’s yard.  From their different ‘beyonds’ they both drew a spellbinding power, quite irrespective of their politics.
It is difficult to say where Rathenau’s policy would have led Germany and Europe if he had been granted time to carry it out.  He was not.  He was murdered after just six months in office.”

FF:

You better check a little deeper.  The US was never an ally in WWI.  Therefore our reasons for entering the war were different.

You need to understand a primary principle: The United States NEVER accepted that there was a connection between the Reparations (owed to the UK and France by Germany) and the War Debt (owed by the UK and France to the USA).  NO CONNECTION!  And France and Britain (particularly France) tried everything possible to connect them and thus getting France off the hook for the War Debt and hanging it on Germany, which the US resisted.

By the time Hitler arose, other things were going on, like the Great Depression.

I’ve read a lot on the hyper-inflation of 1923/24 and I’ve seen scholars line up on the “caused by German Government” side and “not caused by the government side” and I cannot say definitively which is correct.  Like most things I think there are factors that indicate both.  Sure, they could have stopped printing money but they were terrified the economy would collapse if they did.  But did they do it DELIBERATELY to inflate their way out of debt and “A Mark is a Mark” as the courts ruled? Sounds reasonable BUT they would have to know that the Allies wouldn’t accept that.

I agree on your facts (mostly) about scapegoating BUT THAT DOESN’T CHANGE ANYTHING!  “A-Rabs” and “Muslims” are still “Islamofascists” and used as a boogie-man to scare little children in Tea-Bagger Land.

A scapegoat doesn’t actually need to be ANYTHING, other than perceived as a threat. And many at TD DO scapegoat Jews (as “Zionists”, but that’s a code word) rather than Muslims. Plus they scapegoat Blacks and Latinos for:
Crime
Single Mothers
The Banking Crisis (for applyin’ for all them outlandish mor-gages they coodn’t afford.

We have a few who struggle to speak TRUTH TO POWER but who speaks TRUTH TO MANUFACTURED LIE. Even Humanist voices in the MSM talk around, not at, the puppet fear mongers who front for the political Roveian/Koch distortionist. The entire American political dialogue is obfuscated and dominated with meaningless distraction and event. Corporate control of Media ad revenue dictates content, cult of personality entertainment, enforced materialist/consumerist values and an ever more cunning industry of professional political propagandist throw up or tear down marionette candidates at will. It’s a potent and deadly adversary to reason and open dialogue created by small visionless souls in a narrow minded atmosphere of “me first” business greed.  At least some of the current anger at President O is his failure to openly confront the lies and distortions of this beastial lie machine. It’s obvious to us that the Tea Party is what it is but many Americans, held in thrall by the fear, anxiety and uncertainty of the machine can no longer separate fact from fiction. In fact we, often “peer through a glass darkly” trying to discern actual political reality. WE MUST SPEAK FOR OURSELVES. WHO ELSE? LONELY ISN’T IT.

    YOU might want to note for your own protection/amusement that individuals who hold the beliefs expressed by posters on TRUTHDIG are beginning to appear as ungrateful American “white terrorists”, “potential bombers”, “suspects” and “conspiracists” on T.V. cop drama shows. Your ass is already under fire. YOUR belief in the power of TRUTH scares them enough that propagandist countermeasures are being put in place to let the general public know you’re dangerous and should be shunned and, in preparation for your arrest if necessary. Think I’m nuts? Then you weren’t around in the 60’s.

    The CHANGE is come. It’s bigger than them, or you and I. Everybody is gonna get wet. But the real power is “We the people—”. The vicious fearfull greedy lie they are holds no currency to trump the dues we’ve paid. Are YOU really scared of a bunch of morally bankrupt real estate hustlers and graft driven financiers. They’re already done. Don’t let’em hurt you and yours as they make their exit—and don’t fail to be of help to those they have.

      GERARD: How about: “Gee, I see the current state of corrupt American politics has frightented and confused you. I suggest that you’re being manipulated, used and lied to by people who do not have your best interest at heart. Try to remember that your fellow Americans are not the enemy and I tell you with sincere respect that the moral/religious/political beliefs held by many with whom you associate amount to less than superstition.” And if you wanna really set the hook add: “Some friends and I will be gathering for a special prayer meeting to pray for your sanity. Would you like to join us?”

  “Here come ol’ flat top he come movin’ up slowly—-”

Inherit The Wind

The Muslims are not scapegoats, because we have invaded their land, manipulated their governments, and taken their natural resources long before 9/11. I think a better scapegoat would be the illegal Mexicans. But the Jews were a much more credible scapegoat (not that I agree with them), because the Jews had the money, and they were the only ones with money, at the time, and they were the shopkeepers, for the most part, and the bankers. The Jews undermined everything the German government tried to do to fix the economy (not that I agree with that). The Muslims are not an “economic threat”. The Mexicans are, in a way, because they claim that they are taking our jobs.

I mean, if you look at it, can’t one say that the left is scapegoating the bankers and corporations?

By 1925, at Locarno, the reparation issue and the war debt issue had been mainly settled,

That’s not entirely true. There was the Young Plan and the Lausanne Conference after that. The US backed out of that deal, putting Germany back on the hook for reparations. In fact, they still owe WWI reparations, IIRC. France may have pushed hard for reparations, and the Brits were wary, but the Brits did allow it to go forward. Perhaps, I should have said “Allies” instead of “Brits”. The reparations did crash the economy of Germany, and the Middle Class was hurt the most by the hyperinflation. Hitler, and the German people did not forget that. I do not buy in to the idea that the Germans intentionally wrecked their economy. It was the Ruhr valley that led Germany to hyperinflate its currency.

If you want to criticize someone for not getting history correct, you should a little research before making that criticism.

We better watch out, because we may very well be headed for hyperinflation, as well. But not for reparations for war, rather reparations for selling bad paper to the World. The putbacks on mortgage securities are starting to come in from Europe, and we are on the verge of a currency war with China. We are already in “uncharted territory”.

Had US not invaded europe [it seems that’s all US does—and for 100+times] in
apr ‘17, france wld have not won patrician war [is there any other kind?] and
thus germany wld not have to pay french a nickel.

And in the view that austria was justified in ensuring that the serb terrorist
organization, the black hand, never ever kills anyone in bosnia, and it’s demand
to have own people in serbia to do just that rejected by allies and serbia, french
a fortiori shld not have been rewarded. 

Just one terrorist act by black hand lead to WW1 and WW2???? Ok! If one wld
evaluate as true that it did and was sole cause for both wars, then u’d believe
that for the first time ever, santa clause wdl visit ever igloo, sleeping bag, shed,
shanty, lean-to, underpass, refugee camp, and of course also gaza!
Tnx for ur left, right, white, black ears and the Finger!

It was a little more than just rhetoric. If you want to make a comparison to the Nazis, you are going to have to do better than that. Who is their “scapegoat”. Who is their “Strong Man”? With the Nazis, it wasn’t just internal, either. They were dealing with the harsh reparations placed on them by the Brits for WWI.
*****************

FF: If you are going to cite history please don’t use the myths that are tossed around.  The HARSH reparations were imposed mainly by the French, not the British. France seized the Ruhr valley in 1923 to try to SQUEEZE reparations out of Germany—to repay the war debt to the US.  It failed.

By 1925, at Locarno, the reparation issue and the war debt issue had been mainly settled, Hitler was in jail, and the German Foreign Minister, Gustav Streseman earned his nick-name of “The Bismarck of the Defeat”.

There most certainly IS scapegoat today—have you heard the term “Islamofascists”? 
Have you heard the absurd battles over the falsely named “Ground Zero Mosque”? 
Have you heard a reputable Black journalist lose HIS job for describing himself as worried when he sees people in traditional Islamic dress at the airport?  Have you heard the faceless and amorphous “Washington” and “Tax and Spend Democrats” aired without any real facts?
Have you heard how magic solutions of tax cuts and “cutting Spending” are going to solve all our problems?
Have you heard that the financial crisis is caused by “unqualified borrowers” (code for mainly Black and Latino working class folks)?

Sure, you’ve heard all this.  How can you say there are no scapegoats?

Have you not heard candidates talk about “bullets” and the 2nd Amendment?

Have not not heard even elected officials call for the 14th Amendment to be repealed?

There is not a single strong leader, nor is there a codified “Manual”—such as “Mein Kampf” or “Das Kapital”, both of which were influential in Weimar Germany.  Nor is there an openly Communist movement capable of capturing 25% of the popular vote.

But the parallels between the conditions for one totalitarian dictatorship to rise don’t need to be exact.  Conditions in the early 20th century differed from Spain to Italy to Germany to Russia to Romania that lead to their each developing totalitarian dictatorships.

tedmurphy41

Hitler gained power through retoric used to win over the desperate population that was barely managing to exist,

It was a little more than just rhetoric. If you want to make a comparison to the Nazis, you are going to have to do better than that. Who is their “scapegoat”. Who is their “Strong Man”? With the Nazis, it wasn’t just internal, either. They were dealing with the harsh reparations placed on them by the Brits for WWI.

Hitler gained power through retoric used to win over the desperate population that was barely managing to exist, along with the use of brute force.
This group nearly has the first part mastered, although the situation of the American people today is uncomparable with that of the German population in the 20’s and 30’s; however, the next stage….............?

“Let’s think for a minute how would be the best way to deal with this Tea Party frame of mind.”

gerard, excellent of you to make the invitation. I hope many join in the discussion. I’d like to kick it off.

My experience with this bunch goes back a while. In a nutshell (yuck, yuck) those who are loony for God, or country, or company were truly loony originally. Sweet Christine really was a witch once. You got that, right? Billy Bob for Jesus saw Him in an LSD trip (actually several in a row). And so on.

These people—like Todd Palin’s pals in Alaska (look up the video)—figured out that if they shout Jesus, America, and Free Enterprise loud enough, people will excuse whatever they actually do. (Look up: Newt It-Does-Not-Matter-What-I-Do Gingrich. Ask what Rush On-The-Side-Of-Abstinence Limbaugh was doing with Viagra out of wedlock?)

“Conservative” is a code word for “con”, as in “con job”. They have hijacked our institutions—our churches, our government, our corporate headquarters—and they corrupt those institutions through a coalition of support based on the deception of those dear souls who truly hold fundamentalists values from a simpler era.

Anyone who questions or challenges them elicits ever more vehement and fervent cries for God, Country, and Company. Their tactic is to incite violence. They feel they can be extreme because they believe liberals will allow them the “freedom” to oppress under the guise of speech.

We haven’t figured that out.

We liberals have to defend these institutions. We don’t. That’s why we’re at a huge disadvantage, and will continue to be the minority.

You see the crap on this board, anti-government, anti-business, anti-religion. The “cons” simply have to walk in the door. It’s wide open.

Yeah, yeah, be an atheist. Be green. Smoke a bong. It’s a free country. But I’m not an atheist and I am a liberal, and I heartily resent what these “conservatives” are doing to my religion. I believe in free enterprise, and I resent the business philosophy of these “cons” who seek personal profit through out-sourcing our jobs. I’m a non-violent person, but my trigger finger gets mighty itchy when I hear some “con” suggest gunning down MY President.

We need to fight for our institutions.

They want to “take back” the country. I want my country, my religion, and my work. They’ll “take it” over my dead body.

It’s a GOOD THING!! that all the classic American “shadow” forces (race prejudice-greed-biased ignorance-class hubris-financial fraud-open exploitation of labor-religious/superstitious hypocrisy-open political corruption-etc)are all standing in open sunlight, and (apparently) above the law. We owe a vote of thanks to that grand Bushite goose stepper C. Rove and his minions who helped raise these frankenloons from the well deserved trashbin of ignominy where we almost put them to permanent rest. And, a tip of the hat to those “just give me the gold” hearted press tarts who so willingly open their mouths to proclaim any political pigs ear a silk purse if the price is right.

    HERES THE GOOD NEWS. Other than armed repression, it’s the last smokescreen the perps have. They can play it. But they can no longer hide from the truth. Indeed, patriotism IS the last refuge to which scoundrels cling. The Flag refused to hide them. Moral sideshow cripples and Murdoch clones are all they have left. Are ya hungry?

    We’re unstoppable.

ardee

You are correct. It was Charles that was the co-founder, but he is no longer involved with Cato. That link you provided was ambiguous, at best, however. Except for the first sentence, which identified Charles Koch and Ed Crane as the founders, it was just a list of names of people who have been a part of Cato at one time or another, without listing their actual involvement with Cato. It doesn’t tell me that Charles is no longer a part of Cato, and that brother David is on the Board of Directors. It also lists Murray Rothbard, who was always at odds with Crane, and eventually left Cato.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gordon/gordon37.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gordon/gordon39.html

While I agree I was mistaken, I wouldn’t cite that website for a history on Cato. I’d use Wiki before that.

BTW, good catch! Here’s a couple contributions by Glenn Greewald for Cato.

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/08/09/glenn-greenwald/the-digital-surveillance-state-vast-secret-and-dangerous/

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080

http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5887

http://www.cato.org/dailypodcast/podcast-archive.php?podcast_id=404

and here he is on Reason.tv (another Koch funded organization.)

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/glenn-greenwald-on-reason-tv/

Fat Freddy, October 22 at 12:39 pm Link to this comment

BarbieQue,

Glenn Greenwald has done a lot of work for the Cato Institute, and you know how liberals feel about Cato, where David Koch is on the Board, and co-founder.

While both Charles and David Koch are members, only Charles is listed as co-founder along with David Crane:
http://www.nndb.com/org/494/000049347/

gerard, October 22 at 5:08 pm

I had to read this post twice to understand that you were paraphrasing a prototypical Tea Party member..had me going for a bit.

As to how one deals with such illogical and , in my opinion, destructive weakening of our democracy has so far eluded me. I have been debating Tea Party folks on several occasions now and find them to believe in some of the oddest “facts” in support of their opinions. But then folks across the board, whether conservative, liberal or radical are just as likely to be fervently passionate about falsehoods upon which their opinions rest. It may very well be a part of the human condition.

Symbolism helps clarify complex ideas, the handshake and the fist best
symbolizes the Democratic and Republican Parties. The handshake believes in
coexistence and the other in power and enslavement.  Peace loving Obama and
iron fisted mcCain are the opposing embodiment of these two forces, Jesus and
Caesar were another.

Living in the real world, freedom is always constrained. We share public spaces, services such as the police, military, roads etc.. that need to be paid for - The constraints on co-existence are called Laws. The greedier and more self-centered of course want more freedom at the expense of others so they, like the Tea Party, want the Laws to serve the bloated idea of their own self-importance. The double standard and its close relative hypocrisy inevitably rear their ugly head.

If I am a Tea Party member, I am defending my freedom, not yours.
  It’s up to you to defend your freedom, and if you don’t, or can’t, that’s your problem, not mine.
  If you fail to defend your freedom without help from anybody, then you deserve to fail because you are less capable than others who succeed in defending their freedom by themselves, for themselves.
  It’s called “individual liberty” and it belongs to everybody—separately and equally. The Constitution says so.
  Some people deserve more liberty than others. That’s because they work harder, are smarter, or in some way superior to others. People who are in jail are inferior people.  Some of us think white people are superior people; others are not sure, but maybe.
  God rewards some people by giving them more success than He gives others.
  If you pray to God and fight, God will take care of you. If not, that’s your probem.
  The key word here is “deserve”.  Deserve implies a ruthlessness allied to Biblical judgments, Judgment Day, either/or judgmentalism, Right or Wrong.
  Extenuating circumstances (whatever they are) are for “sissies”, “intellectuals” and “elites” who have college educations, which are an unnecessary frill.
  Yesterday was better than today and today will be better than tomorrow because the end of the world is coming.  I don’t know about you, but I intend to get beamed up.
  You may be worried about the Tea Party, but the Tea Party is not worried about you. Whatever you get, you will deserve it.
  Because it is sure it is right, the TP is easy to exploit. All one has to do is to keep assuring members that they are right and everyone else is wrong, evil, and dangerous.
  This way of thinking is anti-liberal, unsympathetic, rigid, resentful of differences, and backward-looking. Above all, it is fearful. It has grasped onto something it believes is right and is not going to let go,  Argument is useless.
  Most liberals, including myself, are at an almost complete loss as to how to approach it, change it, reason with it, or reduce its threat. We tend not to even want to think about it, let alone deal with it.
  Let’s think for a minute how would be the best way to deal with this Tea Party frame of mind. Can anyone cite a source that attempts to answer this need?  Suggestions?

Joe,

Your article is predicated on the premise that libertarians and authoritarians are
somehow incompatible, but according to Bob Altemeyer, a leading researcher
on the authoritarian personality, the self-described libertarians he has studied
display many of the same traits as authoritarians.

From Altemeyer’s paper on the Tea Party:

<If you read postings and comments that argue the Tea Party’s case on various
websites, you will sometimes encounter sentiments like those expressed in the
“Three Groups” quote above. Poor people are poor, they say, simply because
they are lazy. We should not extend unemployment benefits to the people laid
off now because it will just encourage them to watch TV instead of looking for
work. The poor people who accepted the banks’ invitation to buy nice houses
for their families at low interest rates were “reaching beyond their class” and
deserved to lose them.
These [libertarian] attitudes come right out of the catechism of the other
authoritarian personality that research has discovered, the social dominators.
Their defining characteristic is opposition to equality. They believe instead in
dominance, both personal (if they can pull it off) and in their group dominating
other groups. They endorse using intimidation, threats, and power to enrich
themselves at the expense of others. This is the natural order of things, they
believe. “It is a mistake to interfere with the “law of the jungle,? they argue.
Some people were meant to dominate others.” “It’s a dog eat dog world in
which the superior people get to the top.”
Such people may want government to stick to running fire departments so they
can rise/stay above others unimpeded. Research shows that social dominators
are power-hungry, mean, amoral, and even more prejudiced than the
authoritarian followers described earlier. They want unfairness throughout
society… So the hypothesis that the Tea Party movement has more than its fair
share of social dominators may have merit.  >

Flag waving patriots will soon have to make a decision about paying more taxes or
bringing the boys back home. Uncle Sam is out of cash and he cannot keep
borrowing from China, he must raise taxes in order to pay the costs of war. There
is little doubt that patriots will choose to bring the boys back home, but they can
still wave their flags.

These new behaviors by politicians only show that the show changes, but the
structure of governance stays egzactly the same.

And not just in US, but also in all arab lands, and elsewhere. Alas, privately-
owned [really, governmental media. loves every scandal it can find and then use
it to feed it to angry-hungry-left out americans!

In order to feel wanted or being part of america, any crumb of news or bread is
eagerly swallowed. Just don’t to u touch the abcd of it all. And why?” because
one understands the ABCD the best!

Lohan, paris, clooney, a reporter is always news; elucidatory events never are!
And i feel sorry for some reporters—privately-owend, to boot?
Not a bit, they reap what they have sown and wished for and done to mns of
aliens.
This made my day. Expel all these bastards to any refugee camp, sleeping bag
nest! tnx for ur L, R, Wh, Blk Ears and the Finger.

Btw, what hap’d to black ears on these sites. Yes, there is a few uncles on this
site, pedro, petar, vladimir, giovanni, pyotr, pierre,  moshe, ahmed, gupta,
walter, hans, radek!

What do the tea party ideologues mean when they speak of liberty and freedom and the Constitution that they supposedly revere? Sometimes they are described as libertarians, but the behavior of their leading candidates betrays an authoritarian streak just beneath all the sonorous rhetoric.
***************

Why is this “news”?  It’s not new.  It’s well-known.

BarbieQue,

Glenn Greenwald has done a lot of work for the Cato Institute, and you know how liberals feel about Cato, where David Koch is on the Board, and co-founder.

Sometimes they are described as libertarians…

...and that would be wrong, except for the Ron Paul faction. It’s funny how the liberal part of the MSM, and the progressive blogs never seem to acknowledge the real libertarians in the Tea Party. Although, I will admit, they seem to be few and far between, these days.

Joe Con-Us-On-and-On is like a shell man at a freak show.

He’s asking us to get excited about 3 people who aren’t yet elected (and Paladino probably won’t be). He claims Angle is scary because she’s “avoided mainstream media outlets” and O’donnell “doesn’t understand the first amendment”.

While you’re concentrating on Joey manipulating the pea, here’s what a right winger thuglican like Jon Stewart has to say about Obama and Liberties:
(clip at link)“Jon Stewart Slams Obama For Breaking Promises On Civil Liberties”
http://www.smays.com/default/2010/06/jon-stewart-on-obamas-broken-civil-liberties-promises.html

and heres that tea bagger Glenn Greenwald writing about it:
The Obama administration’s war on privacy
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/27/privacy/index.html
Anyone who thinks that is hyperbole should simply read two articles today describing efforts of the Obama administration to obliterate remaining vestiges of privacy…”

True Fans like Joey the Shell man don’t mind so much when their liberties are stolen when the thief wears a (D) after their name. But they sure do fear weaklings.

Lets show the Joeys of this world something: Vote Out All Incumbents 2010