A piece posted to the Tea Party Nation website yesterday, and sent to the group’s members in an email from TPN head Judson Phillips, blamed the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on teachers, unions, bureaucracy, and the presence of sex in popular culture. In a lengthy screed that’s essentially a round-up of every major cultural and policy grievance the American right holds with the rest of the country, author Timothy Birdnow cited concerns about the mental health of shooter Adam Lanza, the lack of spanking in schools, and the new movie “Django Unchained” — among other things — as evidence that American popular culture “has made murder, rape, mayhem, hatred, and violence ‘cool.’”
He then went on to recommend a number of interesting solutions, including a lamentation that George Zimmerman was not guarding Sandy Hook Elementary School:
Homeschool. Take away the power of the radicals in the classrooms. Makes your kids safer, too.
Back Right to Work legislation for the public sector. Teacher’s unions have helped cement much of this in place. As long as we have group think in the classrooms we will never see the end of this. […]
Work to devolve power back to the parents, the local officials, and the communities. A society that is top-down will inevitably lead to alienation of the sort we have seen here. This young man was twenty years old, and his actions were neither spurious nor random. As an FBI profiler said on television last night, he undoubtedly felt powerless and sought to remedy that. Why does a twenty year old feel powerless? He could leave his mother’s home at any time at his age. He feels powerless because he has lived in an over-bureaucratized society, one run ultimately from a far-away central location. […]
Restrict the sex in movies, television, on the internet. There is a reason why young people commit these sorts of crimes, and sex plays no small part. Their passions are eternally inflamed, and they wander the Earth with no outlet for their overstimulated glands. […]
Support the creation of local organizations to act as “neighborhood watch” for schools. Had George Zimmerman been at the front door instead of some mechanical card reader those children would still be alive. Perhaps it’s time we start asking for volunteers to protect our children. It will require security checks, but isn’t that worth it? This dovetails with the union problem; the unions will fight this measure tooth-and-nail.
This isn’t the first time Tea Party Nation has indulged in extremist outbursts. Members of the group chanted “pay for it yourself,” suggesting the uninsured should finance their own health care out of pocket, at protests during the Supreme Court hearings on Obamacare. In 2011, TPN emailed a message urging businesses to “not hire a single person” in protest against Obama’s presidency. And Phillips also responded to the controversy over Mitt Romney’s tax returns by suggesting Republicans inquire whether President Obama is a drug addict.
Timsomor Comment:
The comments above are what's really wrong with America! With thinking like this, (Keep in mind several of these fools have been elected in law making offices) why not just self bomb ourselves back to the stone ages? These people see everything that makes common sense as a start-up sequence to the Black Helicopters they say are about land and take over your life!
And No, If George Zimmerman were there, he could have been the gunmen!
He then went on to recommend a number of interesting solutions, including a lamentation that George Zimmerman was not guarding Sandy Hook Elementary School:
Homeschool. Take away the power of the radicals in the classrooms. Makes your kids safer, too.
Back Right to Work legislation for the public sector. Teacher’s unions have helped cement much of this in place. As long as we have group think in the classrooms we will never see the end of this. […]
Work to devolve power back to the parents, the local officials, and the communities. A society that is top-down will inevitably lead to alienation of the sort we have seen here. This young man was twenty years old, and his actions were neither spurious nor random. As an FBI profiler said on television last night, he undoubtedly felt powerless and sought to remedy that. Why does a twenty year old feel powerless? He could leave his mother’s home at any time at his age. He feels powerless because he has lived in an over-bureaucratized society, one run ultimately from a far-away central location. […]
Restrict the sex in movies, television, on the internet. There is a reason why young people commit these sorts of crimes, and sex plays no small part. Their passions are eternally inflamed, and they wander the Earth with no outlet for their overstimulated glands. […]
Support the creation of local organizations to act as “neighborhood watch” for schools. Had George Zimmerman been at the front door instead of some mechanical card reader those children would still be alive. Perhaps it’s time we start asking for volunteers to protect our children. It will require security checks, but isn’t that worth it? This dovetails with the union problem; the unions will fight this measure tooth-and-nail.
This isn’t the first time Tea Party Nation has indulged in extremist outbursts. Members of the group chanted “pay for it yourself,” suggesting the uninsured should finance their own health care out of pocket, at protests during the Supreme Court hearings on Obamacare. In 2011, TPN emailed a message urging businesses to “not hire a single person” in protest against Obama’s presidency. And Phillips also responded to the controversy over Mitt Romney’s tax returns by suggesting Republicans inquire whether President Obama is a drug addict.
Timsomor Comment:
The comments above are what's really wrong with America! With thinking like this, (Keep in mind several of these fools have been elected in law making offices) why not just self bomb ourselves back to the stone ages? These people see everything that makes common sense as a start-up sequence to the Black Helicopters they say are about land and take over your life!
And No, If George Zimmerman were there, he could have been the gunmen!
As a further background on Birdnow, he also posts on American Thinker, a rightmost-of-the-right site that has attempted to sell itself as "center-right."
ReplyDeleteThere are two things here that go squarely against the Tea Party's stated ideas of greater "freedom" and "liberty"--first of all, reducing the rights of people to NOT own guns, which is frequently a response of the far right on any gun rights debate (see the efforts to make people own more guns here, or on an absolute town-wide level Kennesaw,) sounds pretty anti-liberty to me.
Secondly, it looks to me like they're letting slip they want to regulate Hollywood, rather than merely being "personally opposed" to what they see on it. I can't see how this is anything other than an anti-business, big-government move. Hollywood is a great free-market success story--one which even gives opportunities to many right-leaning individuals. Being in California (and a high-income area of it, i.e. on the high end of the progressive tax code scale) it pays out much more state and federal tax money than it gets back. And yet this is one profession in which at least Mr. Birdnow wants to "prevent the pie from growing," to use an expression we've heard in debates.
#4 on his list, restriction of the media, is another popular target. But it is also (as John Hinderaker noted) unconstitutional.
#8--the War on Drugs--is also "anti-liberty," and I am a bit surprised by it because many more libertarian-leaning Tea Party members oppose it.
Homeschooling is simply not a practical option for many people (without getting into a debate over the degree of regulation it should have.)
Mr. Birdnow said he wanted these solutions without solutions "imposed by our government," but some of the ideas proposed are that very category.
One commenter, Wordwaryor, also shamed evolution-supporters, leading me to wonder if overturning Epperson v. Arkansas (an overturning which would reduce personal liberty) is on their Supreme Court list.
I'm also curious why he demanded that the President step into matters (Egypt, Dearborn, etc.) that should be overseas, state-level, or local-level matters.
Good post man!
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