Comments on: The Phoenix Tea Party

By: Chris Sandvick

Chris Sandvick — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:34:27 +0000

Great report. I was hoping to catch the Tea Party in Tucson but work intervened. I expect it was much like what you saw in Phoenix, unprincipled but … fraught perhaps, with potential.

By: Jeffery Small

Jeffery Small — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:30:09 +0000

I realize that I posted this in response to another author’s post on this site, but since we are talking about Rand here, if you are interested in a follow up action that can extend the impact of the Tax Day Tea Parties, go to the web site go-galt.org and participate in the Atlas Shrugged Books-to-Politicians Campaign.

Regards,
–
Jeffery Small
go-galt.org

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:33:56 +0000

Dang, man, you guys were right across the street from me while I was at work… and I would not have minded in the slightest taking some time AFK for handshakes. Thanks for visiting my humble home city, though I regret you saw some of the worst parts of it (downtown).

By: Myrhaf

Myrhaf — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:34:02 +0000

Thanks for that report, Bill.

Robert Tracinski made an excellent point in his TIA Daily today. He noted that this massive movement has begun before we have felt the effects of Obama’s policies. Just imagine what happens if we experience more economic crises with rising inflation and unemployment. Or if our enemies make the world less safe as they test Obama’s weakness. This movement should take off and become something huge.

By: Bill Brown

Bill Brown — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:36:44 +0000

That is, perhaps, the best way to describe the Tea Parties: unprincipled. But as long as they’re not anti-principles, I think there’s some value in trying to bring them around.

By: Burgess Laughlin

Burgess Laughlin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:31:34 +0000

> “People think the government’s gone too far this time . . .”

I have come to see any talk of having “gone too far” or any other statement of measurement (too high, too many, not enough, unbalanced, etc.) as alert signals.

What underpins such statements is, at best, a lack of principle. At worst, such statements reflect philosophical pragmatism, the notion that reality is a constantly cracking up, tilting, and refreezing ice floe that requires one to constantly “adjust” one’s actions for proper “balance.”

There is no such thing as too much protection of individual rights, which is the only rationale for having a government in the first place. More fundamentally, there can never be too much rational egoism as the ethical foundation of rights, too much reason as the foundation for ethics, or too much this-worldism as the foundation for support for reason and rejection of mysticism in all its forms, including faith.

Instead, rights, egoism, reason, and objective reality are absolute principles.