Kad Barma, has a post which references me making a comment on a post by Greg Page, which is found here. It is all about the Greater Lowell Tea Party. (I wonder who is responsible for them getting their own Web Page?) At any rate, here is Kad's post: "top down vs bottom up?"
This is a stub, but I will fill it out after I finish leaving a comment at Kad's site.
Regards — Cliff
As I read the various tomes on the current political scene, including my own, I am reminded of a quote of Arthur Schopenhauer, author of "Studies in Pessimism" to wit: "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."
ReplyDeleteAs one's "vision limits" are approached, there is understandable unease with what lies outside of those limits. It is true with science throughout history, but perhaps even more true of philosophy and the resultant politick that drives social entities.
The Tea Bag movement has little to do with the R's ORGANIZATIONALLY, and the number of R's present in the movement are incidental to the underlying desired end states. To say that the R's are driving the movement, ie, "top down" has as much veracity as saying that the D's derive their top down philosophy from the tenets of Marx and Lenin.
And while there are undeniable efforts to institutionalize the tea bag movement, those entreprenurial efforts are quite apart from the heart and soul of very localized (and thus locally circumscribed) goals.
In order to advance ourselves as caring, effective, and free society, we have to move beyond the political and ideological parochialism that has evolved to the point of process paralysis.
In my mind, as I consider the individual goals of so-called tea baggers, it is my belief that their purpose underscores a desire to move beyond the political power mongering and back to being responsible and responsive to the people who make up our nation, states, cities, and neighborhoods.
In our current political state of extremism and philosophic isolationalism, the grass roots participants in government of the people, by the people, and for the people are subjected to the ideologic demands of the "party line" and the vehement criticisms of those with differing "fields of vision." In fact, other than perhaps some basic, very basic, similarities in political philosophy, local politics (including the tea bag "movement") bears little similarity to the games played at the state, but more prominently, the Federal level.
Finally, the only way of expanding the limits of our field of vision is to be thoughtfully exposed to, and interact with, dissimilar fields of vision of the same world.
We don't do that well.