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Tell Me Your Views on the Tea Party

I would like to do a piece on my blog, Releasing Religion, regarding mixing God & government. And I'd like to know what opinions people have here about doing such a thing. Some points to mention are:

Glenn Beck is well known for arguing that we have misunderstood that founding fathers & their desire to keep church & state separate. Holding his rally on 8/28, he gathered 150.000 people to hear him talk about bringing out country "back to God". What do you think it would do to our country to "get back to God"?

The Tea Party has been called racist Chrisotcrats. In their recent convention, most conference sessions began with prayers. What do you think of the Tea Party? Do you know very little about them? Do you know a lot? Please share your thoughts here.

The piece will be posted on www.releasingreligion.blogspot.com

Tags: 8/28, Beck, Christocrats, Glenn, Honor, Party, Rally, Restoring, Tea

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Permalink Reply by freethinkermommy on October 16, 2010 at 8:57pm

My dad is a member of the tea party. The long and short of it is that it's not a political movement it's a political cult. The members get whipped into a fear frenzy and blindly believe whatever crazy crap their told. My dad honestly believes that they're secular and that ALL of the funding comes from people like him and that poloticians like Sara Palin and people like Glenn Beck have nothing whatso ever to do with the tea party and not a single industry or private corp has donated a red cent to the tea party. They spread hate and fear. It's so bad he can't even tolerate my brother anymore (my brother is a muslim).

My dad valued logic and critical thinking and always told me to question, question, question. Well with the help of the tea-party my independently minded father has thrown his logic out the window and become a blind, baaing sheep waiting complacently in line to be fleeced and told which pen to go into...

They also go to GREAT lengths to convince people like my father that they are secular and not interested in topics like abortion, gay marriage, and the like. But it's just not true. They definately have a religious agenda. PEople like that wouldn't know what secular was if it bit them in the... bible.

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Permalink Reply by Maia Rodriguez on October 16, 2010 at 10:37pm

I'm sorry to hear about your father. This is where I get confused. Why are the Tea Partiers saying they are one thing, and other people are saying they are something else? This is why when I ask people what they think of the TP, I get so many varied responses. It seems like there isn't a clear answer to what this party is about.

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Permalink Reply by freethinkermommy on October 17, 2010 at 7:51am

My take on it, just from the digging I've done on the internet and the "conversations" I've had with my dad, is that the every day guys are just being repeatedly told this "dogma" of "this is grass roots, we are all average people, politicians are not involved with the tea party because only regular people are involved with the tea party, we are secular and only interested in economic politics, there is no heirarchy within the tea party, don't worry just because some of the members of the tea party are racist bigots doesn't mean the tea party is racist, don't worry just because 60% of the tea party is bible banging born again jesus lovers doesn't mean religion plays a role in our politics at all etc ad infinitum...". Because we all know, and fox news is a prime example of this, if you say something to a lot of people who are listening, and you repeat it enough, and no one bothers to fact check it, it MUST be true, right?

Also, and I don't know if this is true or not at all, but he told me that there were multiple organizations around claiming to be the tea party, but he's a member of the real tea party and it's those other tea parties that are full of bigots and politicians.

(In case you can't tell, I'm rolling my eyes right now)

The other thing I found is that some of their funding, particularly funding for their rallies because it's easier to fund the rallies "under the radar" so to speak, comes from private industries, the primary interest of which is to end cap and trade and loosen emissions and EPA regulations...

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Permalink Reply by Secular Forces 2013 on October 16, 2010 at 11:00pm

http://www.atheistnexus.org/forum/topics/newt-gingrich-your-time-is
! one of their henchmen indeed

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Permalink Reply by Maia Rodriguez on October 17, 2010 at 10:14am

Wow, okay guys. I found this article on MSNBC.com. It's "the faces of the Tea Party". Would love to know what you think. Of course they used the black couple as the headline.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on October 17, 2010 at 2:51pm

Interesting article, Maia. I love this quote:

“The chance of getting fair coverage from (your company) is less than zero percent,” one Tea Party activist said. “I don’t mean any disrespect.”

Yeah, screw you too, buddy. No disrespect.

Looks pretty damn conservative to me. Reactionary and radically ignorant, actually, but they like to call themselves conservatives.

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Permalink Reply by Maia Rodriguez on October 17, 2010 at 3:00pm

So the question is WHY is there such a discrepancy between how certain media describes the Tea Party, how they see themselves, and how the rest of the world sees them?

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Permalink Reply by LarryL on October 18, 2010 at 3:56pm

My best analagy is....They are like Babies.

-Media view: Isn't my baby interesting and beautiful? Let's take a lot of pics and write lots of stories about them. (The TP is partially a media creation, are they not?)

-Rest of the worlds view: umm, yea, sure your baby is just beautiful! (gag/baarf, turn away)

-Tea Party view: Too uneducated, lacking in social diversity and busy sucking mama's teet and pooping to know just how ugly they really are (note that I didn't say stupid)

How did I do?

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Permalink Reply by Phil on October 18, 2010 at 4:28pm

@ LarryL. Noted. Let me do it - I'm certain that most of them are stupid. Notice that I didn't use the unPC term idiots.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Spicer on October 18, 2010 at 6:57pm

Not to disagree with Larry or Phil, but it's pretty clear that Fox News tells the Teabaggers what they want to hear about themselves 24/7, whereas the reality-based media, when they're doing their job, describe the Teabaggers in more credible terms. And people outside the US are generally capable of seeing that Fox News is nothing but a Murdoch crapaganda organ. I'm not surprised at all that there are conflicting yet widely-held views on the Tea Party.

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Permalink Reply by LarryL on October 18, 2010 at 9:22pm

I have two tea partiers in my family (brother and brother in-law) and neither watch Fox News. They do, however, listen to right wing radio programming and have for years.

It's the same thing really. Different messengers, same message.