(Status update: I was seriously contemplating a post about how long it's taken to receive the advance payment for my Bible study book when that payment was delivered to me, here in the cafe, by someone who was obviously afraid I was going to mention some things I've just now decided not to mention. For the first time this year my weekly income has reached a figure--$135--that looks to me like an income on which a person could reasonably expect to survive, as a regular weekly income. I'll soon be reopening my post office box and paying that three months' electric bill ($48 and change). Lovely, and you still need to support this web site, which you may do with one of these options:
* Use the "donate" button in the Greeting post if it works for you (it should be visible at https://priscillaking.blogspot.com , always, and it has worked for some e-friends, but it does not work in my part of the world). "Donate" is what Paypal puts on buttons for web sites that don't use Paypal daily. It does not mean you have to feed the Gimmee Monster! Paypal should prompt you to add a message; you can use that to propose a book or topic you'd like to see discussed here. If for some reason you're not prompted to send the message via Paypal, feel free to send it to the e-mail address at the bottom of the screen.
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* Or mail a U.S. postal money order to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322.)
This locally funded post has been sitting in a computer file for some time now, although it's being revised and updated as it's being posted...The words "The Tea Party is dead" have been popping up in my e-mail longer than some Tea Parties I know have existed. Since there never was one, but were hundreds, of Tea Parties, some groups that used that name really have "died," as groups. Some "Tea Party" web sites are dead. Yet I still get e-mail from other Tea Parties; this web site has never used "Tea Party" as an official name, but fiscal conservatism is one thing on which all of its members have always agreed, and still do.
"Fiscal conservatism" is the correct bipartisan term. "Tea Party" was an acronym a lot of people agreed was cute and apropos in 2011. I've been challenged on this, and yes, the first Tea Party web site I found was maintained by and recommended to Democrats; no, it's no longer active. A lot of people, claiming disagreement and/or embarrassment with other Tea Parties, are back in the Democrat, Republican, Green, and Libertarian Parties, identified there as fiscal conservatives. No Tea Party was ever an organized national party; most Tea Parties had no direct connections to the others, many never were on speaking terms, and many lost interest in the "Tea Party" movement as such. Many Tea Parties were not and have not become activists; many individuals who identified with Tea Parties in 2011 obviously had no idea what long-term, serious activism means. I don't give a flyin' flip whether people want to preserve the "Tea Party" name (this web site will, but other things I do in cyberspace don't use it). I do try to encourage people to remain active in support of fiscal conservatism.
This web site is still reminding Republicans: Fiscal conservatives are a majority, an especially pronounced
majority among people who read current nonfiction. Fiscal conservatives agree
that Americans are Taxed Enough Already. Fiscal conservatives, sometimes
identified as the T.E.A. Party, are found in all of the major political
parties. They disagree on other matters (and yes, some of them even quibble with the current Republican tax compromise, although the position of this web site is that @RepMGriffith should save some time and money by accepting it for this year and move on to a better, tighter budget next year). They agree that the
United States needs to break the habit of supporting feel-good, tax-and-spend
policies.
Fiscal conservatives are not necessarily Republicans. Some of them are positively flaming "liberals" on some "social" issues. This web site generally avoids supporting the homosexual lobby as such, but I think we all know more about Gary Johnson and Peter Thiel than some of us wanted to know. We respect their fiscal conservatism in any case. We are we, and they are they.
This web site has no foreign policy and takes neither side
in any conflict between foreign countries. This web site supports its own
country's military policy to the extent that we want to avoid giving aid and
comfort to our official enemies during war. This web site does not really
approve of any war. This web site concedes that people like Hitler need
killing, but suspects that, even in the case of Hitler, if the right people had
set their minds to it sooner they would very likely have found a way to deal
with him without killing all those decent human beings first. This web site's main
concern about immigration is that illegal immigrants won't find what they're
looking for, if they sneak into the United States, and should try to work online from home.
Some Tea Party groups we respect are very concerned about
immigration or other foreign policy issues. This web site has displayed some of
their arguments, but we are we, and they are they.
This web site is not especially concerned with the personal
choices other people make. Well, actually, this web site is mostly written by
an aunt who wants to recommend the best kind of personal choices to The
Nephews, but this web site does not think public policy needs to add extra punishments
to what nature dishes out for making personal choices. People who sleep around
pick up nasty diseases, and people who don't walk become obese, and people who
don't buy into insurance plans have to pay their own bills, and the best way
government can help is to let nature run its course.
Some of our Tea Party and Republican contacts are very
concerned about issues like abortion. We are we, and they are they.
(Though we will agree with those who say that Alabama's Candidate Jones, who supports abortion as the "choice" to be urged upon pregnant teenagers, seems more likely to hurt those not-so-little-any-more girls we love than is Candidate Moore, who apparently dated teenagers for more years than a "more likely to succeed" young man would have done, and probably bored and/or disgusted and/or offended some young girls, but is not even being accused of having physically hurt any young girls...Women who've had surgical, spontaneous, or hormone-pill-induced abortion agree that it hurts, Mr. Jones. Some correspondents are expressing a wish that you could only experience what they did, Mr. Jones. And no, this web site does not think what I can see of your campaign looks less embarrassing to Virginia gentlemen than Judge Moore's campaign, as of today, Mr. Jones. Probably "women's issues" should be left to women.)
This web site actively deplores race prejudice, debunks
ethnic stereotypes, and supports the positive contributions of members of
groups that have been victims of bigotry. Ethnic (or other group) pride, and
positive bias (as in the self-evident truth that your own grandchildren are the
cutest and cleverest the world has ever seen), are different things from
bigotry. This web site loathes bigotry. This web site celebrates the diversity of fiscal conservatives. This web site ridicules the bigotry of ignorant left-wingers who claim that fiscal
conservatives have ever had anything to do with Germany's Nazional Sozialist
party—socialism being what fiscal conservatives do not want. (Some fiscal conservatives sympathize with the socialist ideals of the Christian Left; fiscal conservatives believe those ideals can be better served by different means.)
Some Tea Parties we respect think it's most helpful not to
mention “race” at all. When a consideration of the available evidence shows
that this is because they grew up with a single solid racial identity and live
in an ethnically homogenous community with others like themselves, but that
that community is not bigoted or exclusive, I respect that decision. Grandma Bonnie Peters is White and can credibly write in a
way that presupposes that everyone else is White; that's true for many older,
rural, and small town Americans. It's not true for me. I'm biracial and spent much of my formative years in the more multiethnic parts of a majority-Black city. I intended, and would
like, for this web site to contain more of GBP's vanilla content than it does, but she is she and I
am I.
Most of the juvenile social media flamewars that can make
social media sites off-putting to visitors are pure bluffing as adolescents go
through hormone surges. Kids say and write things like “We all hate Brooklyn,
the armpit of the universe” when they mean “That new kid from Brooklyn needs to
prove himself if he wants to be part of our crowd.” The strategy of this web
site is generally to ignore flamewars and reward the kids with attention if and
when they post something of interest to adults.
I do see conservative White people reacting to left-wing
verbiage with “What about White history? What about White pride? What about my
own (Southern) State?” The position of this web site is that all of us can
learn from the study of all human history, and there's absolutely nothing wrong
with wanting to study your own ancestors first, or be proud of them. All
mentally healthy individuals are proud of their own kind; even Koko the gorilla
affirmed “Fine animal gorilla.” English, Swedish, Polish are fine things to be.
I often see reports that White people are objecting to
removing material with which they identify from history and literature books or
public displays. That is not hate. It's rude, and it's aggravating problems, to
pretend that “My ancestors were interesting and historically significant” has
anything to do with “I hate you,” or even with “I despise you.” It's downright stupid to pretend that "Moving big, expensive objects on which previous generations spent a lot of money would waste a lot of money" has anything to do with "I hate you" or "I despise you." Money that is being wasted to change church windows or move statues could be used to improve inner city schools! What actual
observation of the Tea Party and conservative Republican community showed, in
2016, was that a lot of people who wave Confederate flags also supported candidates Ted Cruz and Ben Carson...so if an “us against them” thought process
is going on, it's defined by ideas rather than ethnicity. Or regional bias. Or even religious bias--and that is progress.
The position of this web site with regard to wary,
what-about-me White-type conservatives is generally sympathetic. History is not
a narrow little field that has to be taught the way Mrs. Snodgrass taught my
fifth grade history class or not
at all. History is a vast field people can explore for pleasure and profit all through
their lives, and perhaps the best thing a fifth grade history class can do is
give the kids the idea that more good stories are still waiting for them.
There's no such thing as too many stories.
Real haters are perhaps as likely to feel that they're Taxed
Enough Already as anybody else is, but they have no place in the Tea Party or
in any other “party.” Well, they don't; they are party-poopers. Some of them are just very angry
people who can benefit from backing away from public work and spending some
time working through their anger, and some of them are violent criminals who
belong behind bars.
One thing conservatives, right-wingers, and libertarians
have always had in common is a belief in law and order. Right-wingers at least
talk extremely hard lines on crime. If anybody out there who knows how to read
does want to hate and harm other people, and left-wing stereotypes have given
you the idea that “conservative” web sites are a safe space for you, they have
misled you. The main difference between “liberal” and “conservative” Americans'
reactions to Nazis is that “liberals” may think they're supposed to convert
Nazis, whereas “conservatives” favor capital punishment. Clearly haters should
go and infest the Left if they want to live. There are still a few old veterans out there who went to Germany, as my father did, in order to act out their feelings about Nazis, and when they got there they found more pitiful little widows and orphans and old people than real Nazis, and what they did in Germany was act like the nice guys they really were--but they are very old by now, and American "neo-Nazis" should be very wary about triggering any residual feelings they may have.
Only just recently I saw some documentation of who the
alleged “right-wing” haters are, who claim to represent Southerners, conservatives,
and/or “the” Tea Party. Wow! They exist! They don't seem very Southern,
conservative, or Christian to me. David Duke's claim on Louisiana is
based, I have heard, on his having gumbo for brains (if not literally true, that explanation is at least abundantly documented), while that guy from Alaska
obviously doesn't even know which end of a map is up. Anyway the alleged
“Uniters of the Right” were NONE OF OURS. Who invited those characters into Virginia, I don't know; I trust that person has learned to
investigate his or her e-friends more carefully before inviting them here, now.
Anyway, this song came to me as I was working a flea market
one day, inducing the sort of smile that makes people wonder what I'd been
up to. In my mind the song sang itself in a voice that belonged to something
born about 2011—this web site itself:
I'm a little Tea Party, staunch and stout.
When I take in lots of data, then I spout.
When I get all steamed up, then I shout:
Vote your conscience and throw the cheaters out!
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