The Tea Party and the Suppression of the Left

[Shankapotomus]

The Real News interview with Professor Richard Wolff.

[IrishAyes]

1. I've always regarded Professor Wolff on a level with Bill Moyers, Paul Krugman & Joseph Campbell.

[deutsey]

3. He should have the same platform as Moyers, Krugman, and Campbell, too nt

[IrishAyes]

4. Maybe he's a little too advanced for his times. Too many people

freak out already just with the word 'socialist'!

[deutsey]

9. FYI: His radio show is about to come on KPFA.org

Friday, Oct. 18: 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST

[philly_bob]

2. Worth 8 minutes. Summary: Tea Party deflects anger at economic system to anger at government.

Says Democratic Party is complicit because it does not allow or encourage criticism of capitalist economic system, which left populist anger open to Tea Party recruitment...

[IrishAyes]

5. Are you saying we brought this on ourselves for not clasping the snake to our own bosom?

There's a wide gap between 'populist' which requires some sense and integrity, and 'TP' which absolutely shuns any such qualities. Please don't confuse the two.

[philly_bob]

6. Irish, I was just summarizing what (I thought) the speaker said in the OP

I'm not sure the good professor used the word "populist," that was probably my interpretation.

However, the Democrats ARE responsible, the professor says, for not offering a critical and objective look at the capitalist economic system.

I think some consider the Tea Party a populist movement. I guess you'd have to go back in history to study past Populist movements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism). I'm not sure the "Know Nothings" during the Civil War had sense and integrity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing).

[IrishAyes]

7. No offense taken (or given, I hope)

But your statement would be far less ambiguous if you had noted that it was merely your summation of another's thoughts. Otherwise you can always rest assured that it will be seen as your view too.

Regardless of what the professor says, I don't agree that we brought this on ourselves at all. Perhaps some of the extremist libertarians wished it for us, but then I don't consider a libertarian anything more than the worst sort of anarchist dressed in evening clothes. I'll have no truck with them at all.

It's a shame to see the perfectly good term populist tarnished by false association with such nihilism. By my lights, President Obama is the true populist, since he's the one with a mission to serve the people, not rob them blind.

[DeSwiss]

8. K&R

[center][/center]

Capitalism is predicated upon the acceptance of the belief in the Infinite Slices of Pie Theory. In this theory, ''interest'' appears from out the ether to be paid to a lender, as if by magic, in addition to the original sum that was borrowed.

No one knows exactly where this ''interest'' it comes from. Only who pays it and gets to keep it. And they keep slicing up this pie over and over again. But we live in a finite world. A world where all the pies really look like this:

[center][/center]

- So this thing can only end one of two ways: (1) No pie for anyone (Total enslavement) (2) Pie for us all (Total freedom). That's it. Those are the choices......