The Tea Party vs. Occupy Wall Street

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Based on Richard A. Epstein’s new Broadside, this video outlines the differences between the classical liberalism of the Tea Parties and the progressive agenda advanced by the OWS movement, and reveals that the painful performance of the American economy in the past decade is not a function of bad luck, but the product of flawed institutional design….

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9 thoughts on “The Tea Party vs. Occupy Wall Street

  1. No, I don’t buy this for a minute. “classical liberalism of the Tea Parties” is the biggest joke. The tea party is an excuse for bigotry, racism, homophobia, misogyny and a place to favor the wealthy.

  2. I’m pretty sure “classical liberal” is meant as a coded insult anyway, because it implies that liberalism isn’t a dynamic entity. In any case, it’s also obviously meant to make people think that true liberals are either liars or idiots.

  3. Does anyone have an example of a country where a flat tax and no government oversight has resulted in a high quality of life and low unemployment? When I’ve had occasion to ask a libertarian this question, I generally get some answer along the line of “quality of life and unemployment don’t matter, it’s simply wrong to take my money”.

  4. John Stuart Mill’s best line:

    I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

  5. Well that was fair and balanced.

    First twice as much time was spent making a positive case for the Tea Party’s “classic liberalism” as was spent making a distorted case for the OWS’ progressive values. I suppose we should be grateful for that. You know the case is distorted when terms like “wealth destroying” is used. I didn’t notice the term “middle-class eviscerating” used to describe the Tea Party.

    I’ve often asked Marnie’s question about whether there are any contemporary successful industrialized nation states that model the low tax, laissez-faire model advocated by the Tea Party.

    Because I can think of easily a half-dozen tangible successes for the progressive model. Sweden. Denmark. Norway. The Netherlands. Canada. Finland.

    Which takes the question out of the realm of the theoretical, doesn’t it?

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