This is going to be fairly long, and possibly insightful:
Late 2006/early 2007:
Person A: Bush is a joke. Total disaster in foreign policy and civil liberties. PATRIOT Act is very possibly the worst piece of legislation since Adams and the Sedition Act.
Person B: You know, I'm tired of you liberals talking about Bush like you know what he's doing. Clinton didn't protect us from terrorists, and Bush is.
Person A: Well, I'd kind of agree with you that Clinton wasn't very good in "keeping us safe," but not for the same reasons you may feel he failed us. Bush has largely continued a long pattern of foreign policy that has been perpetrated by America for several decades.
Person B: I'm tired of you disrespecting the president and not loving my country.
Mid 2007:
Person A: Hey, Ron Paul's pretty cool, yeah? Wants to drastically cut spending, especially our military budget. It'd help stem the growing number of terrorists created because of our oppressive foreign policy. He'd even cut income taxes to nothing if he could cut enough spending.
Person B: Hell no, he's a liberal. He doesn't love our country or Israel. You liberals and democrats don't know how to keep us safe. Stop listening to your friend Keith Olbermann.
Person A: Well, actually, we give more aid and weapons to Israel's enemies than we do Israel, so if we cut off funding to both Israel and Israel's enemies it would likely reduce the already slim possibility of Israel facing a large scale military threat from a middle eastern country. Also, Israel can't do anything without our approval, so they appear to be carrying out our policy in the middle east; anything bad that happens in their name is attributed by proxy to us.
Late 2007:
Person B: Obama is best friends with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright! He wasn't even born in this country, he was born in Kenya. I'm not voting for a $$$$er to be my president.
Person A: While Bill Ayers isn't really a great choice as an acquaintance for a politician aspiring to be president, there isn't much that Wright said in his "God Damn America" speech that wasn't true. It was over the top, sure, but MLK Jr, Ron Paul, Chalmers Johnson, and Michael Scheuer have said and say many of the same things about our foreign policy. McCain supports many of the policies that are creating terrorists around the world, and in speaking of our deficit nothing in his track record of the last 15 years suggests any possibility of him reducing the size and costs of our foreign adventures, which is really causing our deficit to explode. So really, it's not like McCain is any less of a terrorist than Obama.
Person B: You watch your
ing mouth, boy. Don't you ever disrespect my country. You need to face reality. You're in some fantasy land where everyone in the world hates America because we're some bad country. It's you and your little Ron Paul supporter friends who are the problem, not America.
2009:
Person B: The Tea Party and people like Glenn Beck are going to rise up and take down your little friend Obama and MSNBC. We're rising up, and Fox News is the only one telling the truth.
Person A: Uh... I... uh... what? Do you even know what the Tea Party is?
Person B: You're damn right I know what it is. Us Republicans are coming back.
Person A: Uh, well, the Tea Party thing actually kind of started with me and the terrorist-loving Ron Paul supporters in 2007; you know, we were talking about foreign policy, monetary policy, exploding deficits, civil liberties violations... you know, the crowd Fox News regularly derided...
Person B: Ron Paul isn't part of the Tea Party. The Tea Party is for people who love America, not for liberals like you.
Person A: o..k...
2010, a few months ago:
Person B: I'm tired of them not paying taxes next door. I didn't pay taxes my whole life for them to live here illegally and not pay taxes.
Person A: Actually, I'm pretty sure the neighbors aren't illegal. They speak English and they have jobs, and they pay taxes since they have those jobs. Anyway, you're on disability and SSI, what gives you the right to be a drain on working people like me and the people next door?
Person B: I paid taxes for over 20 years of working, I already paid for my benefits.
Person A: Okay, that's not how it works. How much did you pay each week in both SSI and disability benefits? I'm willing to bet that you didn't pay more than $40,000 in SSI taxes or more than $5,000 in state disability. You're going to end up collecting wayyyy over those numbers by the time you're dead. Also, instead of wanting the neighbors to pay more than zero in taxes - when I'm pretty sure they already are paying taxes - why wouldn't you want your tax burden to be lowered to something resembling their hypothetical tax rate? You're always talking about being overburdened, here's your opportunity to support lowering your tax rate.
Person B: How the hell would you pay for roads and schools?
Person A: Roads are maintained through gasoline taxes and public schools are paid for through local property taxes. And really, the bottom 60% don't really pay a huge assload in taxes as it is, so eliminating the income tax entirely for them wouldn't cut government income much. Cutting wasteful and disastrous foreign policy spending would more than make up for that.
Person B: No, no, you're too liberal.
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Person A is me, person B is my dad. There you have it, a personal experience with a libertarian watching a Republican turn into a Tea Partier turn into a Republican. It's a microcosm of what has been happening with the tea party on a larger scale, as most of you have noticed.
Just for giggles, I'm in my mid 20s, my dad's in his mid 40s. Giggles abound at his leeching off the government already, please. Kind of wish I was more into politics and less into metal before 2006, as I would have been needling him earlier, too.
