Who says liberals/progressives don't have a sense of humor? Parodying the right's political Tea Party "movement" a group has sprung up called the Coffee Party. The serious side of the movement is an attempt to bring reason into the public discourse. The humorous side of the movement is that they want reason in public discourse. I guess they haven't been paying attention to the ongoing attacks on the originators of the idea-- those anti-godders, the evil trinity, Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris? (Isn't there something incredibly uncanny about how all three names end with "s". Does this not prove that the Debil has had a hand in the success of these three???)By contrast the Tea Party has courted some of the most unreasonable public figures we have yet to witness and in the background lurk the extremist movements that helped to fuel(pun intended) Oklahoma city bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (see Op-ed columnist for the NY Times Frank Rich for more at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28rich.html.) The Tea Party is not simply interested in reforming government and seeing the corruption in Washington end-- they actually believe the government is bad and should be destroyed. And to this end they will use violence.
Clearly someone with a truly refined sense of humor woke up one day and thought, "How can we combat the Tea partiers? Why! With reason of course! Let's get people together to demand that we are more reasonable in our political discourse."
http://www.coffeepartyusa.org/ The mission stated on their website:
The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.I think it's a worthy idea-- truly. And I joined because I would love to have it be a real movement (I'm still very idealistic I guess) Unfortunately just the juxtaposition of the two group's missions shows how very far apart we are in this country and why we can't seem to make any headway. One group wants a to have a discussion and the other is fighting (literally) to win.
The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.
