Yes, very broad criteria, one uses broad criteria when assessing large political movements. Valid when you assess how various parties rise and fall within political systems plus whether and how they are successful or not. Sorry you didn't like the article - TDB. Maybe political theory is not your thing.I thought I was perfectly clear ... the moderates disapprove of the tea party ... no moderates, no political success,, past present OR future,
Of course, Obama's alleged "despotism" is not even comparable to Tsarist despotism and the Bolshevik's actions and relation to it isn't comparable to the TP's actions. They do, however, share characteristics in how they relate ideologically to the entrenched system. Their eventual levels of success and fate are not comparable either. So what? That was the point of the article which noted other parallels that more closely align with TP history and so inform us how this whole Tea Party movement might turn out.
Your "Commies" were not actually "real" communists, ala Marx and Engles, either, but more an oligarchy or dictatorship with a veneer of Communist ideology. Marx and Engels hated autocracy and despotism - a view with which we all should be able to agree if not in what should displace that autocracy and despotism. They reviled expansionism as well and especially Tsarist expansionism which they knew well from study. They would have recognized Soviet despotism for what it was (though perhaps not at first) and its expansionism as a potential export which threatened not only the weaker neighbouring nations but the whole world as well.
That is why I would not stop laughing if it weren't for the crying about how hung up on a couple of words like communism and socialism some people are. It cost millions of lives and lots of treasure. We seem to rarely see through the facades of both our friends and enemies to what many of these regimes really are and do to/for their people.
I might disagree, both Clinton and Obama captured the middle, though in different ways, since they had a captive fringe. Clinton worked from the middle out when the Dems were too far left and fractured. Obama started left and triangulated to the middle when talking about elections. Of course they were people and not movements.
So you think they are going to eventually be successful or have they seen the height of their influence and are on the wane? You weren't clear on that, but polling rends would indicate the latter. Originally Posted by LordBeaverbrook