Tired of the Tea Party?

616px-obama-nazi_comparison_-_tea_party_protest

Then check out these guys.

The "coffee party" had about 29,000 Facebook "fans" on the morning of March 1, according to this New York Times story. By the same afternoon, that number was up to 40,000. Late last night, it was more than 110,000.

It's not the Tea Party in reverse (no Limbaugh-as-Hitler signs in answer to the magic-marker swastikas that Tea baggers use to depict a modest change in national laws about medical insurance). The Coffee Party aims to restore the country's civic religion: free speech, deliberative government, and loyalties that put nation above party. That's the point of the group's "civility pledge": "As a member or supporter of the Coffee Party, I pledge to conduct myself in a way that is civil, honest, and respectful toward people with whom I disagree. I value people from different cultures, I value people with different ideas, and I value and cherish the democratic process."

What they lack in goofy hats, they seem to make up for in seriousness of purpose.

blog comments powered by Disqus

About Mind Matters

284 Posts since 1970

In markets, medicine, justice, politics, psychology, and economics, "Rational Man" is dead. As the science of human behavior enters the post-rational era, we no longer think of ourselves as cool calculators in pursuit of our objective self-interest. Mind Matters is about this change and its effects on how we live. It's about the reasons people perceive, feel, think, and act as they do, and the gaps between what we think we're doing and what research says we're doing. Most importantly, it's about how this sea change affects the institutions we live by: courts, hospitals, governments, stock markets and other entities that still run on the presumption that people act rationally.

Links

Recent Posts