The Tea Party Grows Up

By all indications, Election Day could serve as a coming out party for the Tea Party movement. NY-23 has been a clusterfuck of epic proportions, but when all is said and done it looks like the Tea Partiers were right: Dede Scozzafava was a wretched candidate, and if Doug Hoffman pulls out a victory tomorrow night, it will be hard to argue that he shouldn't have been the GOP's candidate. By the time dawn breaks on Wednesday, the Tea Party movement will be both hailed and vilified as the new power brokers on the Right.

I've been on the fence about the Tea Party movement from the get go, and I'm not quite ready to hop down on either side yet. I completely recognize the legitimate anger towards incompetent elected officials who seem uninterested in what their constituents have to say, the fear that the country is drifting (or dashing headlong)away from the principles of our Founders, and the

And yet I'm still not convinced that the Tea Party movement is, on the whole, a good thing for conservatism. I realize the tar and feathers are being readied for me after that statement, but hear me out for a moment or two.

First off, the notion that the Tea Parties are non-partisan in nature should finally be put to rest. The Tea Partiers support limited government, fiscal responsibility, and a restoration of our Constitution (as best as I can sum up from the various Tea Party websites out there). And supporting Doug Hoffman is well in line with those values. But why did the Tea Party people care about the RNCC supporting Dede Scozzafava? Why did a blogger/talk show host like Dana Loesch start a "dump Dede" website? Why did the Tea Party go after the Republican candidate and not the Democratic candidate? The answer's blindingly obvious: Tea Partiers are conservative, and they feel a connection with the Republican brand, even if they feel a disconnect with the current Republican leadership. That's all fine and good, but if the Tea Partiers want honesty, they can start with themselves.

That means that the Tea Partiers are waging a two-front campaign against both the progressives in power and the out-of-power (and quite possibliy out-of-touch) GOP. Two front wars tend to be more difficult, and tactically speaking, are to be avoided when possible. It's one thing to go after a bad candidate in a winnable district. It's another thing to go after the existing party structure, especially when the Tea Party movement itself is still very nebulous and unorganized.

I'm very interested to see who, if anyone, starts to become the de facto leader of the Tea Party movement. There are a lot of people, both established pundits and those who want to be the next conservative star, who have and will attach themselves to the movement. Some of them have some fairly wacky ideas about things, and I'm curious to see how the movement deals with the far-right fringe. We know that Dede Scozzafava is too far left to be welcomed into the Tea Party fold. Is it even possible that someone can be too far right to be embraced by the Tea Party faithful? How about "too crazy"? If the Tea Partiers break with a candidate because they're pro-choice, but welcome activists who believe in FEMA death camps, can the Tea Party movement really be considered mainstream? More importantly, can a movement predicated on the belief that The People innately know what is right and best really be considered conservative?*

There are a lot of questions surrounding conservatism and the Republican Party these days, and not every question needs to be directed at the party leaders who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Dede Scozzafava's campaign.





*I plan on expounding on this at some point in the future. I've been mulling it over in my head, and have even attempted to put some thoughts on paper, but I'm not quite ready yet.

Why I'm Not Going

I was all set to go to the Washington Tea Party today. I even had my shirt picked out; a picture of Obama wearing a set of mouse ears. I was excited. I was ready. And then I saw a press release of the guest speakers.

First of all, who needs speakers? It's a protest, not a rally. I heard Rush Limbaugh say last week that he was too famous to go to a Tea Party protest, and he was right. Once famous people get involved, they inevitably become the focus of the event. Sadly, in the absence of real famous people, the organizers of the Tea Party protest decided to go with people who could be described as "famous to conservatives." That leads me to the second reason I will not be attending: Alan Keyes is speaking, and Alan Keyes doesn't speak for me.

I shouldn't single Keyes out, even though he's not who I want representing me in the eyes of the media. The truth of the matter is, I don't want Laura Ingraham representing me either, or Grover Norquist, no matter how much I may have in common with their political views. I thought the Tea Party was supposed be about us, which is what made it different. Rush Limbaugh understands this, which is why he wisely stayed away. It's an amazingly selfless act, and one that hasn't been much repeated by others in the conservative community. Why do we need anybody representing us? Isn't the point of all of this for the government to hear from We the People? If anybody is representing us on stage, it should be the local business owner who's going to have to cut jobs because of tax increases, or the police officer who sees good colleagues leaving because of budget shortfalls, shortfalls that aren't relieved by stimulus money. For God's sakes, if people have to speak, let them be people, not pundits.

The Tea Party movement didn't need this, the sad parade of B-list conservative celebrities all too eager to attach their name to the cause. The movement did start organically, even if it was soon co-opted by a political machine that politicizes and makes partisan even the most important of issues. Once that issue becomes just another "conservative" thing, all hope of real victory is lost. It is just something else that conservatives will be mocked for, because that is what we do to our political opponents these days. I imagine there'll be a lot of mocking of our opponents at the Washington Tea Party today, because both sides are equally guilty of the practice.

And yet, the organizers of the D.C. Tea Party invited these pundits to assume leadership, or at least prominence, in the movement. By doing so, I can't help but feel like they've killed something very important. I don't know why they felt it was so important to have partisans play such a large role in today's events. Maybe they simply thought it was a good idea. If so, they were wrong.

If this were a liberal rally, it wouldn't be Alan Keyes speaking, it would be Dennis Kucinich. It wouldn't be Laura Ingraham, it would be Rachel Maddow. And conservatives would mock the bejeezus out of it for being a political Woodstock for the lunatic fringe.

I can't begin to tell you how disappointed I am, because I wanted for this to work so badly. The post that started this blog was probably a little too rah-rah in retrospect. Perhaps I'm guilty of idealistically thinking that something "of the people" could remain "of the people" in this day and age. Perhaps I'm incurable, because I'm still looking for ways to turn this around.

There is one thing I've come up with. The organizers of the Tea Party have scheduled the next event for July 4th. Let all Americans, of every political stripe, feel welcome with others who share their concern and disgust over the prospect of continued government bailouts. Leave the polarizing figures behind. You don't need them for this. There's a lot at stake here, and we can't afford to screw it up.

At the end of my first post, I quoted from Joseph Warren's speech commemorating the Boston Massacre in 1775, just a few weeks before the first shots were fired on Lexington Green. I'll repeat them here, because now more than ever, he speaks to us.

On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.

Everyone's A Critic

A friend of mind forwarded me this post by Alex Knapp, in which he expresses "no small amount of amusement" over the Tea Party and Going Galt movements. The reasons are simple:

The “Tea Parties”, of course, started springing up in response to Obama’s stimulus package, a package whose largest fiscal component is a tax cut that will largely benefit the people in the income brackets who make up the Tea Party movement. That I find funny.

The folks in the blogosphere largely cheerleading the Tea Parties are the same folks in the blogosphere who cheerleaded the war in Iraq. So apparently, government intervention to the tune of $650 Billion is okay to spend when it comes to an unnecessary war that in no way advances American interests, but not okay when it comes to building bridges, cutting taxes, helping state governments meet budget shortfalls, or making sure that Americans don’t get covered in lava. Gotcha.

(Disclosure: At the time, I did support the Iraq invasion, which in hindsight was stupid. I am also skeptical about the stimulus package as passed. But I wasn’t opposed to a stimulus package per se.)

Some of the biggest proponents of the “Going Galt” bandwagon in the blogosphere and at Pajamas Media are Glenn Reynolds and his wife, both of whom have jobs (Professor of Law at a public university; forensic psychiatrist) that are dependent on public, taxpayer-funded institutions.

Finally and most ironic of all, none of the folks who attend “tea parties” or who will “go Galt” (one of these days, when they scrounge up the cash) have apparently noticed that we haven’t had anything approaching a free-market system for decades now, but apparently only now that the political party they don’t like is in power have they bothered to notice.

Let's take these one step at a time. First, the "fact" that the Tea Party protestors are arguably protesting against their own economic self-interest. Alex finds that funny. I, on the other hand, think it hearkens back to the original Tea Party. Alex may or may not recall from American History that the Tea Act passed by Parliament was actually going to mean cheaper tea for the colonists... just as long as they accepted the right of Parliament to tax them without the colonists having representation. The working class men and women who not only dumped the tea into the harbor, but organized non-importation movements around the colonies were most certainly working against their own economic self-interest. Doing that doesn't always mean you're a moron. Sometimes it means you simply have principles.

Secondly, the people opposed to the bailouts are largely the same people who supported the Iraq war. So what? The guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. Do we discount everything Jefferson had to say when it comes to freedom and liberty? Besides, everyone's entitled to their opinion, and even if you think they were wrong about Iraq, does that mean they're automatically wrong now?

The notion that men and women who work in a field that is publicly funded can't support in principle private employers "going Galt" is simply absurd. Also, perhaps Alex has forgotten about Pajamas Media? Last time I checked both Glenn and Helen are a part of that private company.

Lastly, Alex finds it amusing that only now are people waking up to the fact that we haven't had a free market system in quite some time. Yes, heaven forbid people are actually allowed to reach that realization. Perhaps Alex will forgive me for asking, but is there a point in which it's simply too late for people to realize this?

People are slow to change. Even Thomas Paine, writing The Crisis realized this. He wrote:

Whether the independence of the continent was declared too soon, or delayed too long, I will not now enter into as an argument; my own simple opinion is, that had it been eight months earlier, it would have been much better. We did not make a proper use of last winter, neither could we, while we were in a dependent state. However, the fault, if it were one, was all our own ; we have none to blame but ourselves. But no great deal is lost yet.

Paine would have preferred independence declared in December of 1775 instead of July of 1776. Even while acknowledging that fact, he still put on a brave face and tried to rally the people to the cause of liberty. Alex Knapp, on the other hand, just wants to get his snark on.

Let’s call the “tea party” and “going Galt” nonsense what it is: unprincipled partisan hackery. If these were truly principled protests, they’d have been around all through the Bush and Republican-controlled Congress years, too.

All well and good, except for the fact that Knapp misses the blindingly obvious point: there was no economic crisis that was met with this kind of response during the Bush and Republican-controlled Congress years. What we're seeing here is a response to a crisis, not the status quo.

It's awfully easy to criticize the Tea Party movement (I've done it myself). But if you're going to criticize people for seeing the light later than you, or for expressing their opposition in a partisan fashion, while you believe that in principle they are right, then you'd be better off offering constructive criticism instead of the all-too-easy sarcasm and snide remarks that pass for real debate these days. Then again, Knapp is the same author who apparently thinks most of civilization has been barking up the wrong tree, philosophically speaking. It may be that he's one of the many bloggers these days who seem incapable of writing in praise of another's ideas, and instead expends all his energy tearing things down (unless, of course, he's talking about Joss Whedon, who seems to be the William Shakespeare of the 21st Century libertarians).

It's easy to tear down, or to provide synchophantic praise. What's rare these days is the courage to offer up a new idea, because you know it's going to simply get ripped apart rather than seriously examined. It's a shame that someone like Knapp prefers intellectual laziness over serious thought and inquiry.

Are We Protesting Ourselves?

How much of the Tea Party protests are directed towards our government for their bloated and dangerous "stimulus" bill, and how much are directed towards our fellow Americans; you know, the ones who decided to live a Lexus lifestyle on a Kia salary?

The New Face of Protesting

This is just sad.

At the same time, even these pathetic excuses for Americans have their own list of (idiotic) demands, which is more than the Tea Party movement can say.

I don't mean to be too critical of the movement, because it is encouraging. It's also going to be a wasted opportunity if it doesn't start to coalesce around some remedies soon.

Act Worthy Of Yourselves

Across the country, the "Tea Party" movement is spreading. Anti-stimulus protests in Arizona, Washington State, Kansas, Georgia, and elsewhere are popping up, and of course CNBC's Rick Santelli has become an instant folk hero after calling for a Chicago Tea Party. But if we're going to compare our actions to those brave Bostonians of 1773, we should really take a look at what their protest meant, and what happened afterwards. To simply compare ourselves to those men and women, without truly understanding what they did, at the least cheapens our shared history and could lead to consusion over the motives of this new "Tea Party" movement.

The decision to dump 45 tons of tea into Boston Harbor wasn't made at the spur of the moment. It had been carefully discussed and planned by the leaders of Boston's patriot community. They knew exactly what they were doing when they boarded those three ships and began breaking open the heavy chests filled with tea from the East India Trading Company. They were committing an act of insurrection, not political theater.

Let's back up for a second. In colonial America, there were a lot of tea drinkers, but many of them bought smuggled tea. The reason was simple: it was cheaper. There was already an import duty on British tea which made it more expensive than the Dutch tea many merchants (including John Hancock) smuggled in to the colonies. In April of 1773 Parliament tried to rectify this by passing the Tea Act. The legislation granted a monopoly of the North American market to the East India Trading Company in order to try and keep the company from economic collapse. At the same time, Parliament imposed a new tax on tea, but one that would be paid in London as a surcharge. The Americans would actually see lower prices on tea, but the tea they purchased would already come pre-taxed. Historian Benson Bobrick says it "remains a noble feature of the whole confrontation that immediate economic interest did not determine [the colonists'] response."

And Americans didn't take the bribe of lower tea in exchange for accepting a revenue tax. In Philadelphia, ships bearing tea couldn't find anyone willing to lead the ships into harbor. In Charleston, South Carolina, the tea was off-loaded, but was stored in moldy warehouses where the product quickly rotted and became useless. In New York City, storms prevented the tea-laden ships from docking.

Boston, already filled with thousands of Regular troops sent to suppress the insurrection, would be a different story. Three ships eventually landed at Griffin's Wharf in Boston Harbor, but armed townspeople stood guard over the vessels to prevent the tea from being unloaded. Patriot leaders pleaded with the captains of the ships to sail away, but they refused to do so until their cargo was removed. Only when word was received that the tea was to be off-loaded and imported the very next morning did the patriots act.

The beginning of the Boston Tea Party took place at Fanueil Hall. The large meeting house was packed to the brim on the night of December 16th. When he was informed that the governor had rejected pleas for help from the colonists, Samuel Adams, a staunch supporter of the Patriot cause (and something of a rabble-rouser) cried out, "This meeting can do nothing more to save the country!"

That was the signal that triggered the Boston Tea Party. Two hundred men disguised themselves as best they could (it's interesting to point out that at the time, no one dared publicly admit they had taken part in the Tea Party) and set out to dump the tea, while thousands of residents watched from the streets.

It took them three hours. They did not burn down the ships, or vandalize them. They didn't steal any tea. They only destroyed it, and then marched off the boats and down the street with a fifer leading the way.

I mentioned earlier that His Majesty's troops were already in Boston that night. They did nothing to stop the Tea Party. Warships anchored less than a mile away did not fire upon the crowd, nor did they send a detachment of soldiers to try to break up the silent riot. Instead, the Crown's men exercised a great deal of restraint (no doubt thinking back to that March night just a few years earlier when troops opened fire on a crowd of belligerent Bostonians, killing five of them in what became known as the Boston Massacre). Still, Admiral John Montague couldn't help but open a window as the patriots passed by on the street below. "Boys, you have had a fine, pleasant evening for your Indian caper, haven't you? But mind, you have got to pay the fiddler yet."

They paid, all right. The reaction from Parliament and the Crown was swift and severe. Parliament quickly passed the Coercive Acts, better known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts. The response to the insurrectionist Tea Party was to try to break the will of the colonists. They shut down the port of Boston, revoked the charter of Massachusetts, removed any civilian governing authority and replaced it with Royal rule, and re-established the practice of quartering troops in civilian homes. Additionally, more than 5,000 more troops arrived to crack down on the rebellious Bostonians. Boston at the time was a city between 15,000 and 20,000, which meant that there was nearly one Regular for every adult male in the city. General Gage, the new military governor of Massachusetts, soon set out to confiscate gunpowder and arms stored in towns throughout the colony. Long before Lexington and Concord, Regular troops marched on the towns of Somerville (where they successfully removed the powder) and Salem (where they were forced to turn back by a crowd of civilians). Patriots responded by seizing the armed garrison at Portsmouth, Maine (then a part of Massachusetts) without firing a shot.

In short, the Boston Tea Party was an act of defiance and insurrection that set in motion a chain of events that led to armed rebellion against Parliament and the King. I wonder, do we really mean to compare ourselves to the men and women who, even at that early date, were ready to sacrifice their all for the cause of liberty?

It seems that what we're actually seeing now is a relatively low-key and sedate protest in relation to the audacious and incredible increase in government power. Frankly, the patriots who took part in the Boston Tea Party would probably call us cowards for not responding in a more full-throated manner.

I'm not objecting to the protests. Far from it in fact. I'll be at the protest in Washington, D.C. But I am not expecting anything other than street theater, or the political equivalent of clearing our throat rather than the yelling our politicians deserve to hear. I won't compare it to the Boston Tea Party, because there is no comparison. To claim otherwise is to both cheapen the actual protest by 200 Bostonians and their thousands of supporters, and to inflate the magnitude of our current actions.

I wonder, what are we expecting to achieve from these protests? Are we content to merely register our disapproval, or are we seeking to change what Congress and our president have done? If it is the former, I'm sure the politicians will note our objection, and wait for us to quiet down. If it is the latter, I fear our current protests are too scatter-shot to do any real good.

What is the target of our protest? Are we protesting the President and Congress for an act already passed, or are we petitioning our state and local governments to refuse to accept the stimulus money?

What do we do if these protests do not result in the change in policies we are asking for? What happens next?

Make no mistake, once a movement like this has begun, it will, sooner or later, have to answer these difficult questions or risk failure. Now is the seed-time of liberty, and the steps we take and the words we use will either be recalled triumphantly by our grandchildren, or seen as a sad charade conducted by children who could not muster the strength and conviction of their ancestors.

In 1775, just a few weeks before blood was spilled at Lexington Green, Dr. Joseph Warren addressed a crowd of Bostonians who had gathered to commemorate the anniversary of the Boston Massacre.

Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves. The faltering tongue of hoary age calls on you to support your country. The lisping infant raises its suppliant hands, imploring defence against the monster slavery. Your fathers look from their celestial seats with smiling approbation on their sons, who boldly stand forth in the cause of virtue; but sternly frown upon the inhuman miscreant, who, to secure the loaves and fishes to himself, would breed a serpent to destroy his children.

With all due respect to Dr. Warren, this is not your father's protest movement. This is your forefathers' protest. Act worthy of yourself.