New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a somewhat frightening piece the other day about the tea party movement. If he is correct about the impact the tea party movement may have in the coming year's elections, we are in for a boatload of trouble. The Bush years will seem like an enlightened age.
The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.
The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting...
The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form a self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.
Reading Brooks's piece brought to mind several recent, unconnected conversations, quotes and encounters.
First was a remark made many years back by a pastor friend of mine in Philadelphia. During a discussion we were having about religion, he said, "I'm no longer interested in what people say they don't believe in when they talk about God or religion or faith. You can't define religious belief by what you are against. Tell me what you do believe in."
Those words have always stuck with me. It seems to me the same principle holds true for beliefs about public policy and social issues. Only expressing what you are against is backward-looking; articulating what you are for is forward-looking. History moves forwards. Political movements based solely on opposition and a desire to return the nation to a mythical ideal past are reactionary and unproductive.
I think this is why the Libertarian movement, though it at least has an intellectual basis, has never gained a lot of traction with the public. Though the tea party movement has a libertarian bent, statements like, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare," hardly qualify as an intellectual underpinning.
A while back I came across a quote from Helen Keller, who led a very interesting, radical political life as an adult. She said:
People do not like to think. If one thinks too much, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
If ever there was a modern movement that embodies an ethos of non-thinking, it is today's tea party movement.
The other day on Minnesota Public Radio, a gentleman called in to a talk show that featured an interview with Walter Mondale. The gentleman blamed Democrats for the partisanship and polarization in the country because, he insisted, they are "dragging the country so far to the left that we will become socialist."
Mondale's response was to quote Abraham Lincoln:
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
He might just as well have channeled Representative Barney Frank and asked, "Sir, on what planet do you spend most of your time?"
The tea party movement's anger, its twisted logic, its mindless distortion of fact and history, and the sheer breadth and depth of its ignorance are staggering. And one of its icons is a smiling, charismatic, gleefully misinformed religious zealot from Alaska.
What does the tea party movement seek to accomplish? What exactly are they proposing for the country? Where would it lead the nation, if it had the chance?
Lincoln had this to say about a similar movement of his time:
When the Know-Nothings get control, it [the constitution] will read "all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
Thankfully, the Know-Nothings seemed to have little impact on the trajectory of the nation's history. Yet every so often, it seems, the movement is resurrected in a new form, re-born with all of its rage, hatred and prejudice intact.
Is this what the elections of 2010 and 2012 have in store for us?
Here's this, from Wikipedia:
The key to Know Nothing success in 1854 was the collapse of the second party system, brought about primarily by the demise of the Whig party. The Whig party, weakened for years by internal dissent and chronic factionalism, was nearly destroyed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Growing anti-party sentiment, fueled by anti-slavery as well as temperance and nativism, also contributed to the disintegration of the party system. The collapsing second party system gave the Know Nothings a much larger pool of potential converts than was available to previous nativist organizations, allowing the Order to succeed where older nativist groups had failed.
– Tyler G. Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, p. 95
This sounds remarkably similar to the Republican Party's recent implosion. The tea party movement is already making huge inroads with this era's "potential converts." That doesn't bode well for the country.
Finally, as if we needed another reminder of how backward a nation we are becoming, there's this:
US Students Behind in Science and Math
Haven't we heard this before? Does anything change? Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Isn't THAT something to be angry about - that we can't manage to adequately educate our children?
To paraphrase Garrison Keillor: "That's the news from the United States; where are all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children below average."
And we LIKE it that way, Gosh darn it!
Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs it is the rule. Nietzsche.
For more from this writer, please visit: http://bareleft.blogspot.com