Updated from original post on samtparry.com.
The more I've tried to understand the substance of the Tea Party movement, the less I understand.
Part of that is because they are not very well-organized and have many competing strands of thoughts and political philosophies throughout the movement -- from libertarians to social conservatives to conspiracy theorists to racists to "traditional" Constitutionalists.
The broad pillars that hold the movement together seem to be:
- An aversion to taxes,
- A concern about the size and extent of government,
- A belief in a "conservative" or "traditional" interpretation of the Constitution,
- A concern about America’s budget deficit, and
- A fear that Obama-Pelosi-Reid are steering the country toward socialism.
I'm not going to address each of these issues. But I'm particularly interested in the opposition to taxes and the complaints of a large and pervasive federal government. And I am most troubled by the way Tea Partiers tend to pervert America's founding principles to justify their views on these issues.
Our Founders and the Tea Party
Tea Partiers love to wrap themselves in the parchment of our founding documents.
But, they misunderstand much of our history and mis-describe the reasons our ancestors dissolved our political bands with Britain.
The American Revolution was not inspired by an opposition to taxation. It was inspired by an opposition to taxation without representation.
Indeed, before and after the British Parliament passed the wildly unpopular Stamp Act in 1765, an igniting event in our revolutionary history, several of our founding fathers, hoping to avoid confrontation, offered alternative ways to govern the colonies and collect revenue.
One option promoted by Benjamin Franklin and others was to create a form of colonial union that could join Britain in a federation and allow colonial participation in an imperial parliament.
Such a colonial body could raise revenue for the British empire similar to the revenue sought by the British Parliament, only with colonial input and representation.
Had Britain gone for such a plan, it is very possible that revolutionary tensions could have been contained and the shot heard round the world would never have been fired.
But, the British government, run by a wealthy, snobbish, incompetent ruling class never took the American colonists seriously, never saw a need to adapt to changing circumstances, and never seriously contemplated extending representation to the American rabble. This was their blunder -- not that they imposed taxes, but they way they did it by forcing it down the throats of the colonists without consultation or any form of representation.
The Declaration of Independence
Anyone who has read our Declaration of Independence can see the flaws of the modern Tea Party and its misinterpretation of our founders' views.
Indeed, it is somewhat jarring given the rhetoric of the Tea Party protesters that there is all of one, count it ONE, direct use of the word "tax" in the entire document. You barely even notice it as it's hidden in the long list of grievances against the King. It reads:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent;
Notice that it doesn’t leave it at merely "For imposing Taxes on us." It adds the clause "without our Consent."
Our founders were not averse to taxes and understood the need for governments to raise money to support the common good. But they were opposed to being treated like second-class citizens and to having a distant, unaccountable government dictate laws on the colonies without consent or representation.
As for the aversion against big government, again this is not to be found in the Declaration. Indeed, our founders’ basic view of the fundamental need for government is summed up in this sentence from the Preamble:
"That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
There it is, in plain, simple, and eloquent language -- the proper role of government is to not get off our backs or get out of the way, but rather to "secure" our rights.
And can you imagine a Tea Party protester holding a sign saying that governments derive "just powers?" And there’s that word again, "consent."
The next sentence of the Preamble does get a little hotter:
"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
Now that’s a sentence I can see on a Tea Party protest sign. But, the context is important and the rest of the entire Declaration is about despotism and tyranny and an unaccountable, i.e. unrepresentative, government.
Our Founders and Ourselves
Our current form of government may be a lot of things, but we do have elections and we do have three branches of government that are in balance and that hold each other accountable.
Senate inaction on many of President Obama's major campaign promises (immigration, climate, DADT, etc) and the Republican abuse of the filibuster and near universal opposition to Obama's agenda, should be proof enough of the role that checks and balances plays in our national governance today.
Tea Partiers have to face it – our founders weren’t anti-government or opposed to taxes. They were opposed to tyranny. And they saw a need to recalibrate the relationship between government and the governed to hold leaders accountable and ensure that governments would derive their just powers from the people.
It is of course hard, maybe impossible, to say what our founders would think of our current form of government. In so many ways, we are far more democratic today than our founders ever envisioned.
-- We no longer permit one person to own another person.
-- We no longer limit the right to vote to white males who own property.
-- We no longer exclude people from participating in our government because of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc.
-- We no longer tolerate the subjugation of one group of people by another.
-- Etc.
In many ways, I think most of our founders would be very impressed with the expansion of democratic rights and privileges and with the fact that our society has grown and become ever more diverse with each passing generation.
Then again, clearly our modern economy and government are each far more complex and larger than anything our founders, who lived lives based predominantly on agriculture and trade, could imagine.
At the end of the day, I don’t know how our founders would respond to modern America anymore than you do.
But, I do know that the tyranny our founders rebelled against was not a tyranny of taxation or of too much government. It was rather a tyranny of being governed without consent, of living under a government that instead of securing their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, trampled on those rights without any democratic accountability.
That is a far different movement than the one described by the Tea Party.