There are many on the left who will write me off for suggesting such thing. It is that illiberal, knee jerk, side taking, among other things, that has diminished the stature of American liberalism. Traditionally, we liberals have been the voice of inclusiveness. How liberal is it to write off and disavow such a large swath of our population, most of whom are working class folks?
Don’t get me wrong, I see many, if not most, of the tea party ideas as sadly wrong headed and mean. There are many clichés to express that we should hate the ideas and not those who hold them. True enough in the veneer world of clichés. But another great tradition of American liberalism is rigorous ideological accountability. Disregarding the whole chaotic swath of Tea Party outlook fails that test in a big way. We need to be responsible for honestly addressing the Tea Party ideas, no matter how idiotic they may be, in ways that are not dismissive and have a chance of providing access to more logical and compassionate solutions to the very real concerns of our brothers and sisters.
Historically, pretty awful things have happened when bad ideologies were written off rather than addressed. We on the left often tend to roll our eyes and deny Tea Party ideas the dignity of a serious response. We usually fail to recognize the validity of the concerns from which these ideas arise. And in the end we also deny the opportunity to have our own ideas challenged.
There is actually a good deal of common ground from which to begin bridge building. The loathing of big government has often come from the left and still might be if we were not so willing to have our rhetoric defined by reaction what is coming from Fox News. The great liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith warned us about the dangers of bureaucratic symbiosis, or the merging of corporate and government forces to repress populist will. Much of Galbraith’s concern was directed at the military industrial complex, which, of course, we were first warned about by Republican President Eisenhower.
The Tea Party railed against Corporate Welfare when the big three were bailed out. And, because this bit of corporate favoritism had been anointed by labor, most on the left missed the opportunity to engage in a more sophisticated discussion that included a general agreement on the evils of corporate welfare, something the left had previously been unwavering on. Having this discussion did not mean that we had to, in this instance, abandon the need to protect so many American jobs.
Of course this discussion would have been even easier to have on the issue of bank bailouts, where, again, many on the left found themselves dangerously close to holding Tea Party positions.
Ron Paul is a nut that worships the right of people to form corporations and demonizes the right of people to form governments. Nonetheless, he remains one of the most articulate voices against American militarism: a rather central idea for most of us on the left. In a climate of thoughtless polarity, most on the left refuse to give support to Paul’s ideas on militarism because they disagree with him on the EPA. How much sense does that make?
The early progressive party of Teddy Roosevelt was a true populist movement that included some rather disturbing segments. But it was a melting pot in which the rough edges were more likely smoothed in the process. Today, working class people are more likely to be in the Tea Party than to identify as progress or populists. We blame the Koch brother for paying for the Tea Party. It seems to me that we have simply handed most of it to them freely.