Today’s Grumbletonians, Know Nothings and Fries Followers wielded into today’s Tea party
Slick Fox advertising created today’ Tea Party. But their ideology is nothing new. In 1984, Barry Goldwater sadly pointed out that the Republican Party had been taken over whackos. The Tea Party are these bad idea whackos on steroids. I’d suggest that Fox simply used an amalgation old 18th Century emotional themes: The Fries’ Rebellion anti-tax theories; the 19th century “Know Nothings”; and the 19th century “Grumbletonians.” Each party described themselves as true patriots; each had some religious overtones. Like Fox, the Tea Baggers play emotion over thought or reason. Irrational mainly, illogical usually, and dishonest all too often. Let’s look at some history.
The Fries rebellion was an early effort to avoid taxation. Some civil war veterans rebelled over paying any taxes. Our Constitution allows Congress the power to tax. Federalist Essay’s numbers 29 to 35 discuss the reasons wny taxes are necessary for government to exist, noting that Taxes are the lifeblood of Government. The philosopher Jeremy Bentham explained that those who refuse to pay their share of taxes meet a reasoned definition of evil. Even old Jesus Christ advised his followers to “Give unto Ceasar what is due Ceasar.”
Disputing these seemingly cogent arguments, Fries and his followers believed taxation should be equated with tyranny: a heartfelt if stupid idea. But no one likes taxes: so easy to complain about them. President John Adams put down theFries Rebellion. But there were hard feelings. For me, Fries rebellion points out recurrent problems with any democracy: First, everyone can’t always get their way. And a second, for a government system to function, it must pay its way. The system cannot tolerate the stress caused when too many people take the benefits but don’t want the burdens.
Today’s Tea Baggers should love Fries. They advance Fries anti-tax stance. They angrily deny blame or responsibility for the large federal deficits their legislation caused. They claim taxation is evil. People like Kantor and Boehner refuse to raise taxes to pay for unfunded programs—about 6 trillion worth—they enacted. Like Fries and his followers, they confuse taxation of and by the represented with tyranny. Like Fries, they confuse the true meaning of “patriot” with actions better described by the word “traitor.”
The “Know Nothings” were white English Protestants very opposed to the German and Irish Catholic immigrants. They fought against the Catholic church inroads into the United States. Against non-English immigrants in general. Many Know Nothings became early members of the then nascent Republican party. They called themselves “Know Nothings” because the engaged in violence to achieve their goals and if questioned, would claim to “know nothing.” That is, they knew they were breaking the rules but calculated lying as a proper means to cover cheating. Abraham Lincoln thankfully removed most of their influence from the Republican party, at least for awhile.
Today’s Tea baggers use some different rhetoric. But their ignorant pronouncements and proliclivity for knowing nothing plays into the same racial fears and violent answers espoused by many 19th Century Know Nothings. For example, one recent Tea Bagger pledge demands that THEY must evaluate every law to see whether it was Constitutional. How stupid and ignorant is that. The courts have been vetting laws since 1790 or so when the Supreme Court decided Marbury v Madison. The tea baggers can only call themselves “patriots” because they know nothing indeed.
And the “Grumbletonians”? They were an English party, described for their grumbling about everything. Government in general, taxes, the supposed laxity in moral standards, the supposed incompetents, and the bureaucrats. Grumbletonians believed that the world is going to hell. Any report must be biased. All the elected officials are corrupt.
Of course, Grumbletonians are no more-- or usually less-- moral, competent and patriotic than those they blame. Any Grumbletonian misses some important truths: life is not perfect, never was, never will be; people are not perfect, never were, never will be; better to have educated experienced folk making reasoned decisions then the ignorant making decisions based on God knows what. If we describe a “great” grumbletonian to mean someone who complains about democracy and claims he can do better, then Adolf Hitler was a great grumbletonian. We see many of Hitler’s arguments against democracy—he destroyed the Democrats before turning on the jews-- as today’s key Republican talking points.
Like the Grumbletonians, Tea Partiers reject important truths in favor of constant complaints. There anti-government complaints are many. They even complain about the free press, a fundamental right so important for a functioning democracy and fought for by our Founding Fathers . It is disturbing to hear Tea Baggers like Palin, Bachman and Fox constantly deride the media and press. I suppose they believe this better than admitting so many shortcomings. But tea party cheers , taunts and postures are rather dangerous. Any rational person should laud the media for pointing out Fox, Bachman and Palin are ignorant and dishonest. While aspiring to lead the country, they knows almost nothing of our history, our important traditions, and the rules which served us so well for so long.
To address the intractable problems consistent with lack of perfection, the founding fathers established a mosaic of rules: among them, democracy with recurring elections hopefully informed by a free press and paid for by taxes. Sadly, today’s republicans have attacked all these ideas. Their simply summed position? Tea baggers believe democracy is corrupt unless they are in charge and get their selfish way. And, when they get their way, they don’t want to pay for it.
The Fox network plays to various common themes, propaganda carefully crafted to invoke strong emotions. The Tea Party creation from today’s Fries traitors, today’s Know Nothings and today’s Grumbletonians is another example. Unfortunately for everyone, Fox’s Tea Party creation simply doubled down on various bad ideas: promoting fear, selfishness, and partisan race over reason; promoting ignorance and the use of force to get their way; the attacks on the free press and democracy; and the traitorous belief that starving the government somehow makes our country stronger.