“Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.” Can you guess who said that? It sounds like it could be any contemporary progressive who understands the constantly evolving nature of society. Certainly not the Thomas Jefferson that we hear tea party folks praising all the time for his aversion towards government. This is because the man that they worship so dearly, while dressing up in eighteenth century apparel, was not the true radical they’ve made him out to be.
While Thomas Jefferson was very much opposed to a strong centralized government during his time as the first Secretary of State, as President he seemed to become almost as much of a Federalist as his political adversary Alexander Hamilton (who ironically campaigned vigorously for Jefferson when he tied with Aaron Burr in the presidential run). Jefferson was deeply philosophical and held strong views, but at the same time he was pragmatic. It may be that the Hamiltonian system of government had already been implemented by the time he got into office, but Jefferson never truly attempted to dismantle any critical parts as President. His neutrality in office was also an important contribution to the eventual dissolving of the Federalist party, along with Hamilton’s untimely death.
He was a figure that helped compromise between the two radically antagonistic political parties and united the young country. But some of the loyalist Democratic-Republicans were beginning to doubt Jefferson, especially when he made the massive Louisiana Purchase from France. Different factions within the party called “Tertium Quids” formed, criticizing the president for violating the constitution by purchasing land. Ultimately, Jefferson’s utopian dream of an agrarian nation of farmers and yeomen was surpassed by Hamilton’s industrialized nation of financiers and a middle class. But while Jefferson’s philosophical hope for America was bypassed by progress, in the end, he was a realist in governing, unlike the radicals of today with their pathological hatred and distrust of government. To give an analogy, the tea party is to Jefferson what the Bolsheviks were to Marx.
This sort of mythologizing is not an uncommon practice in politics, and the latest American leader to be given this treatment is Ronald Reagan. The great communicator has become the right wings symbol of responsible limited government and low taxes. In reality, the Reagan administration in no way resembled the responsible limited government that has somehow been sold to the Fox news viewership. Facts always seem to jumble the right wings perception of reality. Like the fact that after the initial tax cut of 1981 (which was admittedly a large and destructive cut), the Reagan administration raised taxes nearly every remaining year of his presidency, after the supply side theory was proven fallacious. Indeed, a year after his initial cut, Reagan signed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, which was the largest peacetime tax increase in American history.
And what about fiscal responsibility? The fact that Americas debt problem really started to take off under Reagan is another inconvenient fact for the worshiping zealots. The truth is that our debt just about tripled under his administration, while the number of millionaires grew eightfold but the number of Americans below the poverty line rose. And is it true that the gipper somehow miraculously stopped the cancerous inflation that plagued the country through the seventies? No, unfortunately that was the work of Paul Volcker and the Fed, who initiated a significant rise in interest rates, pushing the economy into a recession and therefore lowering inflation. Volcker was nominated by Jimmy Carter.
Okay, so Reagan was not fiscally responsible and wasn’t the tax cutting maniac he’s been made out to be, but at least he ended the Cold War, right? I mean, that excuses him for starting the deficit madness. This has once again been mythologized by historians and the media. The Soviet Union was already looking pretty bad by the 1980’s. If anyone deserves credit for the ending of the Cold War, it is Mikhail Gorbachev and his liberal reforms. In a USA Today poll published just days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 43 percent of Americans gave credit to Gorbachev, while only 14 percent to Reagan. Take that same poll today, and you’d probably get a different result.
So what does this say about the tea party folks? Well, besides the fact that they tend to have a false sense of history, it also says that their radical notions of a government small enough to “drown in a bathtub” are idealistic and antiquated. When Jefferson was preaching small government, it was a very different time. In the eighteenth century it took days to send messages across state lines and weeks to travel the seas. Today, we live in a global village and have enough nuclear power to blow up the world many times over. So the philosophical Reagan can preach small government and lower taxes, but when it comes time to actually govern, pragmatism rules.