In a time when our country confronts intractable fiscal and economic problems that an entrenched two-party system has let accumulate for decades (health care reform, national debt, entitlement reform, military-industrial complex, etc.), I am not surprised that Americans are getting angry.
This nation has a long tradition of turning anger into intense political populism, which is a history we neglect at our folly. What liberals forget to remember is that many of the deepest passions of the American people are stirred by questions of taxation and fiscal (or even monetary) issues.
Should we be surprised that a nation that could get riled up by the soaring rhetoric of William Jennings Bryan on a topic as mundane as the gold standard and bimetallism is now generating a movement that pushes monetary policy and the Federal Reserve to the center of its populist political platform?
Should we be surprised that a nation born in blood defending the concrete principle “no taxation without representation”: rather than the abstract “liberté, égalité, fraternité“: and which in its infancy put down two armed insurrections against government taxation (the Shay and Whiskey rebellions) is today rising up at the most egregious and immoral indebting of present and future generations of Americans in our nation’s history?
Should we be surprised that Americans who are given a choice between a party that is the puppet of big business and a party that wishes to be your puppeteer through big government are disillusioned with the political system as a whole?
Should we be surprised that a pragmatic, industrious and skeptical nation is rebelling against a president who was elected on the emptiest abstractions of “hope” and “change?”
If you are surprised, then surely you have forgotten what it means to be an American.
The Tea Party movement is for better or worse a quintessentially American movement, meaning that it is the most paradoxical combination of naïve idealism and cold pragmatism (take your pick from: I have a God-given right not to obey my God-given obligation to love my neighbor . . . Taxes violate the natural laws of the free market which ironically require taxes to enforce them . . . but I just don’t consent! . . . Having almost no taxes is just better for the economy, which is all that matters anyway, so forget the old people . . . Or simply what one Tea Partier told me, that rich people should just be able to keep their money, period).
While the Tea Party may be a haven for radical libertarians and other undesirable political elements of our society that have few official political outlets, all in all what I hear from people who belong to the Tea Party is a deep-felt concern for this country’s fiscal health. Thus they advocate limited government.
I would argue though that to simply characterize the Tea Party as a movement of small government fiscal conservatives would distort some of its most interesting aspects.
The Tea Party, firmly in the tradition of past American populist movements, is in reality a movement against “bigness” and concentration of power per se, rather than merely an attack against the welfare state. Localists eat your heart out!
For example, the Tea Party focuses a lot on the bank bailout. The bailout was not merely an incredible display of government intervention in the economy, but is more accurately described as government collusion with the most powerful financial institutions in our society.
The common thing you hear in the Tea Party is not just “big government” is wrong or bad etc., but that average Americans are not being heard in government, that government represents the interests of large corporations (GM) or financial institutions (Wall Street) rather than individual tax payers and that government is no longer beholden to the people. Can we honestly say that the Tea Party is wrong on these points?
The Federal Reserve is another area of concern for many Tea Partiers because it represents a shocking combination of secrecy, private-public collusion and fiscal irresponsibility. Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve, HR 1207, will likely pass the House but is facing a stiff fight in the Senate.
Increasing transparency over how trillions of dollars in government loans have been issued to private industry is a paramount objective and an absolutely necessary action in preventing corruption and the collaboration of big government with big business.
After all, even if you believe that the Federal Reserve’s massive lending to the banks helped stave off another Great Depression, whose monetary and interest rate policies created the housing and financial bubbles in the first place?
Even Democrats are influenced by the Tea Party and Ron Paul’s attacks on the Fed and on the bank bailout. That’s why Feingold and Boxer came out against the reconfirmation of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and why Obama has suggested the “bank tax” in response to voter dismay over the bank bailout.
I see the Tea Party not as a group of radicals, but as a group of small business owners, middle-class people from traditional families with children and people of faith who are fed up with the government creating policies that rarely seem to benefit them. Obama has heard this message loud and clear, which is why he has proposed to increase the child-tax credit, limit student loan debt and focus stimulus money on small businesses from now on.
We could approach the Tea Party with juvenile jokes poking fun at their ideological zeal or their sometimes ignorant (much lampooned on YouTube) understanding of the Federal bureaucracy and simply label them as right-wing nut jobs to be ignored.
Or, we could realize that when Americans are really angry, it is usually for good reason. If you truly want to stop a populist surge in this country, then the leadership of both parties needs to step up and start solving our massive fiscal issues. Don’t rise to the challenge: and we know how many Sarah Palins are waiting in the wings.
