By Mike Appleton (Guest Blogger)
In 1773 the British East India Company was broke. In an effort to prevent bankruptcy, and the resulting loss of the crown’s investment, the British government eliminated all taxes on domestic tea sales and granted the company a monopoly on tea shipments to the American colonies. In December of that year radicals boarded ships in Boston harbor and threw $75,000.00 worth of tea overboard. The first Tea Party was a violent reaction to monopolistic economic power protected by government.
The modern Tea Party doesn’t understand history, so it can’t be expected to appreciate irony. It is a mongrel movement, its leaders self-proclaimed, its agenda by turns unfathomable and incoherent, its philosophy grounded in vehemence. So how can it possibly be dangerous? Here, in no particular order, are my four Rs of the Tea Party.
1. It is racist. I know. I just played the race card. But the best way to stop someone from playing the race card is to quit dealing it. Public expressions of bigotry began as soon as Barack Obama was nominated at the Democratic convention, and continued throughout the campaign, during which prominent Republicans referred to him as “boy,” “uppity” and other vulgarities. In short order he became a socialist and a Marxist and was then transformed into an extremist Arab Muslim. Sarah Palin eventually settled on the euphemistic “let’s take our country back,” but we all knew what she meant. The Tea Party began forming before the inauguration and was printing “Don’t Tread on Me” posters while the Obama family was still unpacking in the White House. On April 15, 2009, the Tea Party was protesting a tax burden that was, and is, the lowest in 60 years.
The Tea Party has promoted ugly forms of nativism, including punitive immigration laws, English only legislation and bans on the teaching of ethnic studies. It is the 1840s once again, but the targets are Muslims and Hispanics rather than Germans and Irish.
2. It is a religionist movement. I don’t know if religionism is a word, but I use it to describe a phenomenon distinct from traditional religion: religion as political philosophy. It is the view that the Constitution was divinely inspired, that America is God’s gift to mankind, that capitalism is mandated by Holy Scripture and that the notion of “social justice” is the work of the Antichrist. It is a culmination of the fundamentalist reaction in the early 1900s to Darwin and the progressive movement. It has spawned a form of Christian imperialism that justifies the “crusades” in Iraq and Afghanistan, supports Israel uncritically and sends American politicians to Africa to lobby for the death penalty for homosexuals.
3. It is repressive. The Tea Party is committed to authoritarianism. Lawmakers in Congress and throughout the country, particularly in states with heavily Republican legislatures, have been imposing humiliating burdens on women’s constitutional rights at breakneck speed. They are simultaneously reducing taxes on business and cutting funding for education and health care. The regulation of entire industries is being eliminated in certain states. The integrity of public employees has been impugned and their rights to organize curtailed. Laws banning the phony threat of sharia are pending in a dozen states. The independence of the judiciary has been threatened by proposals to reduce courts’ rule-making authority and politicize the judicial selection process.
4. It is revisionist. The Christian right and its supporters in legislatures and on school boards have demanded that high school history texts be rewritten to eliminate references to the deism endorsed by many of the Founders in favor of promoting the false notion of America as an exclusively Christian nation. The history of slavery and the Civil War is being falsified to satisfy the desires of apologists for the Confederacy and southern “values.” Science cannot be re-written, but it can be denied. The sciences of climate change and evolutionary processes have become the subjects of unnecessary controversy.
Robert La Follette, a founder of the progressive movement, became governor of Wisconsin in 1900 and immediately took on the railroads, forcing them to pay higher taxes on their assets. When the new governor of Wisconsin took office this year, he immediately took on labor in an effort to destroy public employee unions and cover the cost of new tax reductions for business. But like I said earlier. People who don’t understand history can’t appreciate irony.
I can’t agree with 43North’s idea that the extremes of both left and right are actually very close to each other. They both may not like the present administration, but for very different “reasons”. I can’t see them cooperating in any actions, at least not for very long.
Swarthmore mom,
You’re right. My mistake!
That said, any type of attempted overthrow of our government would most likely bring on some type of violence–as it did in Egypt.
lotta,
I wasn’t talking about governments. I was talking about tea partiers and liberals.
Elaine, Egypt was not violent. The person advocated a peaceful demonstration to oust Obama.
Elaine: “Are you saying that both the tea partiers and liberals want to overthrow the government?”
—
No. But both far left and far right governments and the political forms they represent exert a great deal of control over their citizens in my speculation as to Norths meaning. At the extremes, no matter what the propaganda, you’re dealing with fascists, communists, and authoritarians of all manner- only the uniforms are different. That’s how it plays out in reality no matter how happy and empowered the peasants on the posters look.
lottakatz posted the following to the Jan Brewer thread:
Michigan has exercised it’s emergency powers to take control of a city, appoint an emergency manager, nullify the duties of the elected officials and pave the way for a massive property rip-off that benefits a locally powerful business group. Here’s the Maddow vid. Jan needs to take lessons from Rick Snyder to see how real corruption is played:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/42654363#42654363
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Yet another example of “why the Tea Party is dangerous.”
(Those involved have ties to the Koch brothers, which isn’t a big surprise…)
Swarthmore,
Were there posters who actually encouraged a violent armed overthrow of our government? Are you sure those weren’t just hyperbolic statements they were making?
Elaine, I am talking about the few that say to overthrow Obama like the people in Egypt overthrew Mubarek. It has been said on this blog more than a few times by a far left poster.
What Elaine said.
Swarthmore mom,
It is the far right birthers who believe Obama is not a legitimate president. There are many liberals who think that some of the things Obama has done are not constitutional or ethical. (I don’t see that as a common thread.) That is why some on the far left think Obama should be impeached. They felt the same way about Bush.
Stalin and Hitler both hated socialists.
Elaine I think it is the far far left and the far far right that north is talking about not liberals in general. The common thread is that Obama is not a legitimate president and should be impeached or overthrown. They share a common goal.
Thanks the Niemöller quotation, Elaine M.
I’ll say it again:
If what I’m seeing is any indication…
lottakatz,
43north may be alluding to that. I was just attempting to make the same point that I made to Jill earlier on in this thread. I don’t believe that tea partiers and liberals share the same far right-wing beliefs and positions.
Are you saying that both the tea partiers and liberals want to overthrow the government?
Swarthmore mom,
Martin Niemöller quotation:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392
Elaine, I have seen a permutation of the classic depiction of the left/right political spectrum morphed from a horizontal bar to a circular configuration by bringing the left/right ends of the bar up until they touch and form the circle with the most extreme left and right political types touching. That kind of leaves anarchy as the polar opposite if the circular graph is measuring government types based on control exerted from most controlling to least controlling. Maybe 43North is alluding to that. While methods, motives and aims differ the result is similar, high degrees of control to make them work. This is my best guess of the meaning of the statement.
Otteray,
I realize that. My point was to show that the Nazis and Communists weren’t always working together on the same side. While I know that there have been one or two times when the left and the tea party shared a similar view on a specific issue–liberals and the tea partiers are most often on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
Elaine, The communists held seats in the German parliament. I have said before that I do not want to be in a coalition with the tea party to overthrow Obama.
Elaine, I think the reference was to the time BEFORE Hitler came to power, when he needed support from anywhere he could get it, in order to take power himself. After he took office as Chancellor, then things changed.
Didn’t the Nazis also come after the Communists when Hitler was in power? And didn’t the Nazis and Communists fight against each other in WWII?