The following was written by Jeremy Styron, a news editor from Northeast Georgia. Much of his critique/commentary of the Tea Party movement centers around both the perception of the movement through the media and from commentary taken from this site (which we don’t expect to necessarily reflect your personal points of view). As an individual watching the movement from the outside, he has been gracious and bold enough to address “Tea Partiers” as a guest commentator. Please feel free to provide your feedback. In doing so, we request that you provide him the same respect for his differences of opinion that he has.
Everyone,
As I’ve recently offered some rather critical comments (and here) about the tea baggers and about the various “Tea Parties” cropping up across the country, I was invited to write a guest commentary for this site. Here, I will offer my appraisal of this movement as well a suggestion or two for making it less susceptible to misunderstandings.
One of my main arguments has been that it was getting a bit hard to tell — as we on the outside attempt to sift through various online and television media coverage and literature on the reteaparty Web site — just what this movement is all about. Obviously from the mainstream media, we hear movement supporters arguing against taxes and against government overspending, as in the recently passed $787 stimulus bailout plan. But as most everyone knows by now, all types of folks seem to be cropping up at these rallies nationwide. We have seen the far right and folks who are anti-anything Obama to the core. We have seen the anti-tax bunch. We have seen the cartoonish 18th-century throw-backs, pretending they are somehow helping to enact change by resembling those who helped spur the American Revolution.
To, first, address this briefly, those who instituted the Boston Tea Party seemed to me a motley crew of somewhere between 100 or less of possible Sons of Liberty members and others who decided to take matters into their own hands in light of what they viewed as British offenses against the colonies by way of the Townshend Act and the Tea Act of 1773 and, perhaps, favoritism given to the East India Company. Regardless of which issue put them over the edge — probably a combination — the issue was, by and large, about taxes without having representation in England. Today, our taxes are levied with the understanding that we are represented, even if it’s by people we may disagree with on some issues.
Now, to the task at hand. The central problem that I find with the Tea Party movement is that of vaguaries and generalities. Of course, if the organization decides to keep their intentions and basic precepts vague, they will, by right, win the support of more people, won’t they? For, the more specific a plan becomes, the more people begin to fall off from support. Thus, in one of my posts, I suggested that this site’s “About” page was too general and needed specifics about what precisely the movement was attempting to accomplish. I was told the site makers were not wanting ostracize certain groups, make participation freely open and not segregate those who agree from others who may consider joining but haven’t made up their minds. In other words, the goal, as I understand it, was to make the movement accessible to many. That’s a reasonable goal, I suppose.
But in this case, that strategy doesn’t come without consequences, those as I discussed earlier (Folks showing up in 18th-century whigs and far-right slinging all kinds of nonsensical, proposterous claims). Take the case of religious organizations. The intention, in the case of Christianity, is to reach the most people with the good message of Christ and help them live for Christ, before he comes back, raising up (literally) those who accepted him and sending those who did not into eternal separation from God. But good intentions turn sour. A cursory examination of Christian denominations will show that we have hundreds just in America alone, all claiming the right reading of the same book. The central message is this: a series of precepts, which may be good outright, become tweaked, altered or even distorted when specifics are not given and when things are left open to interpretation. A brief look here shows humans can decide little on religion because nothing was set in stone from the outset and nearly everything, even the truth of Scriptures themselves, has been left to conjecture and interpretation. So, we have a plethora of readings of Scripture and 100s of denominations, all holding slightly different doctrines.
This is why we see so many “Tea Baggers” who show up to parties for different reasons. Everyone comes for their own set of issues, regardless of whether those reasons line up with the “quasi-official” stance of the true Tea Party. And here, I turn to the following specific points made in this well-written post, What Tea Parties Are and Are Not:
We're fed up with politicians whose only answer to our problems is to try to spend our way out of them. We're fed up with corporate fat cats who fly in individual private jets to collect billions of our dollars in bailout money. We're fed up with this notion that we have to give up our privacy and our freedoms to feel secure.
We have had it up to here with politicians and corporations trying to run every aspect of our lives for their benefit. All we ever wanted was to run our own lives for the benefit of ourselves and our families.
I suppose the poster is talking about the automakers flying into Washington on private jets, wiretapping and other possible privacy infringements by the Bush administration, but to say that politicians and corporations are attempting “to run every aspect of our lives for their benefit” is an overstatement. Automakers and bankers offer services and products that we can buy into … or not. Politicians offer ideas for solving problems that we can buy into … or not. The Obama administration has offered an idea it feels will take steps toward solving our problems. That is, to prop up the failing financial institutions and car makers in an attempt to save a number of companies, that not only hold the livelihood of their own employees in their hands, but the livelihood of many employees of “partner” companies, that, if the larger whole fails, the spiral arms of the economy twist downward as well.
Many corporations were allowed to become “too big to fail,” as Sean Haugh points out, and this by itself is one of the most caustic and overarching problems: deregulation of big business. Policies, or the lack thereof, through the last decade of more have seemed to have spurred this on. Haugh’s “let them fail,” proposal, while, in a perfect world, would have no dissenters, in this world, has many. It is not possible for the aforementioned reason. Thus, for right or wrong, we start with the “brute fact,” as philosophers like to say, that these institutions are (were), in fact, too big and important for the economy to fail. I would like nothing more than to sign on to the notion that we should let these greedy, corporate suits get what’s coming to them, but the nature of the beast is that we can’t let the beast perish. If she does, the ship may not be able to right itself. Are tea baggers proposing such notions willing to take the risk of sliding down a wormhole to another Great Depression? Visited a soup kitchen lately? If certain companies fail, that trip might be closer than some of us think.
If you are a politician of either party, then we're pretty much done listening to you. Sure, you are welcome to join us, just like any American. But don't think we're going to fall for your false promises again. The same Republican politicians talked a big game in 1994, and we all remember how that turned out.
That first sentence is a dangerous one to make. Politicians on both sides of the aisle (that includes the president), like them or not, have an enormous responsibility on their plates; they keep the plates spinning. If they all, en masse, left Washington one day and decided not to show up for work because they no longer had the support of anyone, anywhere in the U.S., the country would cascade fairly quickly into chaos.
We are not just against taxes. What we're really against is being told taxes have to be raised so the politicians can spend even more of our money. It's the spending that's the problem, even more than the taxes. We live within our means and we expect you to do the same.
This is one complaint against the new administration that I just can’t wrap my mind around. Obama has said it over and over and over and over ad nauseum that he would not institute a tax increase on those making less than 250k per year (At this link, it’s questioned whether a cigarette tax is included in his promise. I say it was not, since smoking is volunteer, hazardous to one’s health and others, is a luxury and not a base federal income or payroll-type tax.). So, many who have become the recipients of bailout money are also the recipients of tax increases, based on Obama’s plan. Do the two balance themselves out? I doubt it, but at least it can’t be argued that regular folks are getting a raw deal. Portions of the stimulus bill were over the top, I will cede that point, but the point was that the economy was in such dire circumstances in so many areas, that nothing short of a gigantic boost would be sufficient. In fact, some experts say even $800 billion isn’t going to be enough.
Further, many Americans don’t live within their means, and I can see no reason why this wouldn’t include a number of tea baggers. To claim the majority use financial frugality and common sense and don’t have substantial credit card debt or mortgages is wishful thinking.
We love it (America) because here you can say what you want, believe what you want, and live the way you want, without someone with a badge and a gun looking over your shoulder all the time.
I, of course, don’t believe this to be true. Hispanics, legal or not, and I would imagine, some black folks don’t have this luxury and don’t believe it to be true either.
Finally, allow me to comment on the demands listed at the end of the post:
Our demands to the politicians are very simple and make perfect sense to us.
Stop making the rich even richer while putting our children in debt while telling us it's necessary to save the economy.
Debt is something “our children” must learn to live with. They will no doubt acquire it themselves through credit cards or mortgages, and it’s not likely that, even without a recession, they will escape through their government.
Stop taxing us to death and then saying you have to raise taxes even more because you failed so miserably at the things you taxed us for in the first place.
This is onerous. Taxes are necessary to continue funding the many services we enjoy on a daily basis, including the Postal Service, the parks system, Medicaid and Social Security. If you want to live on some service-less frontier free from taxes, by all means have at it, but it will be a very hard life of subsistence living. I dare say that if Americans weren’t so anti-tax, our standard of living, our educational system, our technological development and our ability to treat illnesses and find cures would increase exponentially. But we will simply have none of that.
Stop spying on us and stop intruding on our fundamental rights. Give us back habeas corpus and stop even thinking secret tribunals and prisons have any place in America.
Agreed.
Open up the system and let the average citizen participate in how this government is run. Stop putting up barriers to getting on the ballot just so you can stay in office forever and stop keeping any of what you are doing secret from us.
I’m not sure I follow the point here. True, some government offices are secretive, but that’s what the Freedom of Information Act is about. Any resident, not just the media, can file a request to see any public document at any time for any reason, and that reason doesn’t have to be stated. And if the government agency does not relinquish the requested information determined to be part of the public domain, the requester has the right to sue.
Read the bills that you pass and have some kind of idea of what you are doing to us before you do it.
Agreed, but the individual lawmakers should be judged by their consituents on how they are or are not doing in leading. Implying that all lawmakers don’t read the bills they are passing or are not informed is skewed thinking.
It is time for the current crop of failed politicians to get out of the way and let the people run this country again, the way it was originally intended.
Here, let me cite Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier from “Decision in Philadelphia: The Constitutional Convention of 1787″:
According to the theories of the classic political thinkers, there were three basic types of government: the monarchy … the aristocracy … and the democracy, in which the people directly controlled the government. The problem with all of these forms, the theorists said, was that they all tended to run off with themselves: monarchs became despots; aristocracies divided into factions, one which gained ultimate control and formed a tyrannical oligarchy; and democracies degenerated into anarchy, which in turn gave rise to a despot.
I tend to believe that a country totally run by the people, without some means of checks and balances, would fall into disrepair and chaos. Our three-tiered system works to check one branch against the other. The people do, in fact, have a hand in running this country in that the people elected Obama and every other member of Congress to be our representatives. The “people” can’t run this country literally because the “people” don’t know how to run a government and are not qualified. Try putting the state of Texas in Farmer Jones’ hands and see what happens. In fact, the people were never originally intended to run it. That’s a misnomer. The people vote for elected officials, who, in turn, actually run it.
To conclude, there are some good thoughts here but many of them appear to me to be too idealistic to hold muster in this nation or any other. As I’ve said, the missions proposed on this site are a bit vague and would, in fact, likely be approved of by most reason-loving individuals. Details are missing from the “About” page, and of course, this likely sways more folks your way, not because of the accurate information they have about the organization, but because of what they have heard. Adding specific points would, perhaps, subtract people from your numbers, but at least, the movement would know who its true supporters were. After all, if and when you make it more explicit what the movement is about, and the movement still has a well-spring of support, you know you will be on to something.
Thanks very much for giving me to the opportunity to write.
Jeremy Styron
Jeremy Styron is news editor of a weekly newspaper in Northeast Georgia. He has also worked as a night editor for a five-day daily and as a sports writer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in history from Clemson University and enjoys Web design, photography, literature, American and British history and musical performance. More of his writing can be found on his blog at www.jeremystyron.com.
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