Last week, the Wall Street Journal carried an op-ed by Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks, in which they proclaimed that "the tea party movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party, but a hostile takeover of it." Sounds like a good idea to me. But if the Tea Party is going to take over the GOP—or at least exert a strong influence over it—that raises the question of what the Tea Parties stand for, and in what direction they will move the party. Here's what Armey and Kibbe say:
The rebellion's name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who in February 2009 called for a new "tea party" from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. By doing so he reminded all of us that America was founded on the revolutionary principle of citizen participation, citizen activism, and the primacy of the individual over the government. That's the tea party ethos.
Not surprisingly, for an article that proclaims the "primacy of the individual over the government," the authors also show the influence of Ayn Rand, by way of their reference to the "trader principle," a phrase that I believe is unique to her. But what they mean by it is a little difference. It is the principle they name for the basis on which they think the Tea Party movement should be organized. "Our community is built on the Trader Principle: We associate by mutual consent, to further shared goals of restoring fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government."
So the view of the Tea Parties is that of a movement bound together by a specific, and very delimited, set of ideals: "The American values of individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and limited government bind the ranks of our movement."
But there are some on the right who are working to un-bind this movement—or rather, to bind it to their own favored goal. A few months ago, WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah wrote an article demanding that the Tea Party movement place itself in the service of a religious agenda—to which issues of economic freedom must be subordinated. He's proposing his own version of a hostile takeover: a hostile takeover of the Tea Party movement by the Christian Right.
Here is the essence of his argument:
[T]he debate inside the movement is whether it should take on issues other than economic matters....By attempting to limit engagement to "economic issues," what is really being argued is that this is a purely "materialistic" movement—one that is not concerned about the transcendent values that made America the greatest nation on Earth....
God doesn't want us concerned only for our own material welfare. It's the least of His concerns.
While I take a backseat to no one in promoting limited government, free enterprise, low taxes, small government and a vibrant economy, we need to be concerned for the lives of others. We need to be our brother's keeper. We need to recognize sin when we see it. We need to live by God's rules.
There is obviously a certain amount of jealousy at work here among the religious right. The past year and half has seen a huge grassroots political uprising that has brought millions into the streets and promises to shake up state-wide and national elections in November—and none of it is organized around their issues. So they're trying to tell us that we should rise up for the issues they think we really ought to be motivated about, not the ones we actually are motivated about.
But there is also something deeper at work. During the 2008 Republican primaries, I argued that "fusionism"—the philosophy that was supposed to unite the religious and pro-free-market wings of the right—was coming un-fused. Farah's column is a good example of why: the relative indifference of many on the religious right to the importance of economic freedom. To them, concern with taxes and regulations and making money is just "materialistic" and ranks low on God's priority list. Or it is even contradictory to the Bible's supposed injunction that we are "our brother's keepers."
At last September's big Tea Party rally in Washington, DC, I was there carrying a sign that proclaims "Brother, You Ain't My Keeper"—a reply to Barack Obama's argument that we had to vote for ObamaCare because we have a moral obligation to be our brothers' keepers. It is a moral sentiment that Farah apparently agrees with.
And so "fusionism" ends up being something of a one-way street. From the religious right, it was a demand to support and promote their agenda—but when the time came for reciprocity, for the religionists to back the agenda of the pro-free-marketers, they were, well, less than reliable. It was the collapse of support on the religious right, for example, that killed off George Bush's attempt to initiate a semi-quasi-privatization of Social Security back in 2005.
That's not to say that there aren't religious people in the Tea Party movement. In fact, most of the people in the movement are religious believers, and it's probably true that a majority would agree with the big items on the agenda of the religious right. But what makes the difference is that the Tea Party movement is not based on a "fusionist" approach.
The key to the power of the Tea Party movement is the way it makes it possible for religious tea partiers and secular free-marketers, such as myself, to work together without having to compromise our principles. It allows us to work together precisely because we keep the movement focused on economic freedom and avoid the issues on which we disagree—leaving each of us free to be activists on those issues separately (and, sometimes, on opposite sides). So we are not asked to back a religious agenda in exchange for some promise that later on, they will back us on economic freedom. We act on the principle Armey and Kibbe cite: the Trader Principle, on which we come together "by mutual consent" on those issues where we agree.
I've been thinking about all of this recently, not just because of these articles, but because of a recent discussion I was involved with on Facebook among a group of (mostly) Virginia-based Tea Party organizers and supporters. The discussion was touched off when someone linked to an article about how the Tea Parties were carefully staying out of the "gay marriage" controversy. According to the Washington Post:
While many conservative organizations immediately decried a federal judge's decision last week to invalidate the federal ban on recognizing gay marriages, tea party groups have been conspicuously silent on the issue.The silence is by design, activists with the loosely affiliated movement said, because it is held together by an exclusive focus on fiscal matters and its avoidance of divisive social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
This brought some tart comments by more religious folks in the discussion, whose arguments were very much along the lines of Farah's article. Below is what I wrote in response. I've combined three posts into one and taken out a few things that refer to the specific back-and-forth of the argument.
Everyone wants to use the Tea Party movement to advance their own agenda. I'd love to use it to advance mine (which is secularist, by the way)—but that's not how it works.The movement came into being as a reaction to Obama's push toward socialism, not as a reaction to gay marriage or abortion or immigration or any of a number of different issues. All of those issues have been boiling for years and didn't reach any kind of a crisis in 2009. What reached a crisis in 2008-09 was the government spending trillions of dollars we don't have and effectively nationalizing whole industries.
The Tea Party movement can stop the Obama agenda, and if we're very, very lucky, maybe we can even roll back most of the structural damage the Democrats have inflicted on a free economy. We might even instill a little more respect for the idea that there are limits on the power of government.
That's a lot to accomplish, and we're all going to have to be happy with that and pursue the other parts of our agendas separately. Otherwise, we're just going to end up splitting the Tea Party movement and setting up the usual circular firing squad within the right—rather than aiming our fire effectively at the left.
Would you complain that, say, the NRA didn't take a stand on the latest gay marriage ruling? Or have the free marketers complained that pro-life groups didn't take a stand on the financial regulation bill? In both cases, we understand that these are "single issue advocacy" groups, and they have to stay targeted on their message and leave other issues to other groups. The Tea Party movement is a little broader than just a single issue—but not much broader.
Also, berating the "leaders" of the Tea Party movement is a little beside the point, because this is a true, spontaneous, grassroots movement. We "leaders" didn't call it into being and can't give it orders. That's why I agree with Nigel's statement earlier that "We have to stay focused on making the changes that brought us together." I consider that a sign of respect for the Tea Partiers who chose to come out and get active—that I'm not presuming to give them orders or dragoon them into my agenda.
Here is what I think is the crux of the issue: Do you understand that socialism is a moral issue, too? If you think saving the country from government control of our lives is "just about money," you're missing a huge dimension of the story and collapsing morality down to just one issue—not even gay marriage, judging from this thread, but just abortion.
The moral crusade I'm focused on is: does the individual have a right to exist independent of the state—or all we all just faceless cogs of the all-powerful collective? That's a pretty darned big moral issue, and if you agree with us on that issue, then you should support the Tea Parties.
I'm happy to report that the local Tea Party leaders in the discussion agreed, enthusiastically, with this line of argument.
I do think, by the way, that the Tea Party movement will eventually break apart. But if we do it right, the movement will only break apart because it succeeds. If we can achieve the main items on our agenda—stopping the Obama's administration's statism, rolling back the growth of government under his leadership, and reforming the Republican Party to make it more staunchly pro-free-market—then we will, by necessity, go our separate ways. A few years back, a historian wrote a book about the sometimes bitter conflicts between the original Tea Party leaders—the Founding Fathers—in the 1790s. The tagline was: "They fought the British. Then they fought each other." That will be our future, too.
But that's a long way in the future, because we're still fighting the Redcoats, so to speak. I think achieving even a basic Tea Party agenda is quite a tall order and will take us the better part of a decade under the best of circumstances.
I think a good long-term target, a milestone at which we can say that we have really accomplished something and are free to focus on other issues, will be the fundamental reform and privatization of Social Security. If we're concerned about runaway government spending and debt—well, that is precisely what Social Security will require, starting now and just getting worse for the rest of our lives. If we don't tackle that, then there is no hope of achieving smaller government in our lifetimes.
The good news is that we can tackle this issue. I think it is politically possible. A new poll, for example, reveals that public opinion is ripe for an overhaul.
Pessimism over Social Security is at an all-time high as six in ten Americans who don't already receive benefits through the program say they never will, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll. As the program nears its 70th anniversary of implementation, 63 percent of Americans say the program won't last another 70 years.Only about four in ten of current retirees believe Social Security will always be able to pay their full benefits, according to the poll.
It used to be the conventional wisdom that touching Social Security was political suicide. But is that still the case, if the majority of people, of all ages, think the system is doomed anyway?
Privatizing Social Security is a worthy goal—it will be my goal—for what the Tea Parties should do beyond 2012.
In the shorter term, we should focus on this fall's election, and I can also suggest something to focus on between the 2010 election and the Republican primaries for 2012 (presuming that there is such an interval). I linked a while back to a report on the scandal in Bell, California, where local officials were caught raiding the city for extravagant salaries and benefits, living like princes on the backs of their lower-middle-class constituents. Well, it's not limited to California. A recent news article tells of angry voters crashing a local government meeting in Highland Park, Illinois, to complain of a similar system of looting.
Dozens of Highland Park residents confronted their Park District commissioners Thursday night, demanding that they resign for approving a series of exorbitant bonuses, salary increases and pension boosting payouts to top district executives between 2005 and 2008....Werhane, Weiss and Rosenbaum served on the board when former executive director Ralph Volpe, finance director Kenneth Swan, and facilities director David Harris were awarded bonuses that totaled $700,000 during a four-year span.
Additional salary increases during that time have or will provide the three executives with pensions that rival or surpass their total salaries to run the district in 2005. By 2008, Volpe's total compensation topped $435,000. Swan's salary, which was $124,908 in 2005, spiked to $218,372 in 2008. Harris' pay jumped from $135,403 to $339,302 during that time.
Have you looked up the pay and benefits for local officials in your town? I bet you're thinking of it right now, aren't you? The Tea Party movement has been described as a political awakening, and it's amazing what people start to notice once they're awake.
That's why the Tea Party movement needs to stay focused, stay unified around a few key issues, and keep our momentum. We have so much to do, from cleaning up the corruption and looting in local city and county governments, to massive structural reforms such as the privatization of Social Security. We're attempting a hostile takeover of the nation's entire political culture—so we have no effort to waste on hostility toward each other.—RWT
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