The only proper way for an Objectivist to experience one of the big Tea Party rallies is to carry a big sign with some kind of reference to Ayn Rand or Atlas Shrugged, which guarantees that you will be continually stopped by people wanting to take photos of your sign and giving you a thumbs-up, that you will make contact with other Objectivists in the crowd, and that total strangers will come up to you and gush about what a great book Atlas is. There were the four people wearing matching "Who Is John Galt?" T-shirts, the gaggle of students from a college Objectivist club, the lady with a "Shrug, Atlas, Shrug" banner who came running over to give me a hug, the grandmother who declared she was on page 800 and loved the novel, and on and on. Which is to say that it was a little taste of what life ought to be like every day.
That kind of experience is an end in itself. I couldn't stop smiling.
It will also disarm you of any fundamental skepticism you might have about the Tea Parties by giving you an idea of just how thoroughly the movement is honeycombed with Objectivist sympathizers.
That brings me to a comment from a reader who expressed concern about the number of references to God and religion in the speeches at the event. These were not constant or dominant by any means—the wasn't the Glenn Beck rally by any means—but they were uniformly sprinkled through the event. Yet my experience with the big Tea Party rallies is that the speeches are only part of the event. When I ask fellow Tea Partiers what they like best, they usually talk about the experience of meeting other people and seeing everyone's signs.
The mostly homemade, frequently very creative signs are distinctive to the movement (that, and the Gadsden Flag). They are a mark of the individualistic way in which the Tea Party movement is organized: everyone has their own message to bring to the event. I recommend picking up a copy of Don't Tread on Us, a book that consists entirely of photos of signs from Tea Party rallies across the country. (Mine from a year ago shows up about three quarters of the way through.) This Sunday, there were not as many really good signs, simply due to the lower turnout, but I wanted to mention one that I hadn't seen before and really liked: "Give Me Capitalism or Give Me Death." Did you ever think you would see that on a poster?
But back to the speakers. Yes, there were frequent references to God—combined with even more constant references to liberty, the American Dream, individual rights, and yes, occasionally Ayn Rand. On this issue, what stands out in my mind was one speaker (I didn't catch his name) who made a reference to "freedom for religion, not freedom from religion," which made me grimace—but who then turned around and offered a very prominent recommendation of Atlas Shrugged. So there you have the intellectual mixture of the Tea Party movement. They stand for God and Ayn Rand. Yes, that's a contradiction, because Ayn Rand's philosophy is atheistic. But Ayn Rand is the new element in the combination—and definitely the more powerful element, over the long run.
I am becoming convinced that this will be one of the long-term consequences of the Tea Party movement: that it will help make room for a more secular wing and more secular influence—particularly an Objectivist influence—within the right.
One more note on the speakers. I didn't catch all of the speeches; we tended to get caught up in conversations with other Tea Partiers, or with people asking to have their photographs taken with the "Atlas Will Shrug" sign. But by far the best speech I heard was from Ken Cuccinelli, our very own attorney general down here in Virginia, who talked about his lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare and the "individual mandate" that forces individuals to buy health insurance. Cuccinelli gave a terrific historical example of how, in the period leading up to the Revolutionary War, the American colonists announced a boycott of British goods. Parliament considered legislation forcing us to buy those goods, but they dropped it when parliamentary lawyers advised them that they could not force anyone to buy a specific product. Cuccinelli then concluded that the British Parliament under King George III showed more respect for Americans' rights than the current president and Congress.
Someone at the event asked me who I would like to see running on the Republican ticket for president in 2012. I have decided that Cucinelli is on my short list. Barring that, I hope he will run for Jim Webb's Senate seat.
Now back to the attendance figures for Sunday's rally. Ordinarily, the real practical purpose of these events is to be a head count. The idea is to impress our representatives in Congress with our enormous numbers, sending the message that they better vote the way we want or they won't be re-elected. That was definitely the purpose of last year's rally: to block the health care bill by showing that a million people will rally against it in Washington, representing millions more voters back home.
But last year, we showed our numbers and our representatives ignored us, so we all concluded that the only way to keep them from destroying our freedom is to remove them from office. We're no longer trying to influence them; we're simply resolved to vote them out. We don't need to show our numbers at a rally; we need to show them at the voting booths.
That was the biggest recurring theme in the day's speeches and signs, expressed as "Remember in November," "November Is Coming," or even "I Can See November from My House." (The reference is to the Saturday Night Live parody of Sarah Palin, and it shows the peculiar magic of the Palin phenomenon. Even her missteps are used to stoke support among her fans, as evidenced by the two Palin supporters I saw with T-shirts showing the Obama campaign logo stamped with the word "refudiate"—the world's most famous Twitter typo.)
Not everyone is waiting until November, mind you, and it looks like there may be yet another shakeup in Tuesday's primaries, with a Tea Party radical about to knock out the pro-cap-and-trade establishment Republican in Delaware. (More on that soon.) But everyone in the Tea Party movement is focused with grim determination on November 2.
So the real purpose of the rally over the weekend was for us to enjoy the pageantry and carnival atmosphere, the sense of being with a large group of people who share our belief in the irreplaceable value of liberty. And the purpose was to keep up our spirits and our momentum in preparation for the election, because the slogan is right: what matters is that we Remember in November and wipe out the Democrats for showing such unprecedented contempt for the governed.—RWT
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