Posted tagged ‘Tea Party’

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THE RUSE OF BLAMING IDEOLOGY

July 31, 2011

Last Monday the President of the United States blamed the debt ceiling impasse on the so-called Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives. Said Mr. Obama in his nationwide prime time televised address, they can be compared to a scattering of others before them who “held fast to rigid ideologies and who refused to listen to those who disagreed.” Here’s the segment of Mr. Obama’s address from which this quote was taken.

The Tea Party members, for their part, seem to be refusing to go along with a debt limit increase when the quid pro quo is Mr. Obama’s promise that there will be cuts, trust me. The Tea Party apparently asks for promised cuts and also Congressional approval of a balanced budget constitutional amendment which does not become law until it is adopted by 3/4 of the states.

In the view of the President, the rigid ones, the Tea Partyers, won’t be remembered for their ideological stand for less debt or a balanced budget amendment. Instead, according to Mr. Obama, the ones we should and do remember are those, supposedly like him I guess, who “put country above self . . . .” and who “. . . set personal grievances aside for the greater good.” This is nonsensical. The Tea Party has no animosity towards anyone. Most of the Tea Partyers are not even interested in being re-elected if they don’t achieve this goal. They want to balance the books. Plain and simple, their goal is to put this country on track to live within it’s means.

The public is apparently mad at the Tea Party. The public is, according to the polls, clamoring for a “compromise” which I think means simply that they want to go back to life as usual. Stop messing with the credit markets. A plague on both your houses. Stop threatening us with fewer benefits or more taxes. Just stop, stop, stop.

The people calling for compromise now are the same ones as those who called for compromise when Bill Clinton faced down a Republican Congress back in 1995. Clinton faced a Congress which wanted a significant change in the business of government as usual. This Congress, the first Republican Congress in 40 years, passed budgets with significantly lower budget deficits and no tax cuts. President Clinton, however, vetoed several of the budgets they passed and shut down the government before the Congress gave him what he liked. The ones we remember, President Obama says, are those who set aside pride and party to “form a more perfect union.” Mr. Clinton is, however, now widely revered and Mr. Gingrich, the leader of that Congress, is still largely reviled.

If the current situation is a replay of 1995 the Tea Party insurgents are playing the role of the fiscally conservative Republicans who came to Washington to cut the budget that year. The 1995 insurgents were pilloried in the press as being too extreme and in seeking to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. They just wanted to cut too much. Mr. Clinton shut down the government rather than give in to the Republican congress. In 1995 the people called for compromise, they just wanted to be left alone. And they got it and 16 years later we’re much worse off than we were then.

I think that President Clinton beat the 1995 Congress because we the people knew that the Congress was calling for something like austerity. Something like a balanced budget. Something which would change our cushy lives. We the people have reached the same point today only the Congress is divided. And the Tea Party holds a significant power base in only one chamber. We the people, however, want to go back to what we had before. We don’t want to be bothered by budget cuts and other revenue enhancements.

In 2011 when we answer our phones to talk to pollsters we say we want compromise. We act superior and tell them that we just want the politicians to act like adults!!! But we know, in our hearts, that what we really want is just business as usual. We’re happy to shoot the messenger. We wish to eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die!!! In the present case, as it was in 1995, the money we are spending will be paid back, after we die, by our children and grandchildren. We don’t want to cut the budget today or over the next eight years or ever for that matter. We avoid this because it will hurt. That is the bottom line. We the People aren’t really weary of the ‘ideological warfare’ between spenders and savers, we just don’t want to cut up the credit card just yet. We erroneously thought that we were willing to cut up the card when we elected fiscally concerned members in November of 1994 as well as in November of 2010. Now, when it comes to the pointy end of the spear or the sharp edge of the budget axe, we really just prefer not to change.

Unfortunately, either a minority like the Tea Party is going to need to hang tough and make us fix this although they’ll be acting in a throroughly undemocratic way. Or alternatively things will change when someone comes from the outside, like the rating agencies, and forces us to change. But we won’t believe that they will do it until they do do it. Until then we will continue to believe that we can be rich by collecting the printed dollar bills dropped from airplanes and helicopters. In fact if gold itself, all of a sudden, became as commonplace as paper, we couldn’t get rich by picking that up off the ground either. We will only stop when we have no ability to fool ourselves and stop looking to others to pay our bills. This, I think, is the meaning of what the rating agencies are telling us. They, the agencies, are just losing confidence in our willingness to be grown ups, and by that I mean somebody willing to cut back on their current expenses in order to pay the debts they incurred for goods and services previously provided. In the end we’ll get what we deserve unless we decide to support this strange ideology which believes that we need to pay our own bills now and stop putting the hard things off.

Categories: Political Economy, Politics
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THE TEA PARTY AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

May 17, 2011

Why is it so difficult to find good leadership for those who seek less federal government intervention in and control of our lives?

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I think that this difficulty is at least partly due to the mind-set of people who adhere to the viewpoint that America would be a better place with a reduced intervention by all facets of the federal government. Such a person firmly believes in both the efficacy and the primacy of individual action over collective action. Therefore, such a person is motivated by his or her personal wish to be free to engage in those acts they deem worthy and efficacious for themselves as well as for the discharge of their responsibilities to the rest of mankind. They prefer to take responsibility to do things and do not want “government” either to preempt their action or siphon away the resources which they could use to accomplish their own view of the bettement of things. They want to be left alone to act personally and responsibly. They look at governmental intervention and its implied threat of force as disrespectful of the individual rights and abilities of both themselves and their neighbors. They do not seek governmental power to compel actions by other people. They would choose to use that power in very limited and constrained areas of life. What would motivate a believer in such philosophy to seek to enter high government office in the first place?

The very difficulty posed by this question is the fundamental flaw with finding leadership from among those claiming to be adherents to this philosophy. No one who prefers individual action to collective action sees their calling in seeking high office in order to use governmental coercion to achieve their vision. By definition they prefer personal action. Indeed they are suspicious of collective action which can only come into being through the coercive powers of government.

For the reason that a true adherent to this philosophy would seek nothing or nearly nothing from being in charge of the Federal government, only a sense of self-sacrifice is capable of motivating such a person, a believer in the primacy of individual action, to undertake leadership of the federal government’s power. George Washington was such a man and probably the only one in the history of the republic. He showed the spirit of sacrifice in his willingness to serve as the first President. The first few sentences of the First Inaugural Address clearly indicate his preference for individual action and his willingness to sacrifice personally for the benefit of his country as well as his profound humility given the task at hand:

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

AMONG the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years—a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.

Washington himself, a person who had risked everything to obtain independence for his country and liberty for it’s people, clearly felt himself inadequate to the office of first President of the United States. When approached he wanted nothing more than to be left alone to pursue his own private affairs at Mount Vernon. Nevertheless his heeded the call of his country and agreed to serve it once again. Upon leaving office he significantly remarked to his successor, John Adams, “[y]ou are fairly in and I am fairly out, let’s see which one of us will be happiest.”

How different the idea of “government service” has now become. The loftiness of the idea of sacrifice which was Washington’s idea has now been replaced by the idea, famously expressed by the Washington Post’s late columnist, David Broder, that ‘anyone willing to do what it takes to run for the presidency is automatically unfit for the highest office in the land.’ The idea of sacrifice has grown passe and in it’s place, at least according to the venerable and experienced Broder, has arisen the idea of a willingness to be debased in order to achieve presidential power. What would lead a person to debase themselves in this way in order to achieve something which requires, according to Washington, a separation from that which is personally most pleasing, minding to one’s own business? This drive, given the necessity of being debased, is fueled by human pride. This pridefulness is the belief that they are capable of doing great things if only given the reins of presidential power. The power to force others to submit to their will. For instance, President Obama expressed his own ideas about presidential power unabashedly:

This is why finding good and worthy leadership for the “less is more” crowd is so difficult. Lord Acton observed that:

Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; . . . there are excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

He did not, however, explain how to find people to lead a government which values the individual action perpetuated by liberty over the type of collective action perpetuated by the coercion. Such people are the ones to whom the use of power against people who have not harmed them is distasteful even when necessary. This is especially so when the price to be paid for seeking presidential power is personal debasement and that goal, the power, is not sought after for it’s own use but only in order to deny it’s use to another for his time in office.

Given these circumstances it is not surprising that the selection of a candidate must be done with one’s nose held tightly shut and is among a group of politicians who are, because the nature of politics, only partly of the same a mind.

Categories: Politics
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NAACP CALLING TEA PARTIES RACISTS – A MATTER OF WORLDVIEW

July 15, 2010

I believe that the primary point of agreement among Tea Party adherents is a commitment to limited government. Is limited government a racist idea per se? Is it a racist idea in a country with a history of slavery and racism and therefore with much to correct? Is it possible that the desire for limited government is mainly motivated by the racial animus of self identified Tea Partiers? Does the existence of racism in a person or an institution require the existence of racial animus? If so, can it be demonstrated that it is Tea Partiers’ racial animus which causes them to desire limited government? Likewise, if racism requires animus, is it even possible to disprove the charge that the desire for limited government is motivated by racial animus? Motivations being such slippery things, how would you demonstrate this? Therefore, the party which has the burden of proof on the issue of animus and therefore racism, either in the affirmative or negative, will necessarily fail. If the burden is upon the Tea Partiers to prove pure motives then the limited government movement can never be rid of the label “racist.” Limited government Tea Party types must consequently accept the label of racist and understand that they can only overcome it in the eyes of their opponents by renouncing their limited government ideas.

Next question. Is it morally wrong to advocate the definitionally “racist” policy of limited government? If there is no burden of proof on those asserting racial animus as the motivating factor in the limited government movement, then the very term “racist” loses much if not all of its moral opprobium. If racism is not a matter of morality but only of policy, then being accused of racism should lose its painful sting and disqualifying connotation. If there is no evidence of racial animus but only evidence of racially disparate impact of limited government policies, then a Tea Partier can simultaneously be a racist and a good person.

The following exchange between Keith Olbermann and a Princeton professor points out the distinction between racism based upon disparate racial impact and racism based upon racial animus [Unfortunately the link to this Olberman interview with Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell, which perfectly makes my point, has been removed and is no longer on the net, I will continue searching for it. I am adding a link to an Olberman interview with NAACP Ben Jealous who himself, around the last minute and a half of the interview, concedes that there is a difference between Selma/Birmingham racism and the “racism” which is espoused by people other than David Duke.]:

It appears to me that the divide between the NAACP and the Tea Parties is their respective worldviews. A worldview is neither a fact or an opinion but a context or point of view? If someone disagrees with your worldview they are not necessarily, by this fact, liars or morons. Substantial evidence should be required to damn them as morally defective!

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a democratic US Senator from New York, famously observed that:

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

At first blush Moynihan seems right but upon reflection I’m not so sure. To what extent is our worldview based upon accepted and demonstrable facts and to what extent upon our own life experience and our own emotions? Can one worldview be deemed right and the other wrong by application of facts and logic? Certainly the rightness and wrongness of worldviews are in the eyes of the holders of those worldviews since it is so much based upon each personal history and upbringing. The human ability to rationalize all contrary facts is unlimited and this is particularly true when one’s view of himself and his life is intimately affected by his assessment of the factual evidence. Therefore, there are very few statements which are indisputable enough to be referred to as the “facts” in Moynihan’s quote. We must be careful about labelling our opponents as anything other than as opponents.

As to the dominance of worldviews in regard to this issue, this blog returns to a poll reported by Rasmussen on June 24, 2010 in an article titled, 48 Percent See Government Today as a Threat to Individual Rights. It yields the following :

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Adults see the government today as a threat to rights. Thirty-seven percent (37%) hold the opposite view. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

Most Republicans (74%) and unaffiliateds (51%) consider the government to be a threat to individual rights. Most Democrats (64%) regard the government as a protector of rights.

What are we talking about? Is one side or the other lying about how they see the proper role of government? Can both be right and both wrong simultaneously? That this Rasmussen poll gives profound insight into the worldviews of the two sides seems inescapable. There is a fault line that runs through American politics which is based upon the view of whether government is a threat or an ally. This fault line is too deep to overcome by mere factual evidence.

The NAACP perceives Tea Party people as racists because they advocate policies which are not specially advantageous to members of racial minorities but are targeted at making the playing field level for all, a situation which in their worldview is the ultimate in correctness. Generally speaking, however, the average white is economically and institutionally better off than the average black or hispanic so whites begin the game with a head start. That there is “institutional racism” in our world is inescapable given the disparate impacts of existing structures on differently situated people. Therefore in the worldview of the typical black or hispanic citizen this may be viewed as a matter of racism since they start out with less institutional and economic power than most whites. The typical response of the white worldview to the worldview which holds these institutional advantages to be forms of racism is likely to be that their own ancestors started off with nothing when they came to this country and that wasn’t racist, it was just a fact of life which their respective immigrant groups overcame. The alternative worldview holder argues in response that they and their ancestors have been in this country for hundreds of years and that if their race were different they would certainly be economically and institutionally “equal” by now. The reason that they are not equal by now, they conclude, is that racism and its vestiges hold them down. Therefore, they say, they’re still entitled to the head start government intervention gives them. To which the typical Tea Party response is something like, I don’t care what happened hundreds of years ago, just start out on our level playing field and you and your children will get the economic benefits of existing institutions in due course. To do otherwise, they argue, the governmentally instituted advantages for minorities will effectively become permanent which may actually inhibit the disadvantaged from ever “catching up.” And so the argument goes on ad infinitum.

The point of this blog is that NAACP-style “outcomes racism” or “institutional racism” is not actively and causally connected with a demonstrable racial animus. This type of “racism” only requires proof of disparate racial impact for existence not proof of racially based feelings of superiority or inferiority. With this type of “definitional” racism what is really being talked about is political maneuvering for advantage and it cannot be properly considered a moral label. As such “racism” is a label which has everything to do with differences in worldview and little to do with human moral values. Remember that Majority Leader Reid was absolved of a charge of racism by reason of statements about President Obama’s “light skin” and lack of “Negro dialect” essentially because Reid had the right voting record. Apparently no visible moral taint on Reid’s moral character or reputation remains.

Contests between worldviews have always been the province of politics in this country, ever since the federalists and anti federalists squared off over the constitution more than 220 years ago, and so it goes.

Categories: Clash of Worldviews
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