Fabius Maximus asks if our elites are fiddling while Rome burns. He makes the point that Democrats are being irresponsible and Republicans are being irrelevant. It's hard to argue that as the $410B omnibus passes and yet another stimulus is considered (along with Card Check, Universal Health Care, and the Freedom of Choice Act). In following his rules, I left only a 250 word comment, but wanted to flesh it out further here. I'm not the voice for the Tea Party folks Fabius sees as less than helpful, but I am a voice, simply by virtue of knowing why I went, and will continue to go. I'm a voice with a very good grounding in the history of the West, and I say this has happened before.
I know a lot of people look at the tea parties and see listless conservatives or anti-spending libertarians, but there's something else brewing (no pun intended). Those at the tea parties are self-reliant. That's the ethos. The nature of these protests may change, but right now, it's finding like minds and values. If government burns down Western Civilization, or if our excesses have already set that in motion, it's going to be people like those at the tea party who are best prepared to rise from the ashes. Sure some people and groups are trying to add themselves to the movement and speak for it, but right now, it's just an outpouring of emotion. If this is just a blip in economic growth, the tea parties will fade out, with perhaps a minor cleansing of the pols similar to 1994.
Look deeper. These gatherings are about gaining a voice and organization. Anyone who has built an online community knows building the community is a first step. Connections are made, leaders are discovered and uncovered, arguments settled on, and when the opportunity is ripe, the community acts, gaining adherents and eventually labeled a mass movement. Can you point to anything in the last 100 years similar to this? Nationwide protests from the productive, and growing larger each time? What are the tea party protestors asking for? Fiscal sanity. Less intervention. That's a pretty unique protest. Not many people in world history bother to get together to demand to be left alone. Pundits like to see the Obama victory as a fundamental change. Hogwash. This is very different than the election of Obama, which was still a close victory in a divided nation. The mushy middle is not Leftist, and as the facts become apparent in the next two years, the American people will either vote for more freedom or more (perceived) security in 2010 and beyond.
What we are seeing is not that uncommon in world history. Bureaucratic elites and their enablers are seeking to wrest power from economic elites. Using the power of currency and regulation, they are succeeding in creating a large number of citizens on the dole (some by necessity, some by choice).
In reaction, the self-reliant (think yeoman farmers, kulaks, southern rebels, rural nobles, merchants) stand up and say no more. The methods to get there may be masked by words like tea party and tools like Facebook, but the end result is the same. A showdown between the groups occurs - first by ballot, and then by violence (either by revolution or repression). If the self-reliant fail, the economic elites will fall in line behind the bureaucrats to save their fortunes, and the result will either be a succession of crises (marked by greater authoritarian control and the death of the republic) until the civilization falls, or a perceived rebirth of "values," which lasts a generation until the entrenched interests once again seek to take control. And the dance goes on.
The real question is whether the real wealth (as opposed to the money wealth) we've built up as a society is great enough to alter the track past civilizations have followed. Civil war doesn't occur from 3% rises in the marginal rate and a death tax. It occurs when an entire generation is robbed of the opportunity to create wealth and enough of the young see no future. It's difficult to say from where we stand that the long ride of the republic is over. Certainly no one at shopping malls on the weekends is saying that, but maybe that's the last gasp of the credit bubble and we're all fooling ourselves.
And if we are doomed, we could still get lucky. Maybe we find a cheap and plentiful source of energy. Maybe we develop a cheap source of labor through robotics that alters our notions of work and the economy. Maybe we have so much already stored up that the nation can't really conceive of revolution when we're living better than any other human, ever - and that includes most of our poor. It could be that the burden of a technical civilization is an entrenched bureaucracy, and the need for new political systems will change our definitions of liberal and conservative.
We're going to find out. One thing's for sure. The type of person showing up at the tea party I attended knows all of this, and doesn't have much use for chattering classes in Washington eager to hold onto their titles in the minor nobility. We've heard that story, and we're not impressed.
My thoughts on the Tea Party are coalescing into an action plan. We need to organize and educate and toss 100 or so Congressman out on their rumps in the 2010 election. That's a lot of folks, but anything less is really just cosmetic. In Missouri, more Kit Bond porkers, Claire McCaskill tax dodgers and incumbent Congressman winning with over 60% of the vote every year isn't representative democracy. We start in this state clearing out the cache by refreshing Congress. Democrat and Republican, we need new blood in Washington, and we need it in large enough numbers to shake up the old socialist bulls, the corrupt Appropriations piglets, and the gerrymandered power of the least solvent of our states.
It won't be won with social conservatism, but it's not worth winning without a commitment to rolling back the power of the federal government in all areas. If we can't achieve that, then we ought to quit calling ourselves free citizens, and accept our chains. That is what is before us. Do we want freedom as a nation? Are we willing to engage in the political process to safeguard that freedom? Are you, individually, willing to do what it takes to persuade your friends and family? Will you educate yourself? Will you engage in a meaningful manner?
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