Opinion: WWTFFD?
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Today’s installment of the is-the-tea-party-racist story (or non-story, depending on your point of view) focused on the split between the National Tea Party Federation and Sacramento-based Tea Party Express, which refused to oust one of its leaders over an objectionable blog post mocking the NAACP. (For those of you who missed the weeklong kerfuffle, the NAACP adopted a resolution at its national convention accusing the tea party movement of harboring ‘racist elements.’) I thought the Tea Party Express won that rhetorical debate with its hysterical put-down of the federation. Sample quote:
To add to the absurdity of the ‘Federation’ they have also informed us that our members can’t participate in something called their ‘basecamp’ communication network, which makes us think that the individuals involved in the ‘Federation’ spend a bit too much time watching science fiction movies and cartoons.
Anyway, the Tea Party Express spokesman who triggered the controversy, Matt Williams, offered a defense online that seemed to focus more on the NAACP needing to change its name than on Williams’ apparent need for sensitivity training. I won’t quibble with his point about the organization clinging to a long-abandoned racial descriptor. I do, however, find something telling in the following sentences from his apologia:
I have removed the parody letter you came here to read and urge you to fight those who seek to divide us by race, no matter the color of the racist. Our fight is against tyranny and for liberty and to see that this nation continues the lofty goal of equality for all set for us by our founders.
On racial issues, the founders were not, ahem, role models. A not-insignificant number were slave owners, and the ones who weren’t -- including a strong anti-slavery contingent from the Northeast -- were willing to enshrine into the Constitution the idea that slaves amounted to only 3/5ths of a free person. The compromise was for the purposes of taxes and congressional representation, but the symbolism was unmistakable. The founders’ ‘lofty goal of equality’ also seems to have overlooked women.
That’s not to condemn the founders for their pragmatism -- they recognized the southern colonies wouldn’t join the new nation if it outlawed slavery. (For a more vigorous defense, read Daniel Webster’s 1850 speech ‘The Constitution and the Union.’) It’s just to say that Williams, like many folks who don’t like the direction the country seems to be headed, assigns values to the founders that those gentlemen did not possess. That’s an argument for celebrating how the country’s values and sense of decency have evolved over time, rather than pretending that things have gone steadily downhill since the late 18th century.
Updated, Friday 11:30 a.m.: Falling on his sword, Matt Williams announced this morning that he was cutting all ties with the Tea Party Express.The money quote:
This nation is in crisis, and beyond the struggling economy and suffocating deficits, is what I consider to be the most troubling development recently: this nation’s slide towards socialism and abandonment to the fundamental Constitutional principles that have made America great. I do not wish to be used as ammunition against our own cause so to that end I am removing myself from the equation and severing ties to the Tea Party Express.
Yet more evidence to support my proposed Trostky law!
-- Jon Healey
