LewRockwell.com
November 2, 2010
I don’t trust the Tea Party. I’m distrustful of new movements and remember how for eight years of Bush II, people who once had smaller government views suddenly abandoned those views in blind devotion of the president. I realize that it’s easy to believe in freedom for just a few years. My distrust is aided by the fact that the idea of freedom is a momentarily politically expedient idea to some.
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| For right now, I simply see the Tea Party as a safety valve in our system. Photo: Fibonacci Blue. | |
Each time a new president is elected, the opposition freedom movement crumbles as the party votaries step in line. The hangers-on often follow the power. To some, any president is distasteful. For those who desire to be around power, however, a powerful president from his or her own party is less distasteful than a powerful president from the other party. After eight or more years away from the teat of power, some will take any opportunity to make their way back into the presence of the most powerful people in the world.
The exodus away from ideals and towards power that follows an election is repeated almost cyclically. Having a memory is my main “impediment.” It’s the main reason that I’m not able to think highly of the Tea Party movement. I recognize a man must not be judged based on his words, but instead on his actions. Therefore, I see recent Johnny-come-latelies to “freedom” as untested. If the Tea Party movement lasts a few election cycles, I’ll start to take an interest in them.
Until then, I’m going to simply enjoy watching the political mayhem that takes place in the upcoming months. In a stable society the drama of political shifts can be amusing to watch. That the two parties believe in virtually the same ideas does not detract from the entertainment, because the media doesn’t seem willing to admit that, nor do some Americans, which will make for good manufactured drama. I’m not saying that it’s my job to test anyone and offer a stamp of approval, but it’s good for everyone involved to recognize that freedom is commonly a temporary alluring idea that is often forced to take the backseat to pursuits of power, or influence, or even just a feeling of being in the “in crowd.”
No matter how we try to avoid being pulled into a desire to be on the winning team, it’s sometimes hard to recognize changes in ourselves. I watched a good friend turn into a Bush II devotee a few years back, and who has amazingly lost all recollection of the rage he had for the former president. He was in the Army (on reserve) and angry that a moron had started a war and that that moron regularly used loose political language to talk about that war. The man was a Protestant pastor, proficient in Arabic and well-studied in Islam. He privately preached the idiocy of Bush to me for nine months. Six years later, we got together again and he told me “George Bush is the best thing since sliced bread.” Neither he nor his wife could remember any other opinion ever having come from his mouth. This story is not unique.
I’ve also watched beloved peace activists turn into Obama devotees, forgetting that they once despised anyone who would not preach and act in the most peaceful of ways. I remember specifically the weekend when Obama’s pro-war policy became news. For most of 2008, it only took about 3 clicks and 5 minutes of reading on Obama’s campaign website to see that he had officially zero interest in pulling troops out of the Middle East. They were there to stay. Maybe not 140,000 troops in Iraq for all time, but he’d keep them somewhere in the Middle East. Of course, he had many, many supporters who did not actually know what his stated policies were, nor even what his Senate voting record was like. Some of his supporters were proud peaceniks. Then, over a weekend in the fall of 2008, McCain was, as usual, saying that we must stay the course in Iraq and Obama started saying that the U.S. must stay the course in Afghanistan. His peacenik supporters had loved the man, not the policies, but they never realized that. Once the weekend was over they continued to love the man, not the policies. They were no longer peaceniks.
Sometimes we take ourselves too seriously, which is not that great of a thing when we also tend to be very forgetful of our past beliefs and behaviors. That aspect of human behavior leads me to not take the Tea Party too seriously. (READ MORE HERE)
