Listening To The Tea Party

A July 4th Manifesto

The least surprising thing about David Brat’s victory over Eric Cantor in Virginia was how both established politicians and pundits on either side of the aisle were taken completely by surprise. It was the astonished gasps coming from elected officials and the chattering classes alike, more than Brat’s victory, that demonstrated how profoundly out of touch America’s aristocratic elites are from the citizenry. Real change, it is clear, will not be coming from them any time soon.

Even serious commentators like Ana Marie Cox in respected publications like The Guardian dismissed Brat as a wild-eyed fringe Tea Party candidate and electoral outlier:

“You are the victor in a 65,008-person vote that came down to rural Virginia. And your legacy as a harbinger of things to come is even more in doubt: there is no clean Tea Party electoral narrative at this point in the midterms…”

But Cox missed the point. All politics is local, and Brat’s victory—even among a small electorate in rural Virginia—is a sign that our system, as broken as it is, can sometimes still work, for better or for worse.

Brat didn’t have money, he didn’t have the support of the mainstream Republican Party; he didn’t even have the support of the Tea Party and its patrons the Koch Brothers. He just diligently implemented a strong grassroots campaign, conveying a compelling message that resonated with his community enough to get them to the polls.

Though Brat clearly identified himself as a member of the mainstream Republican Party™, the media was quick to align him with the Tea Party™, as if there was still any meaningful distinction between the two.

We are all too quick to dismiss the David Brats of this world as outliers rather than indicators, but I think it is important to listen to what Brat said in an interview with Fox News immediately after his victory:

“The American people are very interested in real ideas and moving beyond the sound bites, and so right now our political dialogue in the nation is just concerned with this right and left versus debate. And my entire campaign was built along a stump speech that took 20 minutes or so full of serious ideas, and the people resonated with that and they loved that.

…the American people want to pay attention to serious ideas again. Our founding was built by people who were political philosophers, and we need to get back to that and away from this kind of cheap political rhetoric of right and left. I ran on free markets. I don’t know those are right or left. I ran on rule of law, property rights. I ran on immigration. I don’t think those are right and left issues. I think those are just free market, constitutional issues.”

David Brat and I could probably not be more politically or culturally opposite. He credits his victory in no small part to God; I don’t believe in a personal god that intervenes in human affairs. I’m pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-marriage equality and about as progressive and liberal as they come.A

At the same time, Brat and I are both pro-business. But I believe that single-payer universal health care is the best solution to removing the burden on employers to provide and administer health insurance plans and that investing in national infrastructure and strengthening the social safety net would level the playing field for small businesses and independent entrepreneurs by providing opportunity and access to working capital while ameliorating personal risk.

We’re both pro-business but have very different ideas of what that means.

So I agree with David Brat that as a country we have to move beyond a “right vs. left” conversation, even beyond the “big vs. small” government conversation. It is time for a substantive public debate about the fundamental purpose, meaning and implementation of government by representative democracy in the United States. We need to have a conversation about what government is meant to do, and how to design a government that will function effectively and efficiently, providing maximal benefit at reasonable expense.

In his seminal essay “Thoughts on Government” from 1776, founding father John Adams wrote:

“We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow, that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.”

Adams offers that the best form of government is republican (small “r”), meaning a government created according to the philosophy of classical republicanism, based on concepts such as civil society, civic virtue, mixed government and the social contract.

Adams goes on to cite Enlightenment era English philosophers as influences and offers this prescription for the formation of a representative government:

“The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed, in constituting this representative assembly. It should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or, in other words, equal interests among the people should have equal interests in it. Great care should be taken to effect this, and to prevent unfair, partial, and corrupt elections.”

A recent New Yorker profile of potential presidential candidate Ted Cruz described a political position “committed to private property, free markets, and constitutionally limited government” and a “textualist” interpretation of The Constitution that believes “the meaning of the Constitution is limited to the precise terms of the document, and nothing more.”

But think on this for a moment: in 1790 the entire population of the sixteen United States was 3,893,635 people of whom 694,280 were slaves. To put this in perspective, the U.S. Census Bureau projected that on Jan. 1, 2014 the United States population would be 317,297,938, representing an increase of 2,218,622, or 0.7 percent, from New Year’s Day 2013. Even as I write this the population of the United States is 318,892,103 and growing at a net gain of one person every 13 seconds.

How is it, then, that in 2014 with over 300 million people in 50 states and a practically continental geographic footprint, we are still using an operating system for representative democracy that was originally designed for 4 million people in 16 states in 1790? How is the current system possibly capable of creating “in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large” to achieve “the happiness of society”?

It’s as if our government is running on an operating system that is so bloated with bad code that it is barely able to do what it was designed to do, much less carry out the complex operations required to adequately govern a nation in the 21st century. This metaphor is literally, tragically true as we found out in recent testimony about the Veterans Affairs administration, whose scheduling software has not been significantly updated since 1985!

Given the apparent tech-illiteracy of the Supreme Court and many others in government, not to mention the embarrassing debacle that was the rollout of healthcare.gov, it is obvious that no-one currently in power, on either side of the aisle, is going to come up with any kind of imaginative solution to the problem.

“But wait,” I hear you saying, “are you really suggesting we re-write the Constitution?”

Sure, why not? I don’t see things getting much better; in fact I see things getting much, much worse. (Hobby Lobby, anyone?)

Elias Isquith in an essay published on Salon.com offers:

“…the Tea Party’s philosophy of government … has embedded within it an aversion to basic democratic principles that goes far beyond a typical contempt for Washington, politicians and pundits. When [conservative pundit Reihan] Salam writes that Teatopia is founded on a commitment to a “robust federalism” intended to let “different states … offer different visions of the good life” and allow citizens to “vote with their feet” by moving to whichever state best reflects their values, he’s not describing a common aversion to corruption or a distaste for political theater. He’s describing a childish and essentially anti-political belief that a return to an Articles of Confederation-style U.S. order — in which each state is more of a sovereign unto itself than a member of a larger American whole — will produce 50 mini-nations where everyone basically agrees.”

On this, the Tea Party™ and I agree: our current government is broken; Washington, D.C. is hopelessly dysfunctional and horribly corrupt. Isquith writes, “a perception of D.C. as thoroughly corrupt is one of the American electorate’s few genuinely cross-partisan beliefs for good reason.”

But if the Tea Party wants to jettison The Constitution and go back to the Articles of Confederation, I think we should at least prepare a credible counterproposal.

The Republican/Tea Party’s insidiously brilliant maneuver was linking the myth of the “free market” with a “textualist” interpretation of the constitution “limited to the precise terms of the document, and nothing more.” But the nation’s guiding principles, based in the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, are clearly predisposed towards progress; our founders were anything but conservative and would almost certainly repudiate strict literal interpretations and dogmatic adherence to The Constitution as it was written.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“… laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors…”

We must take back our country and correct the course of America away from repressive conservative ideologies. We must look to the words of our founders and navigate our way forward based on their timeless philosophies of Enlightenment, Reason, Progress and Liberty. As for the form of our democratic government, let’s take Adams’ premise of creating “in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large” to achieve “the happiness of society” and work from there.

A government, like a corporation, is an entity created to serve the interests of a group of people in aggregate. A “constitution” is a charter document that describes the mission and constitution of the entity. For-profit corporations are designed to generate and aggregate capital, not-for-profit corporations are designed to aggregate and allocate capital for charitable purposes and government is designed to govern civil life. In a democracy, government is a system that is owned and operated by its constituents, it is the clothing that dresses the body politic; it is the means by which we collectively tend to the public good.

Historically these three structures have served different but complementary functions with a tacit acknowledgement that interdependency would provide checks and balances. But our philanthropic sector has been so subsumed by for-profit corporate ideology it often merely replicates the same inequalities created by the market. And our government has been so corrupted by the flow of money from for-profit corporations, the influence of the financial services industry and religious demagoguery that we can hardly call this country a democracy at all.

American democracy is predicated on the idea of the “sovereignty of the people”. Acknowledging that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, the apparatus of democracy is intended to distribute power as widely and equitably as possible, thus avoiding the concentration of power in the hands of the few and thereby mitigating corruption. But corporate influence on government has so abused the notion of civic virtue that even well intentioned actors are corrupted by the lack of moral accountability in the system. Those who speak out against this corruption are punished and vilified, while criminals go free.

The stakes are enormous: if we don’t fix our government, the Tea Partiers will destroy it, and that’s no joke. If you’re not scared, you should be. Listen to the Tea Party. Take them seriously.

The corporate world loves to talk about how “innovation comes from the edges”. Erik Hersman writes on the Skoll World Forum blog, “Innovation comes from the edges, so it comes as no surprise that innovators are found in the margins. They are the misfits among us, the ones who see and do things differently. They challenge the status quo and the power sources that prop that up, so are generally marginalized as a reflexive and defensive action.”

Nobody likes to think about the Tea Party as innovators, but they are. You know who else was an innovator? Adolph Hitler. I know that sounds like the punch line to a sick joke, but it is actually a useful lens through which to look at radical political change. Hitler was a misfit who saw things and did things differently; he challenged the status quo and the existing power structures; he hacked the system and revolutionized Germany. And he definitely came from the margins.

Hitler had never received more than 37% of the popular vote when Hindenburg appointed him chancellor of Germany and the National Socialist Party had never garnered more than a third of the seats in parliament.

Hitler’s strategy was to cultivate support in traditionally conservative small towns by vilifying Marxism and Social Democrats (socialism) and advocating for “positive Christianity”. He made a clear delineation between “real” Germans and everyone else — foreigners, immigrants and minorities. He appealed to his conservative, rural base by identifying the big cities with elitism, corruption and immorality, calling on the “real” Germans to take back their country. His rhetoric appealed to “the common man” and demonized the bankers and barons, while at the same time he was sponsored or supported by many of Germany’s largest corporations like Thyssen, Krupp, IG Farben and Daimler-Benz.

Sound familiar? It should.

The Koch Brothers aren’t stupid: they own the second largest private company in the United States that generates over $100 billion a year. They looked at the Tea Party and they recognized a good investment when they saw it. Whether they believe in all the racist, xenophobic, religious fundamentalist rhetoric of the Tea Party faithful or not, they definitely have a vested interest in hobbling, if not dismantling, the federal government. And they are expert at building a customer base and marketing products; they know how to protect their interests and those of their friends. As long as the racism, xenophobia and fundamentalism activate the base, get people elected, hobble the federal government and promote their gospel of “free markets”, it’s all money well spent.

But the myth of a “free market” is as faith-based as the idea of an interventionist personal god, as fictional as “intelligent design” and as bullheadedly anti-scientific as climate change denial.

Never in the history of markets, since the early days of global commerce in Venice to the famed Markets of Tenochtitlan, has there ever been an entirely unregulated “free market”. All evidence suggests that there is no such thing as a rational actor, much less an “invisible hand”; we are all subject to availability bias — among many other biases — and prone to ethical failings in our dealings with others. That’s why we have market regulations; that’s why we create governments.

You don’t have to dig too far under the surface to see that the idea of “free markets” as espoused by Ted Cruz, David Brat, the Koch Brothers and their ilk is little more than a mask for the relentless pursuit of insatiable greed, a thin pseudo-philosophical veil for a nihilistic worldview predicated on selfishness, indifference and exploitation. Pope Francis, Thomas Piketty and Karl Marx all agree that “by relying on greed and self-interest, markets degrade humans and encourage our worst impulses” as Sean McElwee has written on Salon.com.

Is that the America you want? Is that what Democracy looks like to you?

My family came to this country as refugees from Eastern Europe with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They escaped generations of grinding poverty and relentless persecution, risked death and an unknown future to reach America’s shores. None of my grandparents went to college; both of my parents did, having been educated in public schools. My father has been a physician for over fifty years; over the course of her career my mother has been a teacher, an accountant, and a lawyer. They provided me with a quality of life and an education that my grandparents could never have imagined. The opportunities that have been available to me are gifts they have given as they have “paid forward” the opportunities given to them, earned by the sacrifices of those that came before.

And just as my parents gave me the opportunities, tools and security to become my own person while staying connected to my heritage, this country gave me the freedom to explore and eventually create the astonishing gift of the life I have today. I am part of a wide community of educated, thoughtful, compassionate and engaged people representing all races, religions, cultures, ages, classes, sexual orientations and genders. This is America; I love it.

It may not be fashionable, but I believe in American Exceptionalism. Not in a jingoistic, chauvinistic way, but in the sense that America was the first, unique experiment in applied democracy; that as citizens of this country we are tasked with continuing this radical exploration of creating a society founded on the principals of liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism and populism.

I agree with the Tea Party on this: our country is headed in the wrong direction and we need to take our country back. We need to take it back from the conservative, racist, misogynist, xenophobic, religious fundamentalist, anti-rational, science-denying thugs and their greedy, corporate sponsors.

The question seems to be, “Do we want to keep fighting a grinding, exhausting, frustrating, never ending war of attrition to hold the forces of conservatism at bay, or do we want to win?” Personally, I want to win. So what does winning look like?

Winning means embracing this founding principle of our country: that the government’s authority rests in popular sovereignty, and the end of that government — its essential purpose — is to communicate “ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree.”

Winning means creating a system where we leverage our scale to aggregate our native productivity and wealth to create maximum social benefit for all, where the accomplishments of free individuals contribute to the greatness of the whole, where the social contract is renewed, the social fabric rewoven. Winning means a collective effort to mitigate the precarious circumstances of the most vulnerable among us for the benefit of the greater society; where every citizen can move about the country freely and securely, without fear of being subjected to random, brutal violence by deranged gunmen. Or police.

Winning means a country where everyone has access to health care, education and opportunity, where hard work is rewarded and the game is not rigged, where civic virtue trumps selfishness, where neighborliness trumps prejudice, where fellowship trumps exclusion.

Above all else, winning means taking a lesson from the Reagan/Thatcher Neoliberal playbook and so utterly and completely transforming the way people think about government and society that other frameworks seem inconceivable.

Winning means not only transforming government, but transforming hearts and minds, transforming the way people see themselves and each other — not as merely consumers or purveyors of goods and services, but as human beings, as constituent parts of a greater society; citizens with unalienable rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

What will it take to win? A change in strategy.

Every day I am inundated with emails from Barack Obama, Al Franken, David Plouffe, DNC HQ, and a host of other massive, well-funded Democratic, liberal, progressive organizations in Washington, D.C. asking me to send them money to help them fight this or that (almost always fighting against something, almost never fighting for something). Instead of always asking us for money to help you do a job that you don’t actually seem willing to do — or can’t do because of the partisan gridlock in Washington — why don’t you and your rich friends give us money to get things done on the ground?

Why not take a tip from the Koch Brothers and spend your money activating the base around real ideas, building values-based partnerships and motivating voters as part of a community, not just wallets? How about investing your money in grassroots political and cultural organizations, connectors and entrepreneurial individuals sympathetic to progressive causes to help change hearts and minds on the ground? Why not invest in supporting existing real world social networks that can help diffuse progressive philosophy in non-confrontational, non-oppositional ways?

Is the problem geographic distribution and gerrymandering that creates disproportionate representation of conservatives in Washington, D.C.? Why not start an Economic Development and Progress Corps and fund the relocation of industrious young people with progressive values into those red areas? Provide them with low-interest loans to buy houses, resources to start up new businesses, a peer network for knowledge and resource sharing and tools for community engagement?

According to Pew Research, By 2050 nearly one in five Americans will be immigrants — though all but the Native Americans were immigrants at some point — and the individuals currently described as “white” will become a minority (47%). Our society is inevitably changing — what are we doing to accommodate or prepare for those changes? 2050 is a long way off and a lot of irreparable damage can be done between now and then.

Where are the Koch Brothers of the Left, willing to invest in building a Tea Party For Progress to create change on the ground, in our communities and across the country?

What a profound and unnecessary tragedy it will be if the Tea Party’s nihilistic, government-hating ideology becomes so pervasive that otherwise capable people give up entirely on government as an idea, much less an organizational system for society, only to see it replaced by corporate rule under the guise of the “free market” until the commodification and objectification of all human experience and interaction is complete.

As I may have mentioned earlier, it is highly unlikely that the people currently in power will willingly cede that power, nor are they likely to introduce any truly imaginative, inventive structural changes to the design and implementation of democracy in America.

Ultimately restructuring American government to optimize representative democracy in the 21st Century is a system design challenge. And it has never been more urgent. I don’t know what an agile, resilient, transparent system for 21st Century democracy looks like, but I know this country is filled with creative, imaginative people who could figure this out — and they’re not in Washington, D.C.

It seems impossible, even unimaginable, that the world could be so radically different. But that was how it looked in June of 1776 when five individuals first met to draft the Declaration of Independence and articulate the vision for this great experiment in applied democracy.

The founders of this country were not politicians, they were polymaths: philosophers, lawyers, businessmen, farmers, soldiers, writers, artisans and inventors.

If there was ever an auspicious moment for re-imagining America, this is it. We are experiencing an unprecedented amount of creative and entrepreneurial energy that is yearning to be set loose. It is easy to see the fantastic efflorescence of creativity, industriousness and entrepreneurial spirit coming out of Silicon Valley. What is harder to see — because it is everywhere — is the industrious creative activity all around us.

A recent study by the NEA estimates that 40% of Americans are involved in some kind of art making, other studies suggest that for every 1 “professional” artist there are 30 “non-professional” artists engaging in creative pursuits with no expectation of making a living from them. America is more creative, diverse, dynamic, adventurous and open to change than any time in the past 50 years.
With such limitless possibility in front of us, waiting only for the popular will to invest in nation building at home, are we really willing to squander another generation of American creativity and industry by bankrupting the nation through the folly of foreign interventions only to line the pockets of arms dealers, oilmen and profiteers?

More tragic than a Tea Party Takeover would be if we saw it coming and did nothing. If all this dynamic creative energy and can-do spirit were to be squandered on the merely mundane and mercantile in the service of individual greed, when the great work of radically re-imagining democracy in America is at hand. We have a choice of ushering in a new Age of Enlightenment and Reason, or reverting wholly to the darkness of feudalism, superstition and brutality.

What happens next is up to us.