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Rob Kailey is a working schmuck with no ties or affiliations to any governmental or political organizations, save those of sympathy.
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Wed Apr 28, 2010 at 06:59:27 AM MST
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| So, the other day in the post summarizing folks' views about Arizona's immigration law, I asked - rhetorically - why Tea Partiers aren't up in arms over that state's obvious disregard for the Constitution and its infringement of basic liberties. But, really, it was a rhetorical question, wasn't it? I mean, we all knew Tea Partiers wouldn't oppose the law - in fact, I'm fairly certain most of 'them support the bill, right?
I linked to a Jamelle Bowie post that said immigration law doesn't affect the demographic group that composes the Tea Party "movement," but it isn't just that these folks only fight for the "liberties" that primarily affect them, it's also that the use of the words "freedom" and "liberty" are code words for a conservative political agenda, not actual belief in, you know, liberty or freedom. |
| Jay Stevens :: I don't think that word means what you think it does |
The Democratic Strategist:
Consider that the proponents of right-wing "freedom" are not even slightly inclined to back elements of a libertarian agenda that conflict with conservative identity politics. When John Boehner says "most importantly, let's allow freedom to flourish" he's not suggesting we should open our borders to more immigrants or drop the vestigial Selective Service system or allow gay couples to marry or let Latin American countries sell us more sugar or reduce military expenditures. Indeed, the very same critics who castigate Obama for limiting Americans' freedom also accuse him of being insufficiently eager to torture people, unduly hesitant to detain suspects without trial, and too eager to take the side of black professors subject to police harassment for the crime of trying to enter their own home.
Which is just to say that Boehner is a conservative. He sides with the military, with law enforcement, with the business establishment, and with the dominant ethno-cultural group in the country. In the United States of America, people who adhere to these values like to talk about "freedom" but this has nothing in particular to do with any real ideas about human liberty.
Back in September of 1960, the leading lights of the nascent conservative movement met in Sharon, Connecticut to found Young Americans for Freedom and they proclaimed that "foremost among the transcendent values is the individual's use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force." A naive person might read that and conclude that William F Buckley, Jr was a strong proponent of federal anti-lynching legislation and other civil rights laws since, clearly, it was African-Americans in the Jim Crow South who were most subject to "restrictions of arbitrary force" and general lack of freedom. In the real world, a couple of lines down the Sharon Statement is talking about state's rights, "the genius of the Constitution - the division of powers - is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government." In 1962, YAF gave its Freedom Award to none other than Strom Thurmond, and in 1964 they helped organize the GOP nomination victory of Barry Goldwater, spearheading the party's turn away from its historic support of liberty for black people. Somewhat similarly, the far-right parties in the Netherlands and Austria are both called "Freedom Party."
Of course, this is so obvious and we knew it all along. The Tea Party movement isn't "moderate" or "centrist." It's not even new, it's the extremist conservative base with all its warts bubbling to the surface under a Democratic presidency.
What's unusual here, and why we have to even talk about it, is that the press has saturated our newspapers and televisions sets with images of this "movement" as if it's somehow a new and spontaneous outburst of the "people." |
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