IS THE "TEA PARTY" REALLY A POPULIST MOVEMENT?

and the robber barons were really robin hoods...

If you dident agree with their agenda they had their goons blow your head off.

Yeah, it was the free market that enabled labor laws and modern working conditions, not the hard work of hundreds of thousands of people. And it just coincidentally happened right when they instituted regulations on industry.



Cycloptichorn

Al Sharpton is having his own rally on Saturday, "Reclaiming the Dream" starting at Dunbar High School and marching to the National Mall.

I'm sure the two rallies can share the space...

So which Rally will better invoke the Spirit of MLK on Saturday? Tune into Fox news and find out! Good luck even hearing Al Sharpton even has a rally on Fox News. I bet Fox will gladly use footage of black rally members from his march and pretend to innocently mistake them for Tea Party members.

A few too many
Rallies.
Tea Party Foul

A friend, who has a doctorate in American history (I hear okie's wheels turning as he puts together his knee jerk response to her, saying that he knows more than she does) asked me to pass this essay along.

Here, she invites glenn beck to take out his poison chalk:

Beck v. King?

Since your choice of date begs the comparison, let’s start with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, this Saturday is the anniversary of the occasion during which King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The real inheritors of the Civil Rights Movement are quick to point out that you have no right to his day, much less his legacy. The event in question, however, was not “I Have a Dream Day” but the March on Washington (write that down, please: “March on Washington”). It was originally billed a march “for jobs and freedom,” but became an opportunity instead to pressure Congress to pass the Kennedy administration’s recently introduced civil rights legislation that would, among other things, outlaw de jure segregation in the South. The main organizer of the march was a union man, A. Philip Randolph, and he had proposed the march for the first time in 1941 (write down “union” please). The 1941 march was intended to protest racial discrimination in the defense industries and segregation in the armed forces (ya know, at the time when we were fighting actual Nazis, not the bugaboos of your fun-house-mirror history).

Why A. Philip Randolph matters to you: Comparisons of you to Dr. King distort not only his legacy but also the legacy of the Movement as a whole. Neither marches were proposed as mere platforms for solitary ideologues. The 1963 March emerged from the coordinated efforts of dozens, if not hundreds, of activist, civil and religious organizations. (While sometimes led by them, social movements are neither made nor sustained by ideologues. Mobs, on the other hand, quite often are.) Neither marches were funded by large think-tanks or multi-media conglomerates.

You are not holding a social protest this weekend; you are holding a rally for your fans, your ego, and the large corporations who are the real beneficiaries of your efforts, not the ordinary (white) Americans for whom you claim to speak. While you are certainly no match for Dr. King—a sincere spiritual leader who opposed racism, war and poverty—the true insult to this history is that you mistake your fans for activists and organizers.

“Wake Up America!’

Back to our lesson: Among those in attendance at the 1963 March on Washington was the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “Snick”) which came into existence to coordinate the sit-ins that spread across the South like wildfire in 1960. Then chairman of this radically egalitarian organization was John Lewis, a participant in both the sit-ins and Freedom Rides. He was slated to deliver the most strident speech of the day, entitled “Wake Up America!” SNCC organizers, including Lewis, found the Kennedy administration’s bill inadequate on multiple fronts. They argued that it would not be enforced in the South given white supremacists’ lock on Southern politics, courts and law enforcement, that it would not protect civil rights workers from violence, and that it did not address issues of economic justice and poverty. Lewis’s proposed conclusion to the speech captures SNCC’s growing militancy and impatience: “We will march through the South, through the Heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own ‘scorched earth’ policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground—nonviolently.”

Why John Lewis Matters to You: Georgia Congressman John Lewis’s life’s work—both then and since—demonstrates that that proposed closing to the speech was rhetorical flair, not a literal threat to burn down the white South. The other Movement leaders around him, however, recognized how easily that could be read otherwise, and, fearful of violence in their name, demanded its removal. That demonstrates sincerity of leadership and purpose. It recognizes that incendiary language can motivate the fringe of any group (regardless of partisanship or ideological bent) to commit heinous acts against innocent people, and, in the process, thus threaten the moral mandate of the movement as a whole. In contrast, the mandate of your so-called “movement” is neither morality nor justice, but vengeance and race-baiting. Your choice of “Restore” implies that you’re taking (white) America back from the various people you and your megaphoned brethren have repeatedly attacked since Obama took office—black people, Mexican immigrants, and now all Muslims. You are courting domestic terrorism for political gain and profit.

That means that your true predecessor is Alabama Governor George Wallace, not Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So, Glenn, write these four names on your chalkboard: Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. These girls were killed in the basement of Birmingham’s 16th St. Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, shortly before their Sunday school class was to begin. True, the Klan planted the bomb. But the blood was ever on Wallace’s hands.

Oppression v. Victimization

Another Movement anniversary also approaches. Fannie Lou Hamer, a timekeeper on a Mississippi plantation, tried to register to vote at a courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi on August 31, 1962. The white plantation owner threw her off the land and shortly thereafter she formally joined the Movement. In June of 1963 she and other activists were arrested for attempting to use a whites-only restaurant and washroom at a bus station in Winona, Mississippi. They were arrested, taken to the county jail, and then summarily beaten and sexually assaulted by white police. The Movement is a sickening chronicle of pervasive white violence, much of it committed by white police—of mass arrests, beatings, church burnings, of children being hosed down sidewalks, of pieces of unidentified black bodies being found in rivers, of endless small humiliations—ketchup over one’s head at a lunch counter—to the unimaginably large but very real fear of lynching. In the face of this Movement activists trained one another to remain peaceful and respectful; they also quelled their fears by singing songs together, songs that had sustained their slave ancestors. This Movement culture undergirded the myriad campaigns sprouting across the nation—food drives, creating schools, activist training camps, voter registration drives, the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, letter writing campaigns, Freedom Summer, fundraising efforts, legislative proposals, legal battles, targeted boycotts at public and private facilities, and so on.

Why Fannie Lou Hamer Matters to You: Glenn, you and your beloved Tea Partiers love to claim yourselves oppressed. But you are actually the victims of your own delusions. Who has been fired, arrested, beaten, hosed down the street, bitten by police dogs, or murdered since your “Movement” began? Aside from public temper tantrums with misspelled signs, for what and against whom are your “protests?” Consider, for example, the origins of the “Tea Party.” It began in opposition to raised taxes at a time when all but the rich got a tax cut. Gun rallies—on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing no less—have occurred when no gun control legislation is pending. Your followers persist in demonstrably and laughably false claims, including my two favorites: that our Christian President who was raised by a white mother and grandmother is really a closeted Muslim who hates white people and that the mandated purchase of private insurance is really the government gearing up to gas grandma. If Movement organizers were truly your predecessors, they would have arrived at the 1963 March on Washington spitting on white people and carrying signs that read, “Stop Race Mixing.”

You also claim to be opposed to foreign terrorists as you criminalize 1.4 billion Muslims. Glenn, the Civil Rights Movement displayed the barbarity of Southern white racism to the world in order to end it. In contrast, you write Al Qaeda’s propaganda for them by begging for a Clash of Civilizations.

Hall High School

One last story. Many would recognize Little Rock, Arkansas’s Central High School as a key location in Movement history. Dwight Eisenhower, after all, sent troops to the school in the fall of 1957 to ensure that nine black children could enter after Governor Orval Faubus defied the court order to integrate. Many remember the white mobs outside the school who accosted lone student Elizabeth Eckford. Few remember Hall High School.

Hall High School was the newly built school in the wealthy white neighborhood in Little Rock, intended as a place of refuge for wealthy white students upon Central’s eventual integration. While this in no way excuses the rabidity of white resistance in Little Rock, what’s forgotten from the Little Rock tale (and subsequent stories about the racial roots of parochial schools and vouchers) is that, for many white middle class and working class parents, integration meant downward mobility for their children, as the white rich kids took the teachers, the resources and the prestige with them. Orval Faubus, and other white racial demagogues like him, redirected these white folks’ class resentments using their hatred of black people.


Why Hall High Matters to You: This should be obvious: it’s the same as it ever was. Those in the Tea Party do have real grievances that are being misdiagnosed and then redirected onto race. The misdiagnosis: The closest you and your followers have come to any coherent ideology is anti-government libertarianism— the reigning ideology inside the beltway since Reagan (including Clinton) and outside the beltway (thus far) from the bats*** crazy Randians. The suffering of your fans is very real, but it is the product of free market ideology and the policies (or a-policies or anti-policies) that have flowed from it: the destruction and dissolution of unions, the export of our manufacturing sector overseas, the cuts to social services, the privatization of public jobs, and the wholesale collapse of government as a regulatory check on corporate malfeasance and greed. All of these changes have resulted from the increasing corporate dominance of our media, our political campaign process, the legislative process and the courts. Tea Partiers do not, and perhaps forever will not, recognize that all of these changes have also disproportionately affected people of color. Instead, they line up behind the beneficiaries of these changes, believing that those more vulnerable than them are to blame for their suffering.

So, it’s time to stop calling you and your ilk a movement. The end result here is that your fans will support more political candidates who preach that the government cannot work and cannot be trusted and will prove themselves right upon taking office by further dismantling it. As that unfolds, your followers will undoubtedly continue to decry fascism and theocracy as they support turning the U.S. into precisely both. This is the tragedy of things—that every day is opposite day.

And, that, at last, brings me to my final point.

You’re Brilliant, Glenn Beck

The above history lesson operates on the assumption that you have been sincere in your choice of date. And this is where credit is due to you and where many of your detractors get things wrong. While I think you a fool, and a very dangerous one at that, you and your talk-radio/Fox Blowhard Brigade are brilliant propagandists. White conservative claims to King’s legacy are pure cynicism, providing both political fuel and political cover.

Your adversaries consistently operate within the terms you set for a given debate, including reducing this to being just about Dr. King himself instead of the Movement of which he was a part. You rightly outrage those who are the legitimate beneficiaries of the Movement, particularly contemporary civil rights organizations and black political actors who continue the struggle against white racism. Yet, any and all black outrage serves as simple and immediate proof of your collective white victimization. Anyone who cries, “How Dare You Claim Yourself King’s Legacy!?!” reinforces your narrative that you are now the oppressed racial group in America, that your freedoms are under attack, and that therefore Dr. King belongs to you because he stood for “colorblindness.” Thus, at the same time that progressive outrage fuels your devotees, it also insulates them from charges of racism. The outrage is a, if not the, key ingredient in your recipe of misplaced self-righteousness. That is the point that your adversaries too often miss; these kinds of claims to Dr. King afford white demagogues like you the opportunity to repackage age-old racist ideas as some would-be opposition to the white racism of the Movement era itself. (Yes, even open racists among you will often claim a break with the racists of the past.)

Lastly, the ceaseless framing of “Is this story really about racism?” –in which your adversaries willfully participate instead of challenging the assumptions of the question itself—can occupy hours and hours of air time, distracting your followers from learning about the real causes of the economic and environmental catastrophes unfolding around them. Amidst the renewed bluster with each successive news story, you win, whether sincere or not. That political brilliance renders matters of the historical record (as, say, what appears above) besides the point. So bravo to you, because your adversaries—who are the legitimate heirs to Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement—play right into your hands.

Dr. Laura

So, Glenn Beck, here endeth the lesson. And, like most history lessons, it includes a homework assignment. Your chalkboard should have some arrows connecting The March on Washington to some Movement heroes and finally to the often forgotten Hall High. Please draw a final arrow to Dr. Laura Schlesinger. In light of recent events, would she be an apt addition to your “Restore America” charade? Why or why not?

I’ll give you time to think on it; you have a busy weekend ahead. Happy March on Washington Day.

YEah, those robber barons had the milk of human kindness running through their veins. Too bad it was curdled.

This is exactly how our economy did work in the period of roughly 1865-1935. Most people wouldn't understand this, but Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was thought of as a radical in his day, and was the most despised member of the Republican Party by the powers that were in the Party. (Hell, most Americans don't even know that Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican.) Roosevelt's first initiative in the New York assembly after he went up to Albany in 1881 was a measure to break up Jay Gould's monopoly of the elevated railways in New York City, because he thought it should be the ideal of the Republican Party to always fight for the working man. His "trust buster" persona was a response to the same attitude that the working class needed to be protected from the greed, rapacity and cupidity of the robber barons.

A century ago and more, America looked just like China does today in terms of capitalist exploitation. It is thanks largely to "radicals" in the Republican Party such as Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Henry Cabot Lodge and William Howard Taft that the concept of regulating corporate power and activities to the benefit of the majority of citizens is due.

You just make that **** up as you go along, don't you?

I doubt that he makes it up. It is, after all, standard free market theory. Milton Friedman wrote & said the equivalent many times.

You aren't or shouldn't be that stupid, O'George. Americans did not live in poverty throughout the 19th century. As i said, he must make that **** up as he goes along. If Milton Friedman is claiming that Americans were impoverished throughout the 19th century, then he's making that **** up as he goes along.

I wonder if those here whining about the Koch brothers and Robert Murdoch would be content applying the same "logic" to the motives of George Soros and the owners/managers of the liberal press.

On that element of the argument we generally agree.

Then he was wrong as well. You have to be totally ignorant of the historical struggles of the Labor movement in this country to insist that better worker conditions were brought about by anything but government regulations. The 40-hour work week and child labor laws were not inventions of the Free Market, and neither were consumer protection laws.

Cycloptichorn

Well, you either accept both criticisms as valid, or neither, wouldn't you agree?

Cycloptichorn

I think Milton would have argued that the laws in question came only after the supply of labor became more nearly equal to demand, and in effect made legal requirements of conditions the labor market was also demanding.

I don't think this was true in every case. However, If you believe that without child labor laws or Federally mandated 40 hour weeks we would have materially different labor conditions today, then you too have a very substantial burden of proof that you have not met.

It depends on what you are calling "the liberal press". A press that reports the news and appears to do so with little bias isn't the liberal press. It is the press working the way it is supposed to work.

Not necessarily. It depends on the facts. However It is likely that both groups are pursuing their own interests and advancing policies they believe are beneficial. On the face of it anyone who is suggesting that the motives of one are belign and the other necessarily bad is probably not worth listening to.

Nope - you're asking me to prove a hypothetical situation. There's no way to do that. There's no burden of proof on me to prove a hypothetical situation wrong. Instead, the opposite is true - you and Nero are the ones claiming that it was not government regulations which limited businesses, but instead the Free market and an empowered labor force which had grown in size. So, provide proof that what you say is true.

Instead I will rest on the well-established body of history which shows that it was government regulations that ended the worst practices of Big Businesses of the time, and not any sort of free-market action. Unless you are twisting the phrase 'free market' to mean something that it doesn't mean, that is.

Cycloptichorn

What does belign mean, O'George?

I don't think that's true. If you compare the real incomes of late-19th-century Americans with today's poverty line, you would find that their vast majority fell below it. In that sense, 19th-century Americans were poor. Granted, most 19th-century Americans didn't feel poor, because people tend to judge their own poverty by comparing their own incomes with their neighbors'. In those relative terms, if everyone's poor, nobody is. But that's irrelevant in comparing incomes across time.