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A Further Perspective
Goldilocks at the Tea Party
Always too hot or too cold.
The people who loathe the Tea Party movement most are progressive observers with a Goldilocks problem. Because Republicans pay at least lip service to the idea of smaller government, they have the luxury of treating Tea Party sympathizers with the cautious good will that smart pedestrians extend to strange dogs. Progressives, by contrast, want to increase the scope of “public service,” and this motivation puts them at odds with anyone trying to pull the Constitution out of the mothballs into which all three branches of government have shoved it, beginning perhaps with Roe v. Wade and extending at least through Obamacare. Enter Goldilocks: Remember how the little blonde trespasser passed judgment on food and furniture that was not her own? Progressives do the same thing when talking or writing about convictions for which they have little sympathy and even less understanding.
Some of us appreciate the checks and balances devised by thinkers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Other people claim not to understand what at least one writer calls “conservatives’ fetish for the Founding Fathers.”
Fetish is a revealing noun that more commonly keeps company with charms and sexual proclivities than with the founders of our republic, but any writer can have a bad day in the vocabulary bin, so let’s bracket objections to curious word and look at the argument advanced by Salon contributor Gabriel Winant as though it were serious: In the 1790s, Winant suggests, capitalism required government strong enough to “drag people into the free market,” or they might have been content to scratch out a living as farmers and craftsmen who valued their privacy more than their bank balances. That shaky thesis ignores large numbers of merchants in colonial Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, but it’s just the setup for Winant’s main complaint, which is that only white Protestant men in the Founding era ever had a chance to grab for the brass ring. To him, that shortcoming means game, set, and match for the progressive point of view, roughly paraphrased as “what’s the point of looking for instruction from dead bigots whose minimally positive legacy has been obscured by generations of conservative blather?”
But Winant’s got the wrong game going, which is why I’m wearing a catcher’s mitt and wondering whether he can throw a pitch over the plate. The Salon contributor thinks that because the Articles of Confederation were unworkable and the Constitution did not rule out slavery, the idea of limited government is bunk. My high school Latin teacher would have called that a non sequitur. My history teacher would have laughed. Yet Winant writes with hilariously misplaced confidence that we who disagree with him suffer from “uninformed nostalgia for the 1790s as a mythical time when we were a nation of Ayn Rand characters, all six-foot-five, straight-backed, square-jawed, and buying and selling free of encumbrance.” One can only grin at the multitude of Founding Fathers and mothers (James Madison, Henry Knox, Abigail Adams, and so on) who come nowhere near that lazy description.
Anything a student of American history might say to Winant is mere prequel to the reactions from latter-day Goldilocks impersonators who still cannot fathom how a Republican won the so-called “Kennedy seat” in Massachusetts, why Rand Paul cruised to victory in Kentucky, or when party-switching porkmeister Arlen Specter lost in Pennsylvania.
The Goldilocks response comes (conveniently) in three different ways. Progressives who say “this porridge is too hot” think the Tea Party is tainted by racism, beholden to special interests, and committed to nothing nobler than saying no.
Progressives who say “this porridge is too cold” think the Tea Party movement incubates anti-government sentiment, different in degree but not in kind from what motivated Tim McVeigh to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City back when the only tea party anyone talked about involved overtaxed subjects of King George III dumping Earl Gray and Oolong into Boston Harbor. For the moment, these Goldilocks are content to paint the Tea Party as calculating and cynical, but they hope for the sake of their own moral superiority that a Tea Party rally will someday, somewhere turn violent.
The third progressive reaction to the Tea Party movement (“this porridge is just right”) is less common but funnier than the other two.
Rather than dwell on the frightening implications of having Goldilocks confront bitter gun-clinging Father Bear or narrow-minded and annoyingly fecund Mother Bear, some progressives stake their collective hopes on the Tea Party movement as Baby Bear, because what is small and stupid does not have to be feared.
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal pointed to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell as holding this point of view, because Rendell apparently thinks that there is no Tea Party movement, just a motley collection of media-savvy citizens for whom “taxed enough already” is an excuse to march on the offices of politicians burdened by the thankless task of representing their inferiors. Pundit Michael Kinsley appears to agree with Governor Rendell. But as John Hayward observed tartly, “The entrenched political elite would be much better off if their fantasies of surly voters driven by personal animosity toward President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi were true.” Unfortunately for that point of view, the Tea Party movement is powerful “precisely because it’s not shallow.”
Will the various Goldilocks impersonators on the left figure that out? Not as long as there are chairs, lunches, and beds to try out, and dimwitted smiles to be offered as payment when the three bears return home to find that a trespasser crusading for social justice has broken the “just right” chair and eaten the “just right” porridge.
About the Author
Patrick O’Hannigan is a writer in North Carolina.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (28) | Leave a comment
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martin j smith| 5.24.10 @ 8:22AM
The Tea Party Movement is a threat to Democrat Left Takeover-that is the essence of the "Progressive" aka Socialist response. Too hot, too cold too luke warm--please give me a break. It comes down o this: A lot of people--I suspect a majority of the American Voters--including those who voted Obama--now see the light. They see a government that ignores the people, elitist in nature and by logic looks down on the voter. The method of dismissing or ridicule is as old as time ( politically speak ) Ed Rendell is a Democrat hack.
What in heavens name do you expect from him ?
Alan Brooks| 5.24.10 @ 12:06PM
I don't care about minutiae anymore-- liars figure and figures lie. What I don't like is the Teaparty movement being named after an entirely Yankee event, but being dominated by Southerners.
If Yankees started a movement called 'The Rebel Yellers' you might be given to think something was disingenuous.
And then there is the wealthy celebrity Palin, pretending she and her family are jus' plain folks.
Tim*| 5.24.10 @ 12:46PM
Actually , you're minutiae .
We was gonna name ourselves The Anti-Brookcrappers ,but we decided callin' ourselves The Tea Party would upset ya enough.
AmenBro| 5.24.10 @ 3:29PM
YYYYYYYEAAAAAAAAHHHHAW
ALAIN BABY i am so proud to be a southerner.
You have heightened the awareness of the incredible feeling to new hights.
I'm so excited I just can't fight it.
We are coming for your asses .
If the south is so damned ass backwards BROOKIE BOY why in hail do you assswhores continually poor over the border/Mason Dixon Line like beaners cross the Arizona Border??????
Purpleguy| 5.24.10 @ 6:06PM
No one did until Air Conditioning came to the South. Who said the South is ass backwards? You did - do you have an inferiority complex. Only thing I notice is that it takes a Southerner longer to tell a story than a Northerner. Otherwise we're all pretty much alike.
Tea Baggers are more Republican than Southern, but since most Republicans are Southerners, I guess that holds.
Bram| 5.24.10 @ 9:45AM
The Tea Party is a threat to all Democrats. But, there will be little consequences within the DNC.
The Tea Parties are a much greater threat to old-school GOP types. The Rinos are the stupid, lazy, incompetent step-father bear who is about to get kicked out of the house by a young but very large and mean baby-bear.
Alan Brooks| 5.24.10 @ 12:12PM
OOOh, so perhaps papa bear will kick the token-negro Steele out of the plantation manor, and be sent back to the straw hut?
Nah, politics will remain bread & circuses.
Alan Brooks| 5.24.10 @ 12:17PM
...IMO the economy will change, but politics will remain celebrity-politics (politics has merged with celebrity culture); it really is bread & circuses.
bread= welfare
circuses= celebrity politics
AmenBro| 5.24.10 @ 3:36PM
AFTERBIRTH Bill Clinton put it best ALAN.
Yo Teddie if you weren't drinkin scotch all the time this boy Obama would have been getting you coffee last week LMFAO,.
LIBERAL ARE THE REAL RACIST. Always have been & always will be.
AmenBro| 5.24.10 @ 3:31PM
You must mean the token NEGRO democrat staffers prior to the CHICAGO GANGLAND NIGGGGAS you elected.
martin j smith| 5.24.10 @ 10:04AM
Bram--you mussed have missed a lot of democrat smearing which continues to go on making me believe that the Democrat Party ( not talking any particular part of ) is threatened. But yes, RINOS too for they are Democrat Party members as well.
RINOS and Democrat Party--perfect together.
Ken (Old Texican)| 5.24.10 @ 10:26AM
You know.....
The thing I see in the tea party movement that is MOST encouraging is that it has generated such a widespread willingness on the part of a lot of people ...to simply "reflect" seriously on their relationship with our elected officials.
Taxed Enough Already are convenient fill-ins for the acronym TEA, but in my mind, those words truly do not encompass the essential "guts" of the phenomenon.
In my mind, the guts are 1, non-representation, and 2, the assault on individual liberty across the board.
This Administration and this Congress have drawn liberty vs. authoritarianism in such sharp relief, that for the first time many many Americans have simply said "whoah!"
Combine that with government policies that time after time go opposite the "grain" of what most Americans intuitively know works best for the most Americans.
.....a predictable business climate, job and career opportunities, a self-directed life.
I am a proud member of the Tea Party movement.
Purpleguy| 5.24.10 @ 6:08PM
And, yet, we pay less in taxes now then we have in the last 60 years....
Tim*| 5.24.10 @ 10:59AM
Fast Eddie Rendell is hacked off because We ,Tea Party Rebels chased his other Carpetbagger Buddy Arlen Specter out of The Republican Party & are gonna take down The Little Admiral Joey Sestak on Novemer 2nd.
We , Tea Party Rebels Support The Real Conservative Pat Toomey .
Hey Look , We Can See November From Our House !
Joe D| 5.24.10 @ 11:01AM
Progressives, by contrast, want to increase the scope of "public service," and this motivation puts them at odds with anyone trying to pull the Constitution out of the mothballs into which all three branches of government have shoved it, beginning perhaps with Roe v. Wade - This statement is wrong. It goes back at least to FDR and perhaps further depending on your point of view.
Ken (Old Texican)| 5.24.10 @ 11:29AM
JoeD,
I have often wondered that in the best of worlds.....where precisely would I want to roll the government back to, historically.
My answer always comes back an admittedly over-simplified..."Lots of different dates".
Race relations? circa 5 years after Martin Luther King's death.
Foreign relations? 2005
Social Security? perhaps around 1960...(with no government theft from the SS trust fund since)
Emmigration...heh 2010...freeze it totally for ten years....and build the "fence" with one-way gates....south.
Medicare...day one. If anything, block grants to each State.
Welfare entitlements? 1963 or so.
Executive Branch honesty and integrity? 1980s
Bram| 5.24.10 @ 11:34AM
The Tea Party is a smashing success because we will have a real debate this fall and probably more in 2012. A real debate about the size of government and its involvement in our lives. A real debate on the Constitution - whether it is still relevant or shoudl we just ignore the thing.
Democrats and Republicans have been politely ignoring these questions and ignoring these debates for decades. Time's up.
Michael L. Hauschild| 5.24.10 @ 12:35PM
Socialism is simply another textbook depiction of Utopia, it has not failed. It is still taught, invoked, and carried as the creed of the progressive and the higher education system. What has failed, and this is not just speculation, is every single government in every single country that has adopted it or even tried to transition to it. The window of opportunity to rescue our representative democracy is closing; most voters today are aware of this impending crisis and are cognizant of the danger. Forget spin, there is no emergence of a single entity for political opposition; the proponents, social engineers, libertarian minimalists, and the multifaceted conservative have coalesced into the leaderless coalition known as the tea party. This uprising has befuddled the MSM, terrorized the incumbent, and, invoked a very “beltway” type response from our own rightist pundits to “seize the reins” so their own particular version of earmarks (“to the victor go the spoils”) are in place after November 2010.
To them I humble offer some heartfelt advice. The “reins” are on a locomotive juggernaught, grab them to ride along, you do not get to “steer.” The tracks are headed for a very non-partisan, non-ideological station, and the train will only stop when the goals of less government and personal freedom are realized.
Ragnar| 5.24.10 @ 12:46PM
The TEA Party movement scares the living daylights out of the snide "country club RINOs" in addition to elitist "progressives" who have to get drunk to admit they are marxist/ socialists along with their fellow traveler "cafeteria Christians" who prattle on about "social justice." There is a storm brewing on the horizon and we are all about to reap the consequences of sitting on our fat behinds while ignoring the Constitution and the sacrifices of all those who came before us.
Odin| 5.24.10 @ 1:17PM
Ragnar ,My Main Man Is Right .
You're invited to Valhalla this weekend .
Bilwick| 5.24.10 @ 2:05PM
Same old same old. State-fellators love the State. As one conservative writer put it years ago, tax'n'spend is "the crack cocaine of modern liberalism." If they think Argument A will advance statism,, they'll argue A; if, for a different audience, they think Argument B (which may totally contradict A) will advance their position, they'll argue B. Just don't interefer with thier Staie-fellatin'.
Irish22| 5.24.10 @ 9:22PM
I am beginning to think that statism/socialism/progressiveness may be genetic. Conservatism doesn't offer enough intellectual challenge for "elites." It takes a great deal of moral courage to resist the urge to meddle in the affairs of others. From meddling it is only a few short steps to controlling, and eventually enslaving.
guo | 7.1.10 @ 5:21AM
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