I usually don’t like to push my name too far to the forefront in
writing a story, but after a quarter-century of reporting on
politics I think I’ve discerned a general principle that deserves
to find a place in the textbooks.
I’m going to call it “Tucker’s Law.” If anybody has
posited this before me I’ll be glad to cede naming rights. I don’t
recall ever seeing it in so many words, however, and so since
nobody seems to have marked out the territory, I’m going to rush in
and stake my claim.
What has triggered this is not a single event but a whole
series of observations that have been simmering over the years.
There are many strands leading to the formulation of this concept.
This is good because the mark of a sound scientific theory is that
it is supposed to take seemingly disparate elements and pull them
all together in one concise explanation.
One observation that always sticks in my mind is watching
Sergei Eisenstein’s Ten Days that Shook the World, the
1928 movie made
for Lenin that dramatized John Reed’s account of the Russian
Revolution. There’s a wonderful moment where the Russians have
overthrown the Czar and are setting up their first parliament.
Representatives from all over the Czar’s vast empire arrive. There
are Moslems from Central Asia, Laplanders from the Arctic Circle,
and Cossacks from the vast internal plains that constituted
Russia’s Wild West. I remember the camera lingering particularly
over one Cossack with a massive beard and a headpiece that looked
like a fur-lined sombrero. It was obvious that Eisenstein relished
all this diversity.
Yet the point of the movie was that all this parliamentary
democracy had to go and that Lenin and his party were right in
overthrowing the government, claiming they were more representative
of “The People.” Eisenstein had a hard time dealing with that in
his movie. The Bolsheviks, after all, only held about ten percent
of the seats in parliament. Yet they were an organized and
fanatical minority, prepared to stop at nothing and ready to resort
to violence when needed. And so their fanaticism was enough to
strangle this infant democracy in its cradle.
This was not an easy message to convey to movie audiences.
The best Eisenstein could come up with was a female guard who
starts shedding sentimental tears as she dreams of what life could
be under the Bolsheviks. She finally switches sides, welcoming the
Bolshevik battalions, and the diverse, parliamentary democracy
disappears forever.
But then what was Communism ever about except an effort by
a minority to impose its will on the majority? The key was to
centralize everything while extending the
reach of the government into the most pedestrian aspects of
everyday life. I remember Max Eastman’s
account of his tour of the Soviet Union in the 1920s when he came
to view the “future that works” but soon began to have his doubts.
“It occurred to me one day,” he wrote, “that the two things the
Russians loved most in the world were the market and the church.
What was Lenin’s program except to take both of them away from the
people?”
I thought of this again last week when Cuba announced it
was going to unravel some of its Communist apparatus by firing
100,000 government employees. One tidbit that emerged is that in
Cuba, shoemakers work for the government.
Shoemakers!? When a political regime feels compelled to drag
shoemakers under control of the central authority, what can be left
of normal life?
As Frederick Hayek and the great Austrian economists
taught us, socialism in all forms — be it the “International
Socialism” of the Communists of the “National Socialism” of the
Nazi Party — is an attempt to extend politics into the economic
realm. In order to create perfect equality or end class divisions
or establish the 1000-year Reich or whatever the reformers are
promising, it is necessary to take control of economic activity and
once that happens, human freedom ends. After all, what has any
radical reform movement been except a demand that says, “Give all
power to the government and then give me control of the
government.” As Hayek wrote in one of the most significant
sentences of the 20th century, “The person who advocates government
planning of the economy always assumes that it is
his plan that will be put into
effect.”
What we have been witnessing in this country, then, is a
slow but steady erosion of individual freedom through the gradual
centralization of everything in Washington. This has not been
achieved by one big blow, like the Russian Revolution, but is the
cumulative effect of a thousand little movements, each intent on
achieving its own piece of “reform” by demanding that
decision-making be centralized in order to accomplish their agenda.
Each faction soon discovers that by bringing their small and
perhaps even unpopular effort to the Capital, they can attain the
greatest amount of leverage with the smallest amount of
resources.
Look at the environmental movement. Environmentalism has
always been an issue whose support is a mile wide but an inch deep.
Everyone is in favor of clean air, clean water and protecting
mother earth, but if it comes to paying an extra 50 cents for
gasoline or buying a toilet that has to flush twice to do its job,
support quickly evaporates. Therefore government mandates are
necessary. I recall reading a book written in the early stages of
environmentalism where the author was counseling his fellow nature
lovers on how to grow their effort. “When we think of implementing
an environmental agenda, our thoughts turn to government
regulation,” the writer said. “And when we think of government
regulation, our thoughts naturally turn to Washington.” No point in
trying to persuade your fellow citizens.
Just get down to Washington and start making law.
Ralph Nader was the first person of his generation to
perceive this. When Nader started out in the early 1960s, the
common career path for an ambitious young lawyer who wanted to
enter politics was to go back to his hometown, start a legal
practice, make a name for himself and run for town council around
age 28. If things went well you could move up to the state
legislature at 32 and run for Congress by 35. Then you could go to
Washington and start influencing national policy.
Nader perceived that all this was unnecessary. All you
needed was a law degree and a small office near the Capitol. Start
poring over the Congressional Record. Target some small
bureaucratic agency, broadcast the news that their lack of
oversight was creating a “crisis” and you’re on your way. The more
you prove the agency isn’t doing its job, the bigger it grows. And
the bigger it has to grow, the easier target it becomes. Bring a
lawsuit and pretty soon you may be running the agency yourself
through court orders.
This has been America’s history over the last half
century. Failing to muster enough support at the grassroots level,
thousands of political reform movements have found the best way to
advance their agenda is to centralize decision-making in Washington
and then concentrate their small but dedicated resources on
dictating policy to the rest of the country.
So here, at last, is Tucker’s Law:
“The less support a group has for its
agenda in the general population, the more intent
it will be on centralizing authority so that its limited leverage
will have the largest impact.”
Where does the Tea Party fit into this? Very simple. The
Tea Party is made up of people who have no special interests but
only a general interest in moving
decision-making out of Washington so they
can go back to living normal lives. They are the antithesis of all
the hundreds and thousands of special interests that have migrated
to Washington over the past half-century. Their only interest is
not to be bothered by Washington and not
to have federal bureaucrats interfering with their
lives.
All the Tea Party people I have ever met have been
ordinary people who are already successful at something else. These
are not people you usually meet in politics. What you almost always
encounter are political junkies, hooked on elections, wedded to
policy-wonking or crusading for their particular vision of the
world. Tea Party activists are just the opposite. They already have
careers as insurance agents, software engineers, furniture salesmen
or small business owners. They never had any concern for politics
— or time for it — until they realized Washington was taking
nearly half their income and using it to drive the country toward
national bankruptcy. That’s when they decided to get
involved.
All the statistics bear this out. Tea Party members are
more successful than the general run of the population. They are
more educated and have more income. They have very little political
experience and no interest in expanding the government. They are
“anti-politicians.” This reverses a long tradition in American
history going back to the early days of the Republic when Alexis de
Tocqueville wrote, “In America there are so many ways of making a
living that a man doesn’t usually enter politics until he has
failed at everything else.”
Can such a movement succeed? Sadly, the career path of
such reform efforts is drearily familiar. Time and
time again, reformers from both parties have won election by
preaching the virtues of small government, only to resume their
place at the table and begin carving out their same
portion. This has happened over and
over.
Yet this time it feels different. The Tea Party is steeped
in the traditions of the Founding Fathers and the American
Revolution. One of the most powerful myths of that era was of
George Washington as Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer who abandoned
his fields to lead a successful defense of his country, then
renounced his authority and returned to his plow only sixteen days
later.
Can Tea Partiers save the Republic from bankruptcy and
then return to their fields to resume their regular occupations? If
they do the job right, they will find their ordinary lives waiting
for them when they get back.
