One of the standard mantras of the Tea Party is that they are Constitutionalists and believe in the Founding Fathers. The irony of that is that the Founding Fathers argued out the issues of Federalism and ultimately passed on the Federal Constitution; yet Federalism seems to be exactly what the Tea Party cannot stand. They are actually "anti-Federalist" and if they had their choice we would still be governed by the Articles of Confederation.
Perhaps some Tea Partyers do accept the Federal Constitution but they wish that it had never changed or that we were still interpreting it as we did when 90% or more Americans were farmers living on small rural farms and a largish number of Americans still owned slaves, who were not counted as whole people for population totals. Of course, only land-owning men could vote in those days. Gee, it's sure sad that had to change! As is so often the case with issues raised by the Tea Party, there are certainly some changes from the 1790s that they would admire; it's those other changes that get them riled up. But they don't seem to realize that, if that's the case, they owe us some explanation of why certain changes are evil and others are fine.
I have been an idealist about American government as long as I can remember, and I have rather blindly believed that the Founding Fathers really did mean to create a government that was not only "of" the people but was also to be a government "by" the people and "for" the people (meaning in the interest of the people as a whole). However, as I have aged, I have begun to distrust the sincerity of some of our "fathers" and, in particular, I have grown to suspect that "for" really meant "in the interest of wealth and power." Certainly, when we examine the actual history of America, we have to admit that government has very often worked in favor of the rich and powerful against the interests of the lower and middle classes. In its most uncomfortable extremes this has been when we found it in "our interest" to go to war and young people were slaughtered on the battlefields in the name of something that looks an awful lot like the protection of big business interests.
Of course, we are great at maintaining that we are still a government "by" the people, meaning that we vote for those who represent us. America remains a democracy. But I find that unconvincing as well. Many of our Founding Fathers articulated the grounds on which democracy could truly work and very little of their vision remains today. Voting means making a choice of who will represent me. But "choice" means that I am informed about national issues and about the ideas that a person will represent. Today, the media seem to think they are for anything but real information, and candidates shower us with falsehoods about their opponents rather than telling us what they really think. Worse yet, there are candidate-choices that we will never see because they have neither the wealth nor the power to make it into competition. There is no real democracy in America today when voting fails to involve real informed choices.
Just a brief study of American politics in the last three decades makes it clear that what we are really engaged in is a war to the death of democracy and the Republican winner is going to be oligarchy, plane and simple --- the rule of wealth. Every time Republicans make a pledge to Americans this is what they are talking about. What I fail to understand is why so many Americans go along with this when it is absolutely contrary to their own self-interest and when they are the ones who will pay even their lives to the will of wealth.
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