Tea Party + 2
Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2010 8:32 pm
All - I would invite your comments on this observation:
The current Tea Party activism is a strong sentiment that we should ally with, and/or tap into. First, I do not agree with all their points of view, intents, or philosophical underpinnings, or some of the stronger political opinions of their loudest. But I do believe that they have tapped into a core dissatisfaction of the American electorate. And that - if they were to simply remember two words from our history - would allow them, and anyone allied with them, to grow in popularity and electoral strength.
Let's start with the premise that the Tea Party feels we are overtaxed. Many of their activists believe so, and say so. However, the underlying sentiment that gets them their hearing to many audiences is two words more complex - that we are overtaxed without representation! Those are the "two words" - and they're exactly what TTO has been saying.
People have forgotten that the revolution against the English crown was not about taxes, but it was about taxes being imposed from the outside, about not having colonial representation in Parliament and no say in how the French and Indian War would be paid for. The English held that a Parliament of the realm represented all of the realm. And, irrespective of colonial representation, that they could make the decision to tax the colonies for the defense of the North American empire. Maybe they were right and maybe they were wrong about who should pay for the preceding war, but we claimed - and told them in no uncertain terms! - that they were wrong about how to decide this. No one, we argued, could be taxed without proper representation in the Parliament. And failing to get that representation, we created our own representative government without them.
So my observation and suggestion for further public dialogue on this is to take our message to Tea Party forums, to engage with that group and the audiences they've captured, and to include that group of patriotic Americans into this movement. I believe a vector change of only two words - redirecting the conversation to "without representation" - would create dramatic differences in their movement and in the growth of TTO.
The current Tea Party activism is a strong sentiment that we should ally with, and/or tap into. First, I do not agree with all their points of view, intents, or philosophical underpinnings, or some of the stronger political opinions of their loudest. But I do believe that they have tapped into a core dissatisfaction of the American electorate. And that - if they were to simply remember two words from our history - would allow them, and anyone allied with them, to grow in popularity and electoral strength.
Let's start with the premise that the Tea Party feels we are overtaxed. Many of their activists believe so, and say so. However, the underlying sentiment that gets them their hearing to many audiences is two words more complex - that we are overtaxed without representation! Those are the "two words" - and they're exactly what TTO has been saying.
People have forgotten that the revolution against the English crown was not about taxes, but it was about taxes being imposed from the outside, about not having colonial representation in Parliament and no say in how the French and Indian War would be paid for. The English held that a Parliament of the realm represented all of the realm. And, irrespective of colonial representation, that they could make the decision to tax the colonies for the defense of the North American empire. Maybe they were right and maybe they were wrong about who should pay for the preceding war, but we claimed - and told them in no uncertain terms! - that they were wrong about how to decide this. No one, we argued, could be taxed without proper representation in the Parliament. And failing to get that representation, we created our own representative government without them.
So my observation and suggestion for further public dialogue on this is to take our message to Tea Party forums, to engage with that group and the audiences they've captured, and to include that group of patriotic Americans into this movement. I believe a vector change of only two words - redirecting the conversation to "without representation" - would create dramatic differences in their movement and in the growth of TTO.