Kate Zernike at the NYT ponders of the Tea Party protesters in light of the recent which included questions directed at Tea Party supporters. She concludes that a deep part of their frustration is a nostalgic yearning for the past.
“Perhaps, the most telling evidence that these avowed critics of big government are really mourning an America of the past is in their shifting attitude toward George W. Bush. Only a short time ago, he was reviled on the right for his spendthrift ways (his Medicare expansion), his federalizing of education standards (No Child Left Behind) and his creation of a vast new government agency, Homeland Security.
“At rallies, Tea Party supporters often nod to President Bush’s role in creating the deficit. Yet in the poll, 57 percent of them view Mr. Bush favorably.”
If this were really about lower taxes and smaller government, then Obama would get at least a nod for his efforts, and Gore would be remembered as doing more than anyone in the last century to shrink government. These two men, of course, are deeply reviled by the Tea Party, despite actually working toward similar goals.
Libertarian Jacob Hornberger goes even further in the nostalgia front and of the 1880s.
“Let’s consider, say, the year 1880. Here was a society in which people were free to keep everything they earned, because there was no income tax. They were also free to decide what to do with their own money—spend it, save it, invest it, donate it, or whatever. People were generally free to engage in occupations and professions without a license or permit. There were few federal economic regulations and regulatory agencies. No Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, bailouts, or so-called stimulus plans. No IRS. No Departments of Education, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor. No EPA and OSHA. No Federal Reserve. No drug laws. Few systems of public schooling. No immigration controls. No federal minimum-wage laws or price controls. A monetary system based on gold and silver coins rather than paper money. No slavery. No CIA. No FBI. No torture or cruel or unusual punishments. No renditions. No overseas military empire. No military-industrial complex.
“As a libertarian, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a society that is pretty darned golden.”
Devilstower at the Daily Kos annihilating this romanticized view of the 1880s. Hornberger conveniently glosses over how deadly and debilitating working could be, as well as the crushing poverty suffered by many. He neglects the fact that women could not vote, and in many places could not own property or open their own bank account. There was no FEMA to help when disaster struck leaving thousands homeless and hundreds dead after a natural disaster. The average life span was 40. People regularly died from unregulated food and medicine.
“Of course, what Hornberger was likely envisioning was the flip side of all this liberty. The freedom of being a rich in a society where those with money enjoyed tremendous advantage. The freedom that factory owners and robber barons enjoyed in treating workers as they wanted, employing private armies to beat or kill those who opposed them, and indulging any whim in the sure knowledge that a large enough bribe could smooth things over.”
This desire to return to a simpler past is common. We’ve all felt it at one time or another. Lately, I’ve been immersed in the world of the cigar-factory workers at the turn of the century. Browsing through those images of early Ybor City it’s easy to start romanticizing earlier eras. Real life can be complex, confusing, and filled with evidence that progress often sucks. Who doesn’t, on occasion, want to slow down the world and live without cell phones, cable TV, highways, and crowded cities?
Most of us understand that our nostalgia is a yearning for an idealized past, not the past that actually existed. But one of the things we’re missing from our national discourse is the counterweight of a future worth seeing. Our politicians and our dream-makers have failed to give us anything to strive for.
Al Gore’s future is a terrifying nightmare of a climate gone out of control. Obama’s future is to keep the status quo (i.e. eternal global war) and let the future worry about itself. He expects to see humans on Mars, but it’s not happening on his watch. Some future president can take care of that.
From the 1930s to the 1950s we could regularly see futures with magnificent cities, space ships that carried us to far planets, advanced technologies, racial harmony, global peace, etc. Nowadays it seems like all of our futures are post-apocalyptic and dystopian. Tomorrow brings terminators, the matrix, corporate control of our dreams, and global dictatorships.
The best way to take some of the air out of the Tea Party and Libertarian fantasies of the past is to start creating some aspirational fantasies of our future.
