A Tale of Two Tea Parties
In a column titled "A Tale of Two Moralities," Paul Krugman writes, "Today’s G.O.P. sees much of what the modern federal government does as illegitimate; today’s Democratic Party does not.... What we’re talking about here is a fundamental disagreement about the proper role of government."
My comment is buried again today, so I've reproduced it here:
If you want to eliminate violent and incendiary language, you have to eliminate the modern tea party movement itself, which has as its model a violent act of vandalism, sponsored by the merchant class & carried out by ruffians. The Boston Tea Party -- to one extent or another -- precipitated the American Revolution, which was the ultimate act of civil disobedience.
Any language that attempts to delegitimize the other side would have to go if "civil discourse" is the goal. I don't mean just the birther narrative; I mean language that characterizes the other side or government employees as enemies of the country or of the Constitution. Last week, Rep. Darrell Issa said, "The enemy is the bureaucracy." Who do you think the bureaucracy is? It's people like those Census workers CNN commentator Erik Erikson said he would shoo off his property with "his wife's shotgun" & Rep. Michele Bachmann said she would refuse to answer.
Erikson's reaction to the census, a Constitutional requirement, brings to mind my next taboo. Erikson said of the census, "The servants are becoming the masters. We are working for the government. We are becoming enslaved by the government."
So ditto for language that suggests the "government" or the other side is going to "take away our freedoms" or "enslave us." In the midst of his call for civility (ha!) on ABC's "This Week," former House Majority Leader Dick Armey urged tea party members to "continue to do their duty and defend our liberties." Defend our liberties? Parse that tea party code & what have you got? "Defend" = take up arms; "Our" = "It's US (WE) against THEM; "Liberties" = our natural and/or Constitutional freedoms, of which THEY want to deprive us.
Other euphemisms for acts of violence are just as bad. Sharron Angle's "Second Amendment remedies" comes to mind; she is providing a "Constitutional" rationale for violent acts against the government.
Whichever side of the national debate is correct, the side that believes the government is illegitimate, that it is attempting to "take away our freedoms," that taxation amounts to "tyranny" and that "revolution" may be the only remedy -- cannot tone down the rhetoric & speak with civility. Civility is antithetical to a movement that proposes revolution.