In response to this comment I left at OTB on the protest on Saturday in Washington, DC:
Saturday’s protest would assume more importance if it weren’t so nihilistic. We know what many of the protesters are against: taxes. It may be bad news for them but they’re going to continue to pay taxes come what may. And the foundations of the fiscal insanity that is our federal government were laid nearly 50 years ago. It’s late in the day to be protesting it now.
But what are the protesters in favor of? I don’t really know.
I received the angry retort from another commenter that they were in favor of liberty.
Leaving aside for the moment that we largely define liberty negatively (“Congress shall make no law…”), I still don’t think I see it. I’ve scrutinized every picture I could find of the protests and I didn’t see complaints about current Medicare, Social Security, the TVA, or agricultural subsidies, all expansions of government beyond the powers enumerated in the Constitution.
As I see it the protestors are populist rent-seekers. They want benefits paid by the federal government but they don’t want to pay for them. How are they better (or worse) than the populist rent-seekers who want to expand government into new areas, grant them benefits, and not pay for them?
The protesters want the government to stop wasting our tax dollars and to stop adding to the deficit. Obama has rightly, accused Bush of increasing the deficit, but, instead of fixing it, he made it three times worse. Protesters are well aware that Medicare is broke, Medicaid is broke, Social Security is broke, and everything the government is proposing — expanded health care, stimulus packages, cap-and-trade, for starters — will just make matters worse. What do we want? Stop the spending orgy. Start addressing the country’s fiscal future before it is too late. Start respecting the constitution, and get out of our lives.
Check the signs in these pictures I took on 9/12 in DC. You should see some common themes.
http://picasaweb.google.com/PatJDooley/DC091209#
I don’t know. Almost every protest is a little inchoate, don’t you think?
My sense of the “message” (to the degree there was one) of this protest is as follows:
1. Over the past 60-70 years the government has created programs (Social Security, Medicare, various entitlements, etc.) that have been built upon the backs of the tax payers.
2. These programs take on a permanent character very quickly. Once instituted they are only dislodged with nuclear weapons.
3. Many individuals living today had no input on the existence of these programs. They are bequethed to us regardless of if we want them or not.
4. However, the establishment of NEW programs is a different proposition. It is not something bequethed to us with a vast inertial weight behind it. It CAN be resisted in a way older established program cannot.
For that reason I think it is a little harsh to reject such sentiments out of hand as “populist rent-seekers.” After all, much of the political landscape has been sculpted without their input. Now, in effect, you are saying becuase they didn’t have input upon what happened when they were children (or yet unborn), they shouldn’t be complaining now.
I know you probably didn’t mean it that way – and if you think your position is fundamentally different from what I presented above I’d certainly be interested in reading a rearticulation
I will not fisk you in your own comments; that would be exceedingly rude. While there is a place for rudeness, this is not it. I will only say, then, that your analysis of our (I was there) motivations is incorrect. It is not that we want the government programs but not the taxes to pay for them; it’s that we want the government to leave us alone. That requires the government to shrink, to reduce its programs and its powers. And that in turn has the happy consequence of reducing our tax burdens. Now, it is human nature that people are not that good at reason, and most people having wandered to the last step tend to confuse means with ends. But it is not the taxes, but the intrusion into every aspect of our lives, and the consequent infantilization of all of us, that is the problem.
This government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. We are expressing that we no longer consent to the things the government is trying to do that are new, and in many cases that we never consented to many of the things the government has been doing. The mechanism of changes in representation by election is so rigged (politicians choose their voters, to a large extent, though gerrymandering, and the financing system is designed to prevent anyone other than a Democrat or a Republican from even being heard) as to be meaningless. The mechanism of armed revolution is clearly beyond what anyone wants. So we take to the streets and we say we’re tired of it. That is not “populist rent-seeking;” that is the citizens of a free republic taking an active part in their own governance.
That’s a much better answer than most, Jeff. I’m still not sure that I buy it, however. I see little evidence that the protestors want the government to shrink; rather, I think they don’t want it to expand in this particular way.
Again, I haven’t seen complaints about the thousands of goodies they’re already getting from the government (paid for with tax dollars) and the problem we face is that without serious reform there simply will not conceivably be enough tax dollars to continue paying for them. In my view reform is necessary. I don’t much care for the direction reform is taking since I don’t believe it will effect the changes we need and another round of reform that does will be necessary far too soon.
When you ask somebody why they’re painting their house, if they answer “Because I wanted to change its color” or “To protect it from the elements and insects”, I’d believe it because those things can be effected by the means. If they say “Because I want it to be a fire engine”, I don’t believe it because what they’re doing won’t accomplish the end.
If you’re saying “They’re letting off steam”, then I believe it. Other than that I just don’t know. Go back to the original comment. The protests will be more significant if there’s an effective program behind them.
I think you miss a fundamental point, and it is a fundamental point that most people miss: these protests are not directed in any real sense. This is not a case of a political party or some NGO sitting down and saying, “Here is our program, and if we can gin up some mass protests, the guys in charge will have to do what we say.” No one told me where or when to show up. I knew it was downtown and on 9/12, because I’d heard that talked about on the boards I read. My wife googled something like tea party 9/12 dc and found they were going to march from the White House to the Capitol at 11:30. We met up with my in-laws, and showed up at 11:15 – the march had already been underway for some time at that point, for whatever reason. (I understand the crowds outgrew the holding area.) I didn’t even know where it was, just “near the White House.” We happened to get out at the Reagan Building, right in front of where things were starting, so that worked out well. If it didn’t, we would have made our way down to the Mall and found the right place. We didn’t have signs. We didn’t have an organizational message. We didn’t have anything but a will to say we are tired of the government crapping all over the Constitution and we want to be left alone.
That was the predominant sentiment on the march, as far as I could tell. There were your odd arrangement of nutcases, including the LaRouche disciples with the Obama-as-NAZI signs, the anti-abortion protestors with their particularly tasteless and off-base display, the (I assume Ron Paul fanatics) anti-Federal Reserve contingent, and the strange case I saw of the pickup parked along the march route with an Obama sticker on the back and a Confederate battle flag on the front. These nutcases were generally ignored, occasionally booed. There were far more signs against, yes, expanding government even further with healthcare reform. There were as many signs as that though against the auto bailouts, the financial bailouts, the cap-and-trade (most often the signs called it cap-and-tax) proposals, and general overextension of government. There were a lot of signs against Obama, Pelosi and Reid, and a fairly large number (more than against Pelosi and Reid, but probably not more than against Obama) of signs saying “vote them ALL out” or “Bush started this.” The Republicans are certainly getting no love from the small-government conservatives and libertarians, and why should they?
The point I’m making with all this is that you are looking for a single message, a single theme, essentially for a hierarchical organization and a standard political message campaign. This is not that kind of animal. The tea party movement is an emergent movement. We don’t have any real leaders, any real organizing force. It’s an accumulation of lots of small actions, rather than a directed political movement, and you can’t think of it hierarchically if you want to understand it. This might or might not coalesce around any kind of political party; the Republicans have already tried to co-opt the movement and have failed at it. A third party is more likely, I suspect. It might or might not coalesce around a specific set of proposals. But for now, the only thing uniting all this is the strong sense that the government was barely tolerable before, and beginning in the middle of Bush’s second term, began to be intolerable. (I did in fact see an “intolerable acts” sign listing legislation over the past year that has been particularly egregious.)
If McCain were elected, or if Bush were still in office, I suspect that we would be seeing exactly the same kind of movement. The difference would be that the media would be cheering us on, and the Democrats would be trying to co-opt us.
So what is the mechanism, then? Well, it seems to me that the politicians have a choice. They can pay attention, and change the way they’re doing business, and back off on the unprecedented and unwelcome government expansions of the last several years, or they can face the consequences at the polling booths. But a lot of the people there are losing confidence in the electoral mechanisms, due to ACORN among other causes, and it’s a fair bet that if that doesn’t work, the marches will get larger rather than smaller.
@ Jeff
“Well, it seems to me that the politicians have a choice. They can pay attention, and change the way they’re doing business, and back off on the unprecedented and unwelcome government expansions of the last several years, or they can face the consequences at the polling booths.”
But Jeff, the guy who prevailed at the polling booths last time out was for the expansion of government, no? Judging from the election results, it wasn’t all that unwelcome.
Both of them were for the expansion of government. Do you honestly think McCain would have done any better? I certainly don’t, to the point that had it been McCain vs. Clinton, I would have voted for Clinton.
That wasn’t my point, though it underscores it in a way. My point was that the unwelcome government expansion of which you speak doesn’t seem to be all that unwelcome among the electorate at large. Among you folks yes, elsewhere, no. I’ll tell you what, organize your tea party folks, and see if you can agree on a candidate who is for the repeal of Social Security, Medicare, farm subsidies, and all the rest. Then, run that candidate in the next national election on that platform. That is the only test that counts.
Outside my office window they’re protesting government spending on high speed rail going through the city. I can’t make out most of the signs, but as I write this, some guy walks over and holds up a sign straight at my mirrored window (he can’t see me) that says “Audit the Fed.” I don’t know what that means, but it’s kind of freaky. Maybe he can see me.
You might be right. This might be a losing game. And I’m certainly willing to accept that it’s possible that the electorate does not in fact want to limit the government. But it is impossible to tell for sure, in a system rigged to prevent the rise of someone who does not fit into the “bigger government is better” camp. At the very least, the large number of people that refuse to vote at all gives me some hope that my particular preferences are not as much a minority as they are generally portrayed. It’s certainly even more hopeful that the tea party movement is growing the way it is. Yet I realize that this could be it; this could be as many people as there are that want to be free, and that would not be enough. Time will tell.
But at the point you are arguing about candidates, you have surely missed my point. I’m arguing about the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution as written and as interpreted according to the plain meaning of its words. If that’s what people no longer want, then in the end I will lose. If people do still care about those things, then in the end I will eventually prevail. But it’s assuredly not about the candidates or the parties; it’s about the systemic incentives and disincentives.
I saw an awful lot of retired people in pix of that protest.
You know what I didn’t see? People carrying signs calling for cuts in Social Security or Medicare or VA benefits or government pensions.
Dave’s right: they got theirs, and they got theirs by raiding their children’s piggy bank, and now they want to strut and posture as upright, hard-working taxpayers when in point of fact they are the bulk of the problem.
When I see old people carrying signs that say “Means-test Medicare” or “Means-test Social Security” I’ll start believing it’s something other than rent-seeking, race-panic and generational resentment.
I guess people see what they want to see. And your power to see into the souls of people you’ve never met? Remarkable gift, that.
Jeff:
Oh, it’s not hard. Older white people in full spittle-flecked rage? Denying our president is an American? Contending he’s a Muslim? Alleging he’s organizing a secret army? Claiming he’s preparing to kill off old people?
That’s a policy disagreement? Bull.
I have always said that though I was not a Reagan fan I honored him for his “evil empire” speech. I like it when someone blurts out the truth. Well, I’m even less a Jimmy Carter fan, but he’s done a similar service today, saying what we all know: it’s the racism, stupid.
I’m curious: did you see anyone at the protest calling for means-testing medicare? Because that would really help solve the problem. You know, the problem of too much government money spent on health care. The “policy” problem all these rage-aholics are so upset about. Did you see a sign like that? No?
Of course not. But I’ll bet you saw a whole lot of signs denying that Obama is the legitimate president. Which really doesn’t address the issue, does it?
First, I saw zero spittle-flecked rage. In fact, there was more anger and animosity in your comment than I saw at the rally. While the crowd was predominantly white (there were a few blacks and quite a few Latinos near where I was), it was not predominantly older. In fact, the thing that was most apparent was the large number of families that attended. This is also irrelevant, so far as I can see. It’s not about either age or race. That’s your fantasy, not any kind of reality.
As to the nuts, yeah, there were some nuts. I didn’t see anyone alleging Obama was a Muslim, but they may well have been there. I didn’t see anyone claiming Obama’s organizing a secret army (I would presume you to be referring to whatever Obama’s mandatory service plan is called), but they may have been there. I did see a few people birthers or near enough. I saw a lot of people claiming that he’s preparing to kill off old people, but given Ezekiel Emmanuel’s comments, and the fact that he had a big hand in writing the bill, I’m not convinced they’re nuts. So, do you want to play dueling weirdos, where you bull out a picture of the birthers, and I pull out a picture of the truthers, and we just spiral into the mire? Every movement has its hangers on and fringe elements, and if that’s allowed to be the definition of the mainstream of any given side of the debate, we may as well pull out the guns and start shooting: that way lies madness and irrelevancy. It’s also a rather transparent attempt to detract from the substance of the debate, but I see you get to even worse a bit later, so I’ll cover that attempt in a moment.
I’ve always found it odd that the Left (and given your comments, I assume you would proudly put yourself in that camp) constantly says they want to hear all opinions, then gets deeply offended that anyone has other opinions. Yes, if you disregard the fringes (by your definition or mine, pick one), the vast majority of the rally was about substantive differences, sometimes of policy, more often of ideology and philosophy.
And here is where we get to the racism charge. First, it’s a very transparent attempt to detract from the very substantive policy debate you say you want. It’s a kind of extended ad hominem, and has been so overused through the years that racism is a meaningless charge. And that’s a shame, because true bigotry and racism hides in the shadows so created, that you yourself are trying to deepen here. I reject your label and its implications. I reject Carter’s opinions on any subject utterly. I also reject your attempt to reframe the debate from the policies and ideologies at issue to that of who showed up on 9/12.
As far as the question of means-testing Medicare, I saw no such signs. You are welcome, of course, to bring such a sign to the next round. There were a lot of other signs about reducing the deficit and the debt, and some touted various means for doing exactly that. It wouldn’t be out of place. Of course, I suspect most of the people there fail to share your apparent disapproval of whites and the elderly, but you and they can deal with that if and when it comes up. They’ll likely just ignore you if you act an ass and throw labels around willy-nilly; it’s what civil people tend to do.
I saw not one single sign denying Obama’s legitimacy as president. And for someone so desperately trying to avoid talking about issues, your conclusion is rich. Rhetoric is an attempt to convince an audience of a proposition. I didn’t grade your attempt in detail, but you have failed. Please try again, and give a better attempt next time.
Jeff:
What exactly are the issues, Jeff?
We put a trillion dollars on a credit card to pay for the war. We put another trillion on a credit card to extend drug benefits. Another trillion to buy tax cuts for me and my ilk. (Thanks!)
And all through the above barely a peep from the terribly, terribly concerned crowds of deficit hawks. Where were the protests about all that deficit spending?
Now suddenly, as we spend big piles of money to fix the crisis handed off by the Republicans, suddenly now there are large crowds very, very concerned about deficits.
Before? No. Now? Yes.
While we were building mountains of debt during good economic times — when we shouldn’t have been running up debt — the right said nothing. But now they are very, very concerned.
Entirely by coincidence — just coincidence — the same folks are worried that Obama isn’t a real American, that he is a secret Muslim, that he is Hitler and Stalin, that he is plotting to kill grandma, and that as a consequence we are “losing our America.”
Losing OUR America. Big concern of all these deficit hawks. These sudden overnight converts to deficit hawkery.
Just because you use the dog whistle Jeff doesn’t mean we can’t hear when you play Dixie.
This isn’t about issues. It’s not about health care. There’s no “Hitler” in health insurance reform. And Glen Beck is not the leader of a group of concerned deficit hawks. Nor is Rush Limbaugh. They are professional, full-time race-baiters.
If it was a white president talking about health insurance reform you’d argue the plans, you’d argue the taxes, you’d argue all sorts of things. But you wouldn’t show up to town halls to scream, you wouldn’t shout “You lie!” as the president speaks to Congress, you wouldn’t be dragging Stalin and Hitler into the debate, you wouldn’t be obsessing over birth certificates, you wouldn’t be accusing him Obama of lying about his faith, you wouldn’t be talking about needing to water any trees with the blood of patriots, you wouldn’t be carrying ‘armed and ready’ signs and showing up at rallies with loaded guns, you wouldn’t be accusing the president of planning mass murder, and you wouldn’t be following the lead of a psychopath like Glen Beck.
I want to make one last point, and that is to answer why the people marching now weren’t marching before. Things began to go off the rail in the second Bush administration, and it takes time for a head of steam to build up into marches (at least when protesting hasn’t become a political right of passage in your group, as it seems to be among some on the Left). It takes realizing that your government is not going to listen to you, even when you go from discomfort to outright hostility, as happened with conservatives during the second Bush administration. And then you get an orders of magnitude shift, and people go from being angry to being angry enough to come out in the streets.
I think that it is time to wrap this up. You call me a racist, though with sly deniability. (“Just because you use the dog whistle Jeff doesn’t mean we can’t hear when you play Dixie.”) Fine. As I said, I reject your labels, and even if I didn’t, the term “racist” has no further useful meaning. You’re a racist, too, ya big lug.
I also note that you want to say “you didn’t speak up before” and by it to mean “and you can’t speak up now.” Noting in passing that I did speak up against the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit at the time, I wonder if you were as exercised at Democrats for calling Bush a liar on the House floor as you are at Wilson? I wonder if you were as exercised about the LA Weekly (IIRC) cover with Bush as Satan, or the many depictions of Bush as Hitler? You see, we can all spiral down into the mire. It gets us nowhere, and it’s not a game I care to play. Now you want to personalize this, not just with the racism remark, but by telling me what I would and wouldn’t do, what I have said and what I believe. You’ve gotten essentially all of it wrong.
I disagree with you fundamentally and utterly, and I don’t see any way of bridging that gap.
Actually, before I stop, I think there’s something I should clarify. American society seems to be ideologically divided, rather messily, into three broad groups:
About a third of the population are “liberals” in the current political terminology, and the basic characteristic of this group is a desire to see government grow to encompass ever more areas of life in order to “ensure social justice.” (The one exception is anything related to sex, including but not limited to abortion and homosexuality. And doesn’t it bother anyone that handing the government the power to regulate healthcare at this level obviates Roe v. Wade, and means that the next time a Republican is in power, they could outlaw abortion, legally and constitutionally, by fiat?)
About a third of the population are “conservatives” in the current political terminology, and the basic characteristic of this group is that they want the state to have great power and control, but particularly want the state to regulate “decency” in social matters, and to be active interventionists abroad.
These two groups are constantly fighting with each other, and I note that a lot of the things you said above seems to indicate you think me in the second group. You would be incorrect, if so. I am in the third group, which basically wants to be left alone. We don’t want to be told how to have sex or how not to or whose sexuality we should be praising and whose we should be condemning. We don’t want the US to be constantly intervening abroad, nor constantly appeasing those who would happily kill us if they could. We don’t want the government deciding what jobs we can or cannot have, what we can or cannot buy, how we can or cannot raise our kids. We want to be left alone.
And that the people who are marching are mostly in the third group, and that this group hasn’t taken to the streets since the 1780s, should deeply concern the partisans on both sides.
“We know what many of the protesters are against: taxes”
“we know”
Really? Well then. Cool that you’re a mind reader. On the other hand if you take people at their word and read what they’ve written, online and on their signs I’d say you’re making quite a simplification.
I’m trying to be nice and not call you arrogant. Difficult but I’m working on it.
Come on. You know full well that people protesting had a wide range of issues in mind, few of which one could boil down to taxes. And you know as well that most likely virtually all of these people pay their taxes, unlike their Democrat betters in Congress and in the Obama administration who have turned out to be serial tax cheats. I mean, it’s a freaking phenomenon and a running joke at Instapundit now.
People don’t want to pay _NO_ taxes. They want to pay less taxes and they want their money’s worth.
Oh yes. And they don’t want to be treated as simpletons whose issues can be boiled down to one word, “taxes” by their so-called betters.
PD Shaw: some guy walks over and holds up a sign straight at my mirrored window (he can’t see me) that says “Audit the Fed.†I don’t know what that means, but it’s kind of freaky.
Google Ron Paul
Or Google “Audit the Fed” for that matter.
Michael,
That is an awfully wide brush you are tarring your opponents with. I dare say you are a bigot. Disagree with Michael and he’ll lump you all in one big basket and be sure to point out the kookiest and whackiest ones to make everyone less credible.
Good work Michael.
By the way Michael, like Jeff I too have been a critic of Bush. I opposed many of his spending proposals such as the Energy Bill, the Highway Bill, and the Medicare Prescription Drug Program. I know you probably wont take my word for it, but I do have a posting history over at OTB to support my claim.
Never let it be said that Michael doesn’t jump to a conclusion.