Tea Party

In late 1773, patriots in Boston dumped tea from England into the harbor to protest the tea tax. In New York and Philadelphia, patriots turned tea-carrying ships back. In Charleston, citizens couldn’t even reach agreement on how to respond, finally deciding merely not to pay for the tea or the tax. The tea was off-loaded and stored. The “tea party” held in Greenville and other cities on February 27, however, is an even weaker imitation of the Boston Tea Party than Charleston’s feckless protest in 1773/74.

These “conservatives” supported a war in Iraq funded by massive deficit spending, and they supported the rebuilding of infrastructure in Iraq—again, funded by huge deficits. But when it comes to supporting their fellow Americans through investment in human capital and infrastructure, they call for weak symbolic protests and some even call for revolution. Where were their cries for revolution when George W. Bush was running the nation and the economy into the ground?

These people are not conservatives. These “conservatives” sound more like whiners than workers. They are a bunch of Neros tuning their fiddles while sparks are flying around. They are radical skinflints who would rather see the nation crumble, their neighbors homeless and jobless, the economy in disarray, their security threatened by rises in crime, and a generation of children raised in ignorance than see the government do anything about it. Do you really want your leaders to do nothing, or do you want action?

This nation has borrowed against its future many times in the past, and each time, we’ve managed to pay it off, or move toward paying down that debt. The last time was during the Clinton administration, and we saw that budget surplus transform itself into a huge deficit with no benefit to the American people under George W. Bush. I see no reason that that we won’t be able to pay this new debt if we can get the economy back on track. But empty protests and meaningless calls for revolution aren’t going to accomplish anything. If all the “conservatives” can offer is to do nothing, then they should get out of the way, because something must be done.