Atlas Shrugged: Tea Party Movement

Atlas Shrugged: Tea Party Movement is Definitely Not a Populist Movement

Historical Examination of American Populism and Representative Populist Movements

By Joseph Andrew Settanni

This is a discussion disproving the popular assertion posited, so often ignorantly made, that the Tea Party Movement can be truly classified as a genuine American populist movement.

Although the Tea Party Movement is genuinely a popular political movement having many social and economic, not just political, implications, it does not fit the fundamental pattern and historical reality of actual populist movements in this nation’s history. How can this be definitely proven from the historical evidence and cognate sustained argumentation? And, why is it not really flattering, commendatory, or appealing for such a political cause to be deemed “populist” as to its, supposedly, defined nature?

American-inspired populism (and its various radical movements or forces) has been, on the whole, the unfortunate product of vile hatred, intolerant anger, and mindless bigotry directed primarily against certain specified classes of people based upon their religion, race, or a category, class, or case; for real or imagined reasons, resentment can so exist concerning a variety of issues; but, it has been negatively inspired toward usually wanting to greatly eliminate or discriminate against those who are not of the (White Protestant) majority of this country.

However, this assertion must be carefully qualified. Not all trendy political movements must be populist in nature nor by definition. Of course, many historians have well documented this proper and correct understanding of true populism, though it is not true, nevertheless, that most populist movements have had the support of the majority of the people during any historical period; no one religion, even that of the bulk of the population, as with Protestantism, is to be then simply equated with bigotry or prejudice.

Further, not all popular efforts are to be axiomatically designated and denominated as “populist” simply by being thought of as generally supported by many different kinds or types of people; that would be a form of absurd existential reductionism. To the critical point being made, historians and other people have given populism a usually distinct meaning in specific terms of what it has actually meant during the both lived and documented course of this nation’s history.

As a prominent historical example of actual populism, the Know Nothing Movement, of the 1840s and 1850s, was based upon “Knownothingism” in its being against foreigners based upon their religion, meaning that it was primarily directed against Irish Roman Catholic (legal) immigrants who were terribly and bigotedly referred to as being “white niggers,” so great was the hatred and contempt. Catholicism was regarded as a foreign faith that could contaminate America with strange and harmful ideas and tendencies, though, e. g., colonial Roman Catholics had disproportionately (meaning in terms of their tiny numbers in the colonies) sided with the cause of the American Revolution. The Know Nothings, of course, really didn’t care about such highly inconvenient facts.

These bigoted populists, in worrying and feeling troubled about what was happening, feared those who were different and disliked the idea that these terrible foreigners were to exist among them; also, many saw that the Irish were willing to take lower pay for jobs, which made them economic competitors with other, meaning native, workers. Xenophobia and its associated hatred and loathing were, nonetheless, definite parts of what was going on in the politics of these people who usually claimed to “know nothing” when publicly asked if they were members of such a movement.

Another basic part of Know Nothing thinking [which sounds like an oxymoron!], it can be added, was its overt opposition to all secret societies such as, e. g., the Free Masons, though, ironically, many Free Masons, since they were among the general population at large, were also members of Know Nothing groups. People felt troubled and, of course, sought out helpless scapegoats to blame who did not look like the “decent” majority of the White population.

Overall, however, it must be always critically kept in mind that true populism has always been on the ideological Left in that it was radicalism, extremism, directed against those “other” people or allegedly evil influences or powers thought to be reactionary versus healthy and progressive American politics, society, and culture. As another prominent and highly notable historical case, as needed illustration of the truth being empirically advanced, the Populist Movement of the 1880s and 1890s was clearly of this nature. Waves of increasing industrialization, urbanization, and modernization greatly troubled many people and, once again, the histrionic and demagogic search was on for seeking scapegoats to blame.

Racism, as manifested in American history, is functionally inseparable from the core nature of Populism; Chinese immigrants, e. g., were stopped, by an actual act of the US Congress, in 1882, from coming to this country in direct response to riots connected to this political movement; in the South, in the 1890s, literacy tests and poll taxes, which were invidiously applied to Blacks, either entirely kept them or, at the least, limited them substantially from participating in most elections, local and national.

The Populists had wanted such then quite radical things as the free coinage of silver to help with wanted inflation against the Eastern Money power interests and, also, to help with further inflation by making the Federal government issue paper money as legally mandated “legal tender for all debts” for all Americans. Why was this urgently wanted by the Populists?

The very hated creditors, meaning the rich, were thought to be naturally hurt by the resulting inflation; debtors, the poor or working-class people, are supposed to be, in turn, easily assisted by useful inflation, through cheapening the money’s value in its being then made more easily obtainable, as to the general money supply available. The Populist Party, meaning the political organization itself, had then formally adopted that economic issue for support.

That latter party platform position eventually, in fact, became law and can now be publicly read in what is printed on all American money bills, the $1 bill and above, of course. Radicalism, thus, can have real consequences, though almost always economically, politically, socially, etc. quite negative in ultimate orientation. The above considerations should, thus, help to verifiably establish and suitably reveal the fundamental patterns and manifest indications that do show what goes into genuine populism in this country; radicalism normally sets group against group, race against race, etc., inclusive naturally of encouragement toward class warfare notions of opposing classes being at constant war, in perpetual conflict, with greatly differing interests.

Populism, moreover, has, also, been quite evilly served by many populist-oriented and rabble-rousing demagogues, such as surely was, e. g., Gov. Huey Long of Louisiana who, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, flattered the masses through instituting various welfare measures that obviously marked him as a radical politician, not any kind of rightwing reactionary. As yet another later instance, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, nationally active from the 1960s to early 1970s, who began in politics as a liberal but turned segregationist to win elections in his era, was definitely a dedicated populist who, of course, never really ceased to be a New Deal-style Democrat who favored liberal social policies directed against the rich.

In more recent times, for instance, Ross Perot, a more contemporary demagogue of the 1990s, had tried to express the popularist frustrations against the status quo. Although not involved with any specifically racial themes, his basic appeal was then mainly about how he was to attract White voters to his cause, against the assumed powers-that-be in the Eastern Establishment, as defined principally by Pres. George W. Bush’s father.

But, the essential theme of populism was, nonetheless, strongly upheld because of the theme of seeking out available scapegoats for economic and other problems, fears, and troubles in this country; Perot’s appeal was fairly close to radicalism due to his being someone who had benefited a great deal from Big Government contracts, meaning as to his successful economic career. Populism has sought to make Big Government “work” for the people; it has not been naturally linked to the theme of limited government.

Today, of course, in the early 21^st century, there are economic, social, and cultural worries and problems that have enormously aroused many people to respond by seeking major political resolutions to these matters. The Tea Party Movement (TPM), in sharp contrast to most movements that have been called populist, has never been directed against any racial or other such groups in this country. The good call has been made for a positive and patriotic return to free, constitutional republican government qua governance, meaning according to the original and freedom-enhancing intention of the US Constitution, in unabashed and explicit defense of the Republic, as was gloriously created by the Founding Fathers.

Furthermore, the TPM enthusiastically and emphatically reaches out to all Americans as Americans and has not sought to officially exclude anyone from membership in the cause of fighting for freedom in this country and, of course, liberty under law; all people in this nation are, therefore, freely encouraged to believe in the nation’s future, by trying to then secure a better future for more and more generations of Americans. The truly unconcealed focus has, thus, been upon the important effort to now support the notion of limited government versus the interventionist State, the statism, the tyranny, of these days.

Contrary to the ever vicious and intolerant propaganda of liberals and leftists, moreover, no official statements supposedly honoring or favoring prejudice or discrimination, e. g., against minorities have ever been issued by the TPM. And, those are surely the true, the plain, facts that can be independently and objectively examined and verified, by any fair-minded inquirers, interested in knowing the truth. One can easily see, therefore, that no appeal to radicalism or bigotry is being made.

Conclusion

But, greatly more than that obvious indication of the manifestly non-populist roots of this effort to change the baleful course of American politics is the notable fact that the precise direction of change urgently wanted is set always against any political radicalism, meaning, in effect, any sort or type of collectivism. It is not, therefore, a phenomenon of the ideological Left nor of Liberalism, in general, as it is so understood in this era. One can, thus, quite readily add that it is definitely not commendatory for the TPM to be thought of as being populist, meaning in either its origins or continued existence.

The unbelievable and untenable charge of racism petulantly made by an arm of the forces behind the Democratic Party, meaning the NAACP, is merely a polemical and tendentious act of cheap election-time demagoguery that deserves no viable respect nor proper credence whatsoever, by fair and impartial minds intent upon discerning the truth. Furthermore, many speakers, writers, and others representing the TPM are African Americans and other minority group people who have, also, attended many rallies and meetings across this country.

If the asinine accusation is made that most TPM people tend to be White, so, well, it is as equally true that most people, in this country, are of that designation as well. Thus, that absurd and false accusatory statement of a White majority, being quite obviously involved with the TPM, is just totally nonsensical, meaning, of course, as it so directly pertains to any baseless charge that racism motivates such people, in their cause for the support of economic liberty.

Absolutely no racial or other such minorities are being cited and denounced as the intended scapegoats for the economic and related troubles afflicting this nation. The ongoing economic depression, which most people call a great recession, is not being blamed upon either legal or illegal aliens. Masses of people are, however, truly angry at what the Federal government has been repeatedly doing, at the hands of Obama and the Democratic Party-controlled US Congress (the latter since January 2007), to wrongfully transform this nation into a social-democratic/collectivist country.

The major and sustained opposition to collectivism is, indeed, quite popular in its general and quite widespread origins, though not, definitionally speaking, populist in any way, shape, or form, within the scope of American history, as has been properly noted.

And, that ought to be the final definitive proof, though actually completely unneeded, given in easy and notable defense of the Tea Party Movement fully demonstrating that it is not, in any way whatsoever, a (truly) populist movement. What happened, on November 2, 2010, was a truly clear case of “Atlas Shrugged,” in the true spirit of the anti-Big Government sentiments of Ayn Rand, as even, e. g., Rush Limbaugh had so freely admitted.