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Tea Party Populism:
What Would the Founders Say?
With their homemade signs begging for fiscal common sense and a return to constitutional government, the Tea Party Movement has been a unique phenomenon in the American political scene and a unique brew of American populism. It is true that populism can be a destructive force, especially when passion rules reason. However, a populism that advocates limited government and constitutionalism - while still capturing the general discontent of the nation - is compatible with and beneficial to republican self-government. Such populism (tea party style) is consistent with the Founders' vision for our nation.
The Founders were very aware of the dangers of a populism that elevated passion over reason. In Federalist 49, James Madison argued that it was suicidal for a nation if "the passions...not the reason, of the public would sit in judgment." Thomas Jefferson decried the characterization of the United States as a democracy, because "democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people rule the other forty-nine." Alexander Hamilton echoed these sentiments saying, "[T]he voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right." With this in mind, the Founders established a constitutional government with institutions to channel and check popular passion, while deriving its power from the consent of the governed.
Passionate populism was not the only danger to self government. Rule by scientific expertise—such as the one Angelo Codevilla described—also threatened republican self government. The Founders, far from the progressive model of administration by experts, supported governance by those with, in the words of James Madison, the "most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society." Their concern was with electing the best potential leader, not with giving the person with the most expertise a legislative fiat to act however they wish.
But the Tea Party Movement, despite its portrayal on MSNBC, is neither a wayward mob nor racially motivated hate group. As Matthew Spalding noted when awarding the Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship to the Tea Party Movement, "The debate between America's Founders and the modern progressive paradigm of government…has now been engaged in the public square;" the Tea Party has embraced the Founders' vision while fully rejecting the progressive paradigm. This revival of thought grounded in the permanent truths of the founding, by average citizens interested in nothing more than returning our nation to its founding principles, has animated "a deepening commitment and advocacy of the truths of the Declaration of Independence and the basic principles of the United States Constitution." This is a rational populism that conservatives should not fear, but instead wholeheartedly embrace.
Keep Reading about Populism, Tea Party Style
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Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
~ Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 15
For more quotes, visit westillholdthesetruths.org
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