Thursday, February 18, 2010

The Winning Framework

The Tea Parties should and must remain both independent and separate from the present national parties if they hope to survive and bear good fruit. If they fall for confidence-shills like Sarah Palin and join in the ol' boy network, willy nilly, they will disappear faster than March snows in April. Palin is nothing more than a Lorelei mole leading them to their destruction on the Scylla or the Charybdis.

Some say they should join the RNC in the hope of changing it. I submit that if they do so they will become like the blushing bride who married a bad man to "change him." They simply will fail and ruin their own life in the process, as well as the lives of their children.

However, remaining independent does not mean they should remain utterly disorganized and isolated from one another. Independence, by its very nature, does not imply isolation but relationship. In fact, the equality of independent entities is really the only valid condition for effective cooperative alliance. In contrast, joining a larger, more powerful entity means ultimate annihilation, almost always ending in disillusionment and utter loss of identity.

The image of the foolish blushing bride should remain ever in the minds of the Tea Party people when others make friendly overtures. This does not mean every invitation should be rejected, de facto. Doing so would be as much a mistake as just jumping on the bandwagon of any Joe Blow who passes by. Careful reasoned examination of past history, not knee-jerk foxhole paranoia, should be arbiter of what steps should be taken in each instance. Such a measured approach will help avoid irrevocable mistakes and prevent the irretrievable loss of genuine opportunity.

The real question of the moment (with momentous implications) is not whether the Tea Party should or should not organize within their own ranks, but how they can do so to be nationally effective when necessary, without loss of local autonomy and indepedence. Consider this: a centrally controlled party whose avowed purpose is to deconstruct a centrally controlled Empire and return it to republican, Constitutional proportions is a glaring contradiction. The cognitive dissonance can only be sustained for a brief time before disaster; something would have to give.

In order to avoid both the disaster of being co-opted and the politics of compromise and contradiction, I suggest the Tea Party should nationally organize around the original framework of these United States: the Articles of Confederation.

This framework did an excellent job of preserving state and sectional independence while still making efficacious cooperation in national concerns possible. Consequently, it was the framework that Patrick Henry praised very highly in his anti federalist/ pro liberty speeches to Virginia's ratification committee in June of 1788.

Since then, the protestations, fears and objections the great Henry in outlined those speeches were not unwarranted, as many of his opponents insisted. Only a short unbiased examination of the events that followed shows Mr. Henry has been vindicated hundreds of fold. Virginia, of course, went ahead and ratified the new Constitution. But Henry's speeches where were not altogether fruitless, even at the time. They helped garner "We the People" the Bill of Rights. Since the day these first amendments were placed in the new Constitution and ratified with it they have been the bulwark of "We the People's" Liberty...and the thorn in the Statist's side. (That's just where the framers wanted it.)

If the Tea Party organized, taking the Articles as a model, then the local, regional and state chapters could retain needed flexibility and independence, both in terms of $$ and the addressing of issues. Many who advocate the melding of the Tea Party with the RNC say loose organization is a weakness. But there are tremendous advantages in remaining locally independent and small: you can make changes quickly and move fast on the ground to accomplish your tactics. You also are more in touch with what is really happening. No doubt national organizations have some strengths due to their size, $$$ and central command structure, but they lack both the above enumerated virtues and many others as well, including the all important Spirit of true liberty.

A final instructive bit of history
The Framework of the Articles of Confederation provides the best of both worlds, and it worked great until the money men decided to run a scam to create a more powerful centralized government in order to line their own pockets. Here's how they did it: They hoped to do so by redeeming their own war bonds from the newly Centralized Government as well as the war bonds they had purchased from average citizens for pennies on the $$$. The plan was to then redeem them at full value. This, in fact, was eventually done, and large fortunes were made as a consequence.

Patrick Henry warned against the scheme from the begining, Jefferson referred to these mostly Yankee confidence men as "the moneyed Aristocracy," and George Mason, who actually stood to profit more than anyone from redeeming his own bonds, refused to sign on to the Constitutional Scam, which had been initially proposed by Mr. Hamilton at the Annapolis Convention in 1786. As Yankees skipper, Casey Stengel, was fond of saying to dumb-struck sports reporters, "If you don't believe it, you can look it up."

I believe using the framework of the Articles as a basis for successful co-operation is a formula for both short and long-term success. Remember, the Patriots of the Revolution did not ultimately defeat the British army by direct confrontation, but by asymmetrical warfare. The framework I suggest here does just that. It also kept the baby of national cooperation safe while throwing out the bathwater of consolidation and tyranny. It did so then, and it can now as well.

The Tea Party people need to learn a little history in order to avoid making history's mistakes.

2 comments:

  1. People will say that a third party will only insure that the Democrats win. The Republicans are using that threat and saying you better join us, but at what cost? I will not vote for another Neo-con John Macain , Rick Perry, Sara Palin establishment republican. If they want to win they better produce real grassroots conservatives like Debra Medina and stop trying to destroy them. I WAS a life long Republican......

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  2. Chuck I could not agree more. My propose formation under the Articles does not form a third "party" as we understand the form our national parties have taken. It forms a loosely connected network of watch dogs, all operative and blooming in their own individual communities dealing with their own local issues, yet, because of communications, are able to cooperate and coordinated to send assistance to other sister chapters when needed. Local independence/national cooperation on larger, more principled issues. This gets the job done both locally and nationally. And remember, almost all national politicians were once local; that's where the seeds of corruption start, it only flowers on the Potomac.

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