Not dupes
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 2011
UKIAH
DAILY JOURNAL
To
the Editor:
The
Ukiah Valley Patriots sponsored a 12-week course on the U.S. Constitution this
winter, from January 18 to April 5, using the Constitution and The Federalist [Papers]
as texts. Ron Cannon was our instructor and class attendance varied from 39 to
a hard core of 20 participants. Some of us were frankly amazed at the
willingness of so many to grapple with a not so easy to read 18th Century
Founding American text: it was a group of mostly middle aged to elderly
Americans, many of them with jobs and families to support who took time out
from their busy lives to take a class for no credits other than to have a
better understanding of their country’s founding documents. Many interesting and
stimulating discussions ensued and despite a recent disparaging Letter to the
Editor from Robin Sunbeam (March 7,
2011, “Feeling Powerless”) there was a lot less spin in that class
than there generally is from our so-called Mainstream Media.
Although
a majority of the participants were either tea party members or conservatives,
several progressives also participated and always felt welcome to contribute
their point of view. To say the least, they were always cordial but never shy
about expressing their differences of opinion. One can only hope that one day
American institutions of “higher learning” could be as respectful of diverging
points of view.
The
reason we’re writing this letter is to counter certain misrepresentations in
Ms. Sunbeam’s letter about both the Constitution Class and the tea party
movement. First of all, although Ms. Sunbeam did attend one tea party meeting,
ostensibly to check us out, she never attended a single Constitution Class
meeting. Therefore, she has no evidence whatsoever to conclude that “[t]hey are
teaching a class on the Constitution that spins it into a charter for free
enterprise rather than a charter to protect individual and collective rights.”
We might add that while the Bill of Rights was added to protect individual rights,
there was very little in the Constitution to promote free enterprise or
collective rights, unless by that term, Ms. Sunbeam means State’s Rights. The
Constitution was mainly a founding document to increase the power of the
central government after the Articles of Confederation had failed to produce a
viable national government, according to the logic of the Founders. But the
Constitution also limited and dispersed power in a tripartite Federalist
system; or in other words, it was a document that limited the power of a
central government to ride rough shod over the rights of individual Americans
and the several states. Of course, it was a far from perfect document, but with
seventeen Amendments since the original Bill of Rights, it has withstood the test
of time.
As to
Ms. Sunbeam’s misrepresentations of the tea party movement: it appears that she
gets all of her information from far left blogs or news programs. There has
been a concerted effort on the part of the left to portray the tea party as a
bunch of wild eyed radicals or “extremists,” as the recent gaffe made by
Senator Schumer makes abundantly clear, when in reality they are mostly like
our local tea party group of middle and working class Americans. While Ms.
Sunbeam claims that tea party participants “eat up the twisted lies being told
to them by the Koch-trained liars,” most members of the tea party have never
heard of the Koch Brothers and certainly aren’t trained by them (the last I
heard, the Koch’s were funding the libertarian Cato Institute). It may be
disconcerting to Ms. Sunbeam that the tea party is not a monolithic
organization that can be summed up in talking point catch phrases like “trained
by the Koch brothers” or “neocon fascists.” (I’ve generally assumed that when
people run out of coherent arguments they resort to name-calling,
misrepresentations, and distortions.) No, the tea party is not even one
organization, but rather a loose consortium of grass roots organizations made
up mostly of middle and working class Americans. One thing we share in common
is a love for our country as well as a generally shared belief that our country
has gone off the rails under the leadership of both political parties, as well
as the business and media elites that think they know what's best for us while
they bankrupt the country. Quite frankly, if that’s the best they can do, we’d
be better off without them.
While
numerous Republican operatives and perennial candidates have jumped aboard the
tea party bandwagon, the tea party is not the Republican Party. Even so, it has
been a leftist tactic to conflate the tea party with the Republican Party, one
day blaming the tea party “extremists” for forcing the Republicans into holding
the line on the debt limit, while on the next day, blaming the tea party for
all the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Administration. The truth of the
matter is that the Republican Party establishment is not all that thrilled
about the challenges from the tea party as anyone who keeps track of current
events is sure to know. Both the Republican and Democratic parties have been
feckless and fiscally irresponsible, but the fact of the matter is, there has
been a lot more willingness on the part of disgruntled conservatives and
libertarians to tackle the problem of deficit spending and our monstrous
national debt, which made it tactically more feasible for the tea party to
challenge the status quo in the Republican primaries, rather than the
Democratic majority in 2010. As an example of why this is so, just look at the
current budget battles in Congress. The tea party movement has pressured
Boehner into proposing $61 billion in cuts from a budget of $3.7 trillion: That
comes out to about 1.6 percent, not enough to make much of a dent, but about
double what the Congressional Democrats are proposing, and as for Obama’s
“tough cuts,” one would need a microscope to find them. When will the political
leadership in this country finally become serious about dealing with our debt
and budget woes? Before the nation goes bankrupt and the dollar is worthless,
or are they waiting for an even bigger crash than 2008? Finally, we might add,
most tea party members did not favor bail outs for the Wall Street scoundrels
that got us into the current financial mess, unlike the political
establishments for both major parties, so one might ask, who really is beholden
to those Ms. Sunbeam calls the “filthy rich”?
P.S.
Ms. Sunbeam finally attended the last Constitution Class meeting. We think she
enjoyed the intellectual give and take, and hopefully, she now has a more
accurate perspective about the class, and the fact that we’re not all a bunch
of “Koch-trained” dupes, whatever that means.
Mark
Amagi, Redwood Valley
Lou
and Betty Morgan, Ukiah
Dave
and Kathy Lowe, Redwood
Valley
Mike
and Brenda Smith, Willits
Ron
and Katherine Cannon, Ukiah
Duane
and Deborah Grilli, Ukiah
Dave
Olson, Philo
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