The Tea Party movement coalesced around disgust with trillion dollar bailout stimulus slush funds, and solidified around opposition to health care nationalization. Other than that, and a general anti-incumbency bias, it’s a real hodgepodge with no clear platform. So why the potshots?

It’s a common theme at FPR: Set up a strawman, call him a conservative, Republican, rightwing, teabagger, dittohead or whatever, then tear him down. But why? It appears the writers here fear being mistaken for one of “them”, the politically incorrect rubes, peasants and great unwashed.

And so we get the gratuitous posturing. Too bad, because it weakens an otherwise strong argument, and alienates a potentially supportive group. Very supportive.

One thing Wendell Berry achieved was bringing “those types” of people into the localist and environmentalist movements. Try to follow his good example, and not undo his good work.

Essays on localism and the economy should stick to the subject. When it becomes necessary to invoke specifics, stick to positions (like corporate funded politics) and forbear wholesale attacks on general groups. After all, isn’t that what “they” do, with their attacks on Democrats, illegals, liberals, or whatever?

I enjoy reading your posts, and I agree with much of what you say. I think Freddy makes a good point here, though, in his comment about the tea partiers (my disappointment in that crowd is the topic for another time). Do we want a free society where people are left to choose the for themselves what type of “togetherness” they want? Or do we want a society that is directed in its transactions and its associations from some (ostensibly) benevolent and well-meaning centralized bureaucracy? I would certainly prefer the former, and that is the position of the libertarian. Not that we want evil corporations to take advantage of all the helpless little people. From what I read, I get the feeling that your thinking tends a little too much toward Marxism, which I believe history has proven to be a fatally flawed and harmful philosophy. As for this longing to “build something of our own,” I could not agree more that it is a real and sorely felt sentiment by most Americans. I guess the disagreement is in how to fulfill that need. I don’t count on our “leaders” to do anything other than work against and obstruct such an impulse.

For a different perspective on (I think) some of the underlying ideas in your piece, check out this piece:

http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/11/hurtling-down-the-road-to-serf

I suppose what I’m saying is this: the localist utopia that seems to be the end goal of most, if not all (Mr. Stegal excepted) Front Porchers is not possible in a society that is dictated from the top down. It can only be the result of a truly free society uninhibited by government interference (the usual libertarian disclaimer about the rule of law and need for govt. to enforce contracts applies here of course).

I, however, agree with Sam. We’ve worked hard for generations now to provide better for our children. My dad worked days on the farm and nights on an ambulance to provide better for himself and his kids. Work is fun for a while, my favorite jobs have always been on the farm, but I always get to go back to school when harvest is over. A lifetime of hard work is a hard lifetime. I understand the desire to work and produce what is tangible, but lets be wary of romanticizing a lifestyle that much of the world longs to be relieved of.

Think of Dunder Mifflin. We see the office and the people selling paper. Know what we never see? The paper mill. Ever been near one? It’s like something out of Mordor, in terms of look AND smell. So yeah. We all want to be Matthew Shepard, tinkering with a motorcycle. But how many people really want to live in a mill town? Not many, I can guarantee you that.

When I was in college I worked in a plant that built brakes for cars and trucks. It was tangible stuff! It was also back-breaking work on a press-line, where the temperature got up to 125 degrees. I bet the guy from Venice Beach would love it there for a while. But not for long.

Just keep in mind that there was a reason so many people in places like Pittsburgh and Buffalo worked really hard to send their kids to college. They wanted to give people a choice. And the choice still does exist. You can quit college and go to trade school. But not many people do. Despite the fact that there are lots of good jobs available for highly-skilled tradesmen.

Just saying.

I am a few years out of college, and I have been struck by the number of times I have heard my contemporaries say, “I just don’t think I made to work in an office,” as if they were the only one. No one wants to be a cog in a machine, whether physical or virtual, because it is offends our very humanity. To be a cog in a machine that is only aimed at making money, not things, is even more offensive; it denies our bodily nature and treats us as pure spirits.

On a completely separate note, I am grateful to the webdesigner for getting off the rolling format!

1) I am not a tea-partier but am close kin. Regarding what you say the tea-partiers miss: They do not necessarily aschew collective action. They simply desire for it to be voluntary. Indeed, much of your post centers around – but never mentions by name – the idea of authenticity. Relationships engineered from afar by DC bureaucrats are not authentic relationships at all. Let us have relations among men but let those relationships be spontaneous and borne of our own creativity, ingenuity, and neighborliness.

2) Re: Mistrust of SCOTUS CU ruling. Tea-partier/libertarians see through the classic business-versus-government ruse and recognize the incestuous relationship between the two institutions. Hence, the apprehension. These types tend to mistrust large-scale organization of any sort, especially when it is backed up by the coercive force of government. They correctly see the CU ruling as an avenue to greater special-interest influence over politics, not less. Their mistrust of the intersection of business and government may be greater than their mistrust of regulation alone.