On the way to California I read Jill LePore’s new book
The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History
. It’s not a narrative of the new movement. It’s an argument that the Tea Party movement is “a product of a reactionary version of American history that took hold during the crisis over the bicentennial,” the latest spin on “the founding” that distorts history for a purpose.
She actually digs up history that has been largely forgotten, mostly about the celebrations around the bicentennial, from roughly 1970 to 1976*. At the time, liberal activist Jeremy Rifkin ran an organization devoted to branding the bicentennial for the New Left.
The Peoples Bicentennial Commission published America’s Birthday: A Planning and Activity Guide for Citizens’ Participation During the Bicentennial Years . It called on ordinary Americans to form TEA Parties (the acronym stood for Tax Equity for Americans) because the country needed “a new party, a movement that will treat tax reform as one aspect of a fight for genuine equality of property and power and against taxation without representation.” It urged Tea Party organizers to use the slogan, “Don’t Tread On Me.” The book included step-by-step instruction:
You might also consider staging your own events in places with captive audiences. How about a “King George Exhibit” of tax avoiders in some public park, with pictures and charts of the loopholes they use? How about forums on Tax Day, or on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party – in front of IRS or H. & R. Block.
The Coffee Party, a “response” to the Tea Party that I haven’t really seen anyone take seriously, fails for a number of reasons. But a big one is surely that its organizing principle is agreement and togetherness. Movements – especially movements that hijack the spirit of 1773 – are about anger.
[Correction: The original version of this post referred to “1770 to 1776 instead of “1970 to 1976.”]
