re: #76 SpaceJesus

and they like to fantasize that the founding fathers would have been in favor of their anti-tax poseur rebellion against the federal government. I’d like to instruct the tea party folks to look up the Whiskey Rebellion and Shay’s rebellion and see how those turned out.

Economists talk about ‘revealed preferences’. You can look at peoples’ behavior and discern what they really really want. In this case, I’d say what the tea party movement wants is lower taxes and smaller government, not civil war.

They’ve taken no steps toward civil war, nor toward a putsch. There may be several reasons for this, and one of them surely is that it wouldn’t stand a chance. We all know this. They know it too. But another reason is probably that that’s not what they want anyhow. What does stand a chance is the project of electing some candidates who don’t have a long track record in politics and who would be less likely to acculturate to the Washington way of doing things. They’d be less likely to go along to get along, and they’d be steadfast in voting against further expansions to big government.

They’d probably be less inclined to believe mainstream science when it comes to AGW. This spirit of independent thinking that would be so much the signature of a tea party candidate can shade over with little effort into a spirit of rejecting even irrefutable evidence, just because it comes from the ‘establishment’.

They’d see themselves as patriots, which is fine. They might see their opponents as doubtful elements, which would be unfortunate. After the next election, we’ll have some actual winners to size up. One, five, a dozen, who can say? Then we’ll get some more ‘revealed preferences’ data.