Comments on: The Religion of the Tea Party: A Cautionary Tale to Scholars

By: JDLoRusso

JDLoRusso — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 17:54:35 +0000

Lindy, Your point is well taken. I do think that your position is quite salient in that certainly compromise and discourse are NOT virtues emphasized in the circles of the extreme right. However, it appears that the only option that you leave for progressives is to employ the same tactics from the left and abandon these virtues as well. I’m not suggesting that we naively enter into bargaining with our political adversaries, but I believe that principles that are essential to a functioning democracy must be upheld if we are not ultimately seeking an authoritarian politics ourselves. In fact, I’m only saying that by taking their frustrations seriously (not necessarily as truth), we can better understand the sources of the malignancy and, ultimately,progressives are better equipped to change the direction of our national debate. In a sense, it appears to me as if the progressives (not nearly all progressives) lack even a loose consensus about how to engage this current climate, and many seem content to just sit by and complain about “the lunacy” on the right while not attempting more fruitful forms of activism. All in all, if dialogue and respect don’t work, then aren’t we really saying that democracy is an untenable form of government?? I, for one, am not ready to make this claim

By: Lindy

Lindy — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 16:45:27 +0000

I think I’m probably echoing much of what’s been said by previous commenters. But my perspective is that of someone who has been (for the better part of a decade) one of the few progressive voices in an academic institution (with a very explicit religious affiliation) that has been sliding toward the right with increasing rapidity.

Here’s the thing. The very notion of attempting to listen to, understand, appreciate the perspectives of those in the tea party movement is a notion that is grounded in certain principles that the tea partiers don’t subscribe to. While we on the left are naively talking about “taking them/their agenda seriously” or “trying to hear what they’re saying” or “coming to the bargaining table,” they are exploiting this naivete in order to consolidate gains and control the rhetorical space.

I have watched over the last few years at my institution as the progressives have consistently lost ground (they’ve pretty much been routed as of this year) by making these very same naive attempts. And those on the right have utilized the bargaining table as a screen to hide the byzantine and authoritarian maneuvers they were actually engaged in, all while the progressives were patting themselves on the back and mumbling about “transparency” and “conversation.”

It’s a lot less subtle at the Fox/Beck/Tea Party level, but the same basic setup is in place. At what point do we on the left begin to acknowledge that tolerance has limits, and that listening to incoherent, nativist, racist rants should not be on the agenda. Time for the revolution.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 23:57:01 +0000

W, I’m not sure if I am the ‘marginally sympathetic’ person you are looking for, but if you want to understand the tea party grass roots, I would point to the American history lessons of middle- and high-school textbooks. Just like there’s a whole generation of Chinese little prince(sse)s brought up on grandiose notions of Chinese history and China’s place in the world, I think there’s a vast swath of middle America that has been taught something about the American social contract that has been long out of sync with the reality of modern America. As they look at the financial crisis and what’s followed, they realize how much the establishment’s vision (and the actual operation) of America differs from their own. Their vision, and what I think you’ll find if you peer into their history schooling, is that America is a place of equal opportunity guaranteed by the unobstructed functioning of free markets, and of individual rights but few, if any, social obligations. I think the American left has a hard time understanding that vision — given the plain reality of racial and economic relations, they can’t see how you could possibly connect equal opportunities to unfettered free markets — but nevertheless the vision is there and it’s internally consistent as long as you never collide with the unseemly underbelly of life in the US. And if you live in a homogenous community in rural America, you may never. I would also point out that people who have been told to accept their place in our purported meritocracy can become its radical defenders — call it Stockholm syndrome if you want.

By: Hts

Hts — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:02:54 +0000

Jfuller: that is just your opinion dude..

By: JDLoRusso

JDLoRusso — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:38:06 +0000

W, thanks for your comment here, becuase I do share in your frustration of finding voices with which to converse in the Tea Party movement. Still, painting the individuals that participate OR agree with the “platitudes” espoused by their leading voices (Beck, Palin, etc.) as nonsensical or insane (your words) simply performs the same demonizing of the “other side” of which you accuse them. Before dismissing the frustrations of the Tea Partiers as the result of some great manipulation of the unsophisticated masses, we might want to look more closely at why the movement resonates so strongly with people. Progressives will not succeed in opening dialogue in any other way. Would you care to listen to someone who labeled your own views as nonsense or as a sect/cult and not genuine political activism? Probably not, I presume. These people, no matter how much progressives wish, are not going to vanish. They are, after all, our fellow citizens and we need to keep that in mind when confronting them. Otherwise, we only contribute to the polarization that we so loathe

By: W

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:19:17 +0000

“his type of rhetoric, so prototypical of all the progressive polemics against the Tea Party, an important goal is dismissed: any attempt to take the grievances and positions of the Tea Party movement seriously. In order to converse with the Tea Party, after all, the left must listen to them first.”

Converse with who? The Tea Party prides itself on being decentralized and ostensibly grass roots — although anybody worth taking seriously knows that it’s half astroturf.

Grievances? Is there any *specific* policy the Tea Party is upset about? Because every time I read anything, it’s all general platitudes and vague boogeymen: “washington insiders”, “big government spending”, “higher taxes” (which increases are we talking about, again?), and best of all “socialism”. The most specific opposition I can think of — on health care — was time and time again weak if not insane, confusing the private but regulated plan under discussion for socialized insurance (e.g. Canada) and in turn with socialized actual care (e.g. England)…. when we got a chance to move the discussion beyond nonsense like “death panels”.

Positions? Has the Tea Party published a platform of any kind?

IMO, the reason the Tea Party isn’t taken seriously by a lot of people is that there doesn’t appear to be any “there” there, at least on the policy front. If I’m missing a substantial discussion that’s going on (but somehow, no doubt, subverted or ignored by the mainstream media, right?) by all means, feel free to point me to it. I’d be *ecstatic* to actually be able to engage with someone in or even marginally sympathetic to the Tea Party that takes their own ideas seriously enough to actually bother with articulation.

By: Kenny Smith

Kenny Smith — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 15:07:15 +0000

I think the author raises a number of excellent points here, perhaps most of all that those of us who make career of studying religion inherit a profound responsibility for contributing to broader cultural debates in a constructive manner. What a superb and potent reminder!

By: JDLoRusso

JDLoRusso — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:20:34 +0000

Thanks for the comments so far… J. Fuller, I do appreciate your concerns about the objectivity of my words. However, I’m not sure where I call names. Still, you’re right, this article is not for submission to a scholarly journal, but rather for general readership, and this was precisely the point about which I am writing. When scholars speak to the public, simply reinforcing sterotypical imagery of those on the political right, in this case the Tea Party movement, works against productive dialogue. In this way, objectivity is not necessarily a goal here (and I would honestly hesitate to claim such a goal even in work intended for scholarly audiences), but rather calling on those of us in the field of religious studies to remember that our public voice should be illustrative and inclusive, not “otherizing.” Thanks for reading…

By: J. Fuller

J. Fuller — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:19:00 +0000

How incredibly objective, rife with name calling and euphemisms. Not sure how many intellectual “debates” are characterized by such. My guess would be there are no plans to submit this article to a scholarly journal.

By: J.F. Sullivan

J.F. Sullivan — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 03:35:33 +0000

Unfortunately this seems like yet another unintended consequence of the mutliculturalist approach to identity that tends to affect and infect all areas where identification and ideology meet. Whether someone adopts an ethno-racial, national, political, religious, or sexual identity – a predetermined ideology and set of positions tend to come along with it. Thus, if I am a Republican, Tea Partier, Evangelical etc., by my very adoption of that identity, I then have to sign on for whatever agenda is being pushed by that group and fight to the death, even if that means making decisions or taking positions that defy logic or even common sense. In this case Schmalz is attempting to re-position the Tea Party as religious, and plug them into an identity category for which there is an already established oppositional identity and ideology camp, which might include atheists, rationalists, scientists and scholars – in addition to any politically motivated opposition that already existed. If this is indeed the case, can we ever get to a place for discussion if the so-called middle ground has ceased to exist? If positions on both sides of any discussion have become so profoundly entrenched and polarized, have we moved past open dialogue to the point where the only way to manifest a conversation is to engage it from within the worldview of the opponent using the opponent’s accepted interpretations of reality?

For example, if you are trying to have a discussion with a scriptural literalist who believes that dinosaurs and humans must have coexisted in order to satisfy Genesis, is there a scientific argument available that will allow you to engage that person, or is the only real way to start a dialogue to accept the Genesis premise and proceed from within that context? Just like Israel/Palestine – if the two sides are fighting a cosmic war, how effective are traditional peace negotiations with their decidedly uncosmic outcomes going to be?