Note: On the advice of the editor, this essay is being split into 4 posts. This is Part 1.
I’m troubled by recent movements to “organize” the Tea Party. Being local, simple and unorganized is the only true advantage it has over the Democrats and Republicans – and the current, broken political system that is derailing this country.
The roots of the Tea Party movement are grass. Always have been, and as we see it grow (and various political ambitions grow from it), it inevitably will become something else. And this new form is not what the Tea Party is about. Time to ignore – and stay out of -- the national organization movements.
The best way to expand the power of the Tea Party is by expanding the number of small groups. Not by centralizing into one big group.
As the tide of discontent in this country rises, the grass roots are in danger of being washed away in the flood of ambition to be more than it should be.
Thanks to some big political, ambitious, personalities – including Glenn Beck, and the organizers of this Nashville event – the Tea Party is now in danger of becoming an organized "association" with one leader and one website and one preamble, etc. When groups do this, bureaucracy and dysfunction inevitably follow.
That's why founder Patrick Moore no longer associates himself with Greenpeace. That's why the founder of the Weather Channel, John Coleman, shakes his head in disbelief at the mainstream monster he helped create. It's also a good part of why our two major political parties really do not represent the true interests of their constituents.
There are two ways the Tea Party can go – trying to become a “third party” or remaining very active, relatively small, scattered, localized movements that influence politics from the ground up. The latter strategy won the American Revolution.
The Tea Party should remain many individual parts, scattered all over the country, not a highly-organized political machine. It will function better as a “system” this way. And it will be impossible to defeat, destroy or marginalize.
After writing this, I found a guy who has similar thoughts:
http://bigjournalism.com/rfutrell/2010/02/09/its-the-constitution-stupid-what-the-tea-partiers-really-want/
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I believe the move to "organize" the Tea Party is from the outside, to pigeon hole the movement. The article you linked to on Big Journalism mentions you can't dehumanize a mass movement...you need a figure head. The Tea Party has no figure head and we had better not get one. I agree with him completely that we should rally round the constitution and nothing else.
ReplyDeletewell said...don't stop telling others about our Constitution!
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