Tea Party, past and present

Today a national group of anti-tax, anti-Big Government and anti-incumbent activists has coalesced under the banner of the Tea Party Movement in reference to the original Boston Tea Party of 1775. ( For more information on this, you may check my earlier posts on this : http://americanstudiesyear2.blogspot.com/2010/03/right-wing-extremism-in-us.html

These vocal critics of the governement have been referring to the American founders in their wish to take power back, that is away from the federal government. They have used the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence to argue for a return to the original American institutional framework. Was the Constitution truly the work of people who distrusted the State and favoured democracy?

The Economist offers an interesting study of the constitutional rhetoric of these Tea Party activists : The perils of Constitution worship. This passage is particularly relevant :

But many of the tea-partiers have invented a strangely ahistorical version of it. For example, they say that the framers’ aim was to check the central government and protect the rights of the states. In fact the constitution of 1787 set out to do the opposite: to bolster the centre and weaken the power the states had briefly enjoyed under the new republic’s Articles of Confederation of 1777.

If we look back to the debates about the Constitution and the nationwide discussion that took place during the nine month ratification process, it is pretty clear that the Constitution was defended by a group of people who wanted a powerful central government.

Today's Tea Party movement would certainly have sided with the Anti-Federalists who argued against ratification. Our "modern-day anti-federalists" have picked a strange fight !