White supremacists
I’ve been thinking about the comment by “Mike in Ontario, NY”, that the TEA Party is merely a cover for white supremacists and racists. What is exceptionally foolish about this comment is that any reasonable white supremacist would oppose the TEA Party and its goals.
One of the points that Walter Williams makes repeatedly is that individuals cannot afford to engage in systematic (society-wide) discrimination. He argues that systematic discrimination has to be enforced by the government, or it will fail.
Dr. Williams points out that, in apartheid South Africa, there were laws restricting the kinds of jobs blacks could hold — and white employers were charged with and convicted of violating those laws. Why did white employers take that risk? Because it was in their individual interest to employ the best available workers in the jobs for which they were best suited. It is only government — which has no concern for the bottom line — which can demand and enforce the inefficiency of refusing to place the best workers in the right jobs.
Likewise, Dr. Williams points to the segregated buses in the South, and observes that the bus companies resisted segregation — they fought the laws requiring segregation, and when they lost, they disobeyed the laws until they were threatened with legal action. Why would they refuse to humiliate black people when the law not only allowed but required it? Because those black people were their customers, and they didn’t want to drive off their customers. Only a government can ignore the bottom line and deliberately humiliate a class of people regardless of the economic effect.
Getting back to the TEA Party, the tea-partiers wish to reduce the scope of government and increase the scope of individual decision-making. This makes systematic discrimination more difficult rather than less, which would not be a desirable outcome for white supremacists.
You may reply that systematic discrimination is illegal in the United States, and indeed that the Federal Government is hostile to the goals of white supremacists. Well sure it is … now. But what basis is there for the Federal Government to be hostile to the goals of white supremacists? What reason is there for systematic discrimination to be illegal?
It has long been thought that the Constitution demands equal rights under the law, but we have seen that the Constitution is, well, less honored than previously. It is not self-executing. If all three branches get together and decide that, say, freedom of speech means freedom to say what the law allows when the law allows it, to those whom the law allows to hear it (McCain-Feingold) … well, there’s not much left of the Constitution, is there?
So what is there to stop the Federal Government from deciding that “equal rights under the law” means dramatically different rights for different groups? Can that happen?
The insane spending currently engaged in by Congress can end only in disaster. I do not know what the disaster will be, though I think Zimbabwean-style inflation is the probable end-game. Whatever the ultimate disaster, with a black President, don’t you think the white supremacists would seize the opportunity — the same opportunity a certain dictator of the 20th century seized — to blame all of the nation’s troubles on a specific racial group? Don’t you think they would be in an exceedingly strong position to take power? And once they were in power, with the nation in turmoil and the precedent established that the rights guaranteed by the Constitution are not in fact guaranteed … how long would equality under the law last?
The tea-partiers want to avert the looming disaster by reining in spending. They want to re-establish the principle that the United States is a Constitutional republic. Why on Earth would white supremacists support the tea-partiers? On the contrary, I would expect white supremacists to be the most enthusiastic supporters of the Federal Government’s race to ruin.