A classic liberal looks at the Tea Parties from the grave
A plaque has hung in my home since 1997, when my wife (then a woman I’d been dating for exactly one day) bought me the plaque as a gift. It has meant a lot to me, and a picture of it appears below. I’ll tell you what it says in six more paragraphs, if you can hang in there (click on image for larger version).
Alfange's Creed
Now about those tea parties. Let me get right to the point. The left (and everyone informed by them) seems to either see something sinister about Tea Party protesters, or else think that Tea Party participants are ignorant of their own best interests, blindly forfeiting the marvelous benefits of our always unquestionably beneficent and selfless political leaders and national organizers in favor of serving the hated rich, and all without any knowledge of what we are doing.
“Don’t you know that you’re eligible for a $400 tax credit?”
Well, they’re wrong about all of that, but instead of going down the fruitless road of trying to convince the left of that, or of reaffirming what STACLU readers already know (that we are sincere, principled, genuine, concerned, and prepared to sacrifice for the good of our country in ways and reasons that the left is incapable of understanding and indisposed to recognize), I will try to put into words at least one of the primary themes of the Tea Party I attended in Orlando, Florida on tax day.
We don’t want free stuff that isn’t free. At least, we don’t want things that ultimately don’t amount to very much at the price of becoming dependent even in small ways, or at the price of having to continually give thanks, votes, and acquiescence to the powerful for (in Al Gore’s words) “enough for a diet coke a week” or (in Michelle Obama’s words) “a pair of earrings”. And what’s more, we don’t want “benefits” that we don’t necessarily need that are extracted by force either from our neighbors or from the debt that will be the legacy we leave to our children and grandchildren.
CNN reporter Susan Roegen famously interrupted an Illinois Tea Party attendee with the retort, “Don’t you know that you’re eligible for a $400 tax credit?“ And that, friends, is the point. That’s the whole story. Is it really impossible that some might comprehend that the cost in federal spending and debt to ourselves and future generations of that $400 tax credit (or diet coke, or pair of earrings) outweighs the benefit? Is it inconceivable? To the left it is. To the left it is nothing short of “insanity” to do a cost-benefit analysis of the current administration’s policies, or to have enough pride as a human being to want to provide for him or herself without having to look to our betters for the “hope” that human experience tells us comes from sources both more solid and more accessible than those wielding governmental power?
And that brings me back to my plaque. It begins with the words “I do not choose to be a common man.” When my girlfriend (who was to be my fiance two weeks later and my wife six months later) gave me that plaque, I did not know its author, and I didn’t know who wrote it for quite a while. Recently I found, through the wonders of the internet, not only who the author was, but that his creed had been reproduced in two magazines and in his Who’s Who In America entry. The identity of the author of the words on that plaque should serve as illustration of how very, very, very far we have drifted as Americans in our politics.
The author was Dean Alfange, proclaimed in his New York Times obituary to be a “liberal leader“. This was a man who not only found the Republican Party not up to his standards, but who also found the Democrat Party to not be liberal enough and joined up with the American Labor Party. Later Mr. Alfange took his politics a step further and founded the Liberal Party. The following are the words of this classic liberal leader of the 20th century, a self-professed man of the left who would likely today have far more in common with the Tea Party participants than he would the cynical critics on today’s left who long ago forgot what the word liberal even means. I’m certainly not the first blogger to post Mr. Alfange’s creed, but there’s no harm in doing it again. This shout-out from The Honorable Dean Alfange’s grave is dedicated to all who see nothing sincere, thoughtful, or substantive about the Tea Party participants:
I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon…if I can. I seek opportunity…not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself; enjoy the benefits of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, this I have done. All this is what it means to be an American.” –Dean Alfange
Thank you, Mr. Alfange, with apologies to any of his living relatives who may not agree with me. I appreciate your words and see your creed as validating the notion that there are, indeed, American values that transcend both time and left-right politics; and that while you and I may have clashed were we contemporaries, we would at least have in common a basic sense of dignity and pride in our self and abilities that chafes at the bit of a central government that not only takes too much, but promises more than a dignified person should want.
THAT is what the Tea Parties are about.
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Posted by ArrMatey on April 21, 2009 10:25 pm
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, Anti-Americanism, Anti-Capitalism, Conservatism, Economy, History, News, Tea Party/Protests, liberalism
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Where is Farmer Tom to poopoo the tea party goers as wanting to assassinate Obarfstain?