Sarah Churchwell: The wilful ignorance that has dragged the US to the brink

[xchrom]

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sarah-churchwell-the-wilful-ignorance-that-has-dragged-the-us-to-the-brink-2330179.html

Here's a monumental historical irony: a moment in the origins of the United States that every American schoolchild learns to view with pride, the Boston Tea Party, has now become a symbol of our (inter)national shame. In one sense, it is difficult to know what to say in response to the utter irrationality of the Tea Party's self-destructive decision to sabotage the American political process – and thus its own country's economy, and the global economy.

Last week, while the US government was locked in stalemate and risked defaulting on its national debt for the first time in its history (and thus also defying the Constitution that Tea Partiers supposedly hold sacred, which declares in the 14th Amendment that it is illegal for Congress to default), Michele Bachmann instructed her followers not to listen to those who attempted to "scare" them with untruths that the US would default if it didn't raise the debt ceiling. When, of course, that is precisely what it would have done. But the Tea Party has never let facts get in the way of its belief system, and now that belief system is genuinely threatening the wellbeing of the nation they claim to love.

Mottos are supposed to express a philosophy: in so far as the Tea Party can be said to have anything so exalted as a philosophy, their motto is quite telling. They are one of the most inaccurately named movements in American political history, but that inaccuracy is itself emblematic of the party's adamantine ignorance. Any American schoolchild can tell you the motto of the historical Boston Tea Party from which they take their name and – they mistakenly believe – their inspiration: "No taxation without representation."

Impatient with those extra two words, evidently, the Tea Party has truncated this proposition to something simpler: "No taxation." Never mind that the US has among the lowest levels of taxation in the developed world, matched only by Mexico and Chile (are these the nations the Tea Party would like to emulate?). Never mind that the nation's actual Founding Fathers were perfectly prepared to pay taxes – they just thought those taxes should purchase them a democratic voice in their own government.

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, xchrom.

[xchrom]

2. sure thing. nt

[TheWraith]

3. Um... no.

"and thus also defying the Constitution that Tea Partiers supposedly hold sacred, which declares in the 14th Amendment that it is illegal for Congress to default"

No, the 14th Amendment does not say that. It says:

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

In other words, precluding a fight by the former Confederate states against paying debts they were not party to incurring, or trying to pay debts they incurred in the course of fighting the civil war. There is nothing there that says Congress cannot limit the amount of the national debt, or even one word about default.

[dpbrown]

4. That argument won't fly any more than declaring the 2nd Amendment only applies to state militias

The clear language of the amendment is that the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned. That means that it's colorably illegal for the Congress to partake in this melodramatic stage-play for the benefit of the rich in the first place.

[FiveGoodMen]

5. And this is why I always lash out at the church

No one pushes willful ignorance like they do.

They teach young children to cherish it above all else.

(OR ELSE!)