Organizing Vs Organizing - Road to the Middle Class

The president represents a worthy left-wing tradition. The young radical suit parachutes into an oppressed community and teaches it to come together in political action. Then, after a season, he leaves for greener pastures.

But the “tea party” movement inspired by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli belongs to a different tradition. You could call it the American tradition of political activism.

The Investors Business Daily takes note of the difference between the two organizing traditions. It’s interesting, they observe that our friends in the mainstream media don’t seem to interested in covering the tea parties. There’s a reason for that:

But the real reason the major media aren’t interested in these protests is that they don’t agree with them. In the final analysis, these affairs are really taking issue with the political party they helped elect without hiding bias in the last election.

That’s why a small scrum of Acorn-financed wackos on a bus tour to intimidate AIG execs last weekend made the news while the tea parties didn’t.

But I think that the tea parties are well served by MSM neglect. They are in the very early stages of building a true political force based on grass-roots support and political sentiment. They need to be out in the political wilderness while they organize, hammer out a manifesto, and sort out their leadership.

If the tea-party leaders were being interviewed on the MSM today they would get chopped up and made to look like bigoted fools. In another year, they could look serious and professional.

The problem for the MSM and for our liberal friends generally is that President is not just an “organizer” in the left-wing tradition. He is also a “leader.” He is like the Robert Redford character in The Candidate. President Obama never had a trial run at leadership, as a governor of a state or as a CEO in the business sector or armed forces. This will start to tell in the months ahead.

The years in opposition are crucial years. They present the opportunity to reconnect with the grass roots and find out what really upsets people and what they really want. That’s the value of the tea-party movement. If it grows and matures it will help crystallize the future of the United States.

The big problem in the US is that, because of the top-down “organizing” of our liberal activist friends, we just have no idea what the working class and underclass want. When they emerge from their century-long dependency on the Democrats we may be surprised.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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