Take a look at the Tea Party (TP) advertisement headed “Tiftarea Tea Party Patriots Release Straw Poll”, on page 8A, of the 18 July 2010, Tifton Gazette. Skip the names and numbers and look down near the bottom right at the list of six “objectives,” No.  4 of which reads “Eliminate individual income tax, and institute a national sales tax to fund militia and national infrastructure.”

There is no indication of what is meant by “national infrastructure,” so I won’t comment on it except to say that it is probably something you would wish could be taken back if it is ever put in place. And I won’t mention the issue of income tax versus a national sales tax here except to say that it is a frequent refrain of the far right. What I want to focus on instead is the objective to “fund [a] militia.”

Why do you suppose the TP would want to fund a militia? How many legitimate and well-regulated military and paramilitary organizations do we already have that can you think of? Well, there are these, for starters: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, National Guard, Reserves, DEA, ICE, ATF, FBI, state police, county sheriff, city police and many more. Neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party has a paramilitary force beholden to them. If they need security, local police can provide it. All of the military and police units listed above (as well as those not mentioned) are under the control of the executive branches of the respective local, state, and federal governments. None exist under the auspices of political parties, quasi-political organizations, or religious groups, except illegally.

So I ask again, why would the TP want to fund a militia? It could be for no good reason. A legal and functional system is already in place for the election and, if needed, the impeachment of government officers and judges. Who would the TP send their militia to fight? The people? The government in Washington that doesn’t give them their way? Other parties who oppose them? Other religions that disagree with their narrow views? 

I anticipate that one reply would be that such a militia would protect state’s rights against an “encroaching” federal government. But the governors of each state already have a National Guard and state police. Any perceived “encroachment” is only a political opinion or even merely an excuse of the TP and the far right to oppose the operation of the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution.

Another reply might be that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution provides for a militia. On the contrary, it does not; it merely discusses gun ownership rights with respect to the militia that was already in place before the Revolutionary War and which gradually went out of existence with the formation of the standing Army after 1787.

If the federal government is such a bogey, why have the Republicans and Democrats not proposed diversion of federal income tax revenues for their own political or religious benefit or to fund their own militias? The answer, whether you agree or not in detail with their platforms, is that the Republicans and Democrats are largely responsible (no irony intended) political parties with a tradition of responsible representative government behind them. The Tea Party has no such record. Indeed, the Tea Party gives every indication of being a narrowly sectarian gun culture bent on benefitting only itself and serving as a magnet and haven for jingoistic chauvinism. 

A private militia would be a tool for maintaining the TP in power. You can be assured that such a militia would not be “well regulated,” as required in the Second Amendment. Don’t be so foolish as to imagine that, once empowered, it would go quietly away at your polite request.

Again, if the federal government is such a bogey that the TP wants to maintain a militia in readiness against it or to use it to thwart lawful federal action under the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, then the TP should drop the “patriot” self-label, put away the US flag, and stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance because such a militia and its sponsors would be composed of patriots to something other than the US.

Before throwing your lot in with an entity such as the Tea Party, I suggest that you take the time and trouble to read a small book on the subject of mass movements, “The True Believer,” by Eric Hoffer (1951). Hoffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Reagan in 1983. Despite its title, the book is only marginally about religion in mass movements and is not about the TP specifically, since that organization did not exist in 1951.

In the Preface, speaking of “the true believer,”, Hoffer writes “…whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.” In section 83, Hoffer writes “To maintain itself, a mass movement has to order things so that when the people no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force.” In another of Hoffer’s books, “The Temper of Our Time” (1967), he writes “Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.”

Dick Marti

Tifton