Loose Leaf

I don't fit in. I've known that for a very, very long time. Sometimes it has been a curse, sometimes a blessing, but it's always been a truth. Personally and politically, I'm a bit the odd one. But I've always been a dreamer. My early education focused on the founding of America through a patriotic and passionate lens, and that vision of the land of the free and the home of the brave melded itself inseparably with my own hopes and ideals.

Unfortunately, that proud vision of the land of our fathers became tattered as I grew up. It wasn't the political decisions of any man or woman. It wasn't some terrible war or traumatic truth. It was the toll of time and pragmatism. The bold lines of the portraits of framers and fathers were smudged; the edges of the constitution were tattered. There were no Jeffersons, Washingtons or Adams to be found. Politics could no longer be said to be about bringing ideals into reality and crafting the identity of a new and different people. It was a place of corruption, a place cut off from the practical concerns of the people it represented and the ideological ideas it should be aspiring to. It was discouraging, and the more I looked at it, the more disheartening it grew. So, like so many Americans, I turned away.

The ugliness of government continued to intrude, however. Government's power became increasingly invasive, and as I strove to succeed – to make my own small American Dream coalesce into reality - I found myself more and more frequently encountering both the government's influence and the opinions of those I worked with regarding the government and its courses of action. They felt helpless, apathetic, disconnected. They complained. I complained. But we accepted, cowed by the massive leviathan of federal authority.

Then, on the radio, I heard about the Tea Party movement. I was enchanted. Admittedly, I heard no statement of principles, no particular credo, but I wasn't looking for one. The name was enough. Those two words, "tea party" invoked all of the dramatic images and exciting stories of fourth grade history. It was patriotic; it was glowing with the simple, heroic idealism of historical narrative. And, more than that, it promised something I had long ago given up on: heroic involvement and adventure in shaping the course of the mighty dream called America.

Perhaps logically, that image called to others as well. For all of the much vaunted failures of the educational system, it seems that the Boston Tea Party has enough dramatic potential to fire the imaginations of new generations. I believe that a great measure of that call came from the same source that sparked my imagination – it was a promise of involvement, a promise of heroism and adventure, a genuine opportunity to matter.

In an increasingly oligarchic almost exclusively two party system, the idea of individual Americans having the opportunity to be heroes, to emulate the often canonized, rarely examined "founding fathers" is almost irresistible. Weeks ago, I heard a radio host allege that modern criticism of America is no different than that of 50 years ago; America has always been self-critical. That may be true, but modern criticism bears a deep difference – it brings with it the bitter aftertaste of apathy. There is a sense that the nation is a decrepit juggernaut bearing its constituents to some inevitable, unknown end.

That sense of doom and apathy breeds desperation. It served as the leverage for the promises of change and the sometimes almost religious fervor that catapulted Barak Obama into office. It provided the fallow ground for the images of a 250 year old act of rebellion to draw people into the tea party movement.

With time and success, however, comes rationality. By modern standards, the Boston Tea Party was an act of vandalism and violence. It was a powerful statement – but it was also, technically, a criminal one. It was an act of a mob, and although it sent a powerful message, it was not the act of great men. Without the ideas and the passionate, sacrificial organization of the generals and delegates, the tea party would have been nothing more than another piece of mob violence.

In any ideal involving large numbers of people, the mob becomes a factor. "We the people" somewhere bleeds into "we the mob majority," and the pull of the lowest common denominator becomes an almost irresistible black hole that sucks in the last rays of dreams and ideals into its gravitational pit. The Greeks put harsh limitations on "democracy" in an attempt to prevent the lowest common denominator from dragging their decisions into mob rule. The Romans devolved from responsible representative government into the appeasement of the mob, and found that the mob cannot be appeased. They pillaged their own cities beside the invading barbarian tribes and then begged for government assistance to mediate the loss.

Without clear headed leadership - leadership that understands the concerns of the people and yet strives to protect individual liberty rather than placate base human greed and selfishness with appeasement and protectionism that dehumanizes those it claims to assist - political systems devolve into mob rule. Perhaps modern America appears more elegant with its iphones and internet outlets, but ideologically, we are still in the coliseum. The crowd chants and stamps its feet; politicians yield to opinion polls and fear bricks through their windows, and the people go mad with the smell of blood.

I started this blog because I need to speak. My imagination is still sparked by the idealized image of those early Americans clad as "natives," throwing tea into Boston harbor to show their hatred of an unresponsive, invasive government. But I believe that such dramatic violence without wise leadership and clearly elucidated principles is dangerous and destructive. The "Tea Party Movement" as it has been labeled has not yet produced any such leadership or any clear philosophy other than anger and an un-clarified identification with the revolutionaries at the birth of the nation.

I want to capture that sense of adventure and the idea of being able to re-birth a government of the people by the people. But I think that part of achieving that ideal is understanding it. This place is called loose leaf because I am unwilling to simply stay inside the bag of any party – tea or otherwise. I advocate passion, but I deplore the thoughtless violence of the mob. Perhaps if we can temper passion with knowledge of the men who crafted this dream called America, we may yet reclaim it and return, from the coliseum to the floor of the senate and the verbal violence of the chambers of Philadelphia rather than the stench of Boston Harbor.