merefaith: discipleship in the ruins of empire

The "Spirit of '76" is being invoked a lot lately. In the past year we have seen the "Tea Party" movement consciously adopt the symbols and rhetoric of the American Revolution as needed and applicable instruments of protest in the current political climate. Protesters show up to rallies waving Revolutionary-era flags, holding up signs proclaiming their continuity with the principles of the founders, and even wearing replica costumes of statesmen and soldiers.

I've been entering another kick of reading about the American Revolution and the early American experience and just the other day I decided to enter "american revolution" as a search term on the Youtube home page. The majority of videos that were listed on the opening page were not documentary pieces about history but political videos promoting the need for a "Second American Revolution."

The idea of a second revolution has been invoked before, of course. The label has been affixed to the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Some of the founders may have even envisioned a regular reoccurrence of "little revolutions" every couple of decades in the calling of constitutional conventions to address new reforms.

Unlike the liberal critics of the Tea Party movement that I have read, I have some sympathy for the protesters. They are not simply racist, ignorant wingnuts but concerned individuals and families reacting to uncertain times. However, I do agree with the liberal critics that the Partiers are generally incoherent. There is no need further to belabor the point that they were not out in force as a white president loaded the country with debt to fight two wars and engineer the bank bailout.

But beyond that fact the real incoherence I see is the adoption of the American Revolution as exemplary model for current political protest. I understand that mass rallies aren't places of critical nuance, but nevertheless I see a lot of confusion about what the Revolution was and was not. As many working-class Americans and women lionize the Founders they whitewash their biographies to invoke them as guiding spirits. But in truth the landed gentry and rising businessmen who make up the American pantheon would likely not be pleased with the Tea Party rallies. Many, if not most, of the participants in the movement would be denied the vote or the chance to hold office by the founders. These men generally supported the property qualifications set by the states for political participation, resisting the idea of full suffrage for white men - let alone blacks or women. They believed in the purportedly wise rule of the deserving, the "better" or at least "middling" sort that possessed land and education. They were terrified of any action on the part of the "mob" and resisted public demonstrations by a crowd of Average Joes (unless, of course, said crowds were managed by them). If a Hancock or a Morris were to hear the ignorant declaration to "keep your government hands off my Medicare" they would immediately call up the militia to disperse the "rabble."

This is not to suggest that the founders were simply evil elites. Elites they were, yes, but perhaps guided more by a paternalistic mindset and the blindness of their social position rather than any conspiratorial bent to oppress others. Some, like Jefferson, may have viewed the masses more favorably. But, in general, they supported what was truthfully a system of minority rule. Pennsylvania was the only Revolutionary-era state to adopt universal male suffrage, and New Jersey adopted women's suffrage in 1776 only to repeal it within a couple of decades.

But there is more to the Revolution than the visible white men on pedestals. It has become commonplace among scholars to speak of multiple revolutionary visions that were imagined and argued in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Instead of a unified, homogenous revolutionary movement there were competing factions and shifting alliances. The language of liberty was disseminated and shared across the social spectrum but it received multiple interpretations as it played in the minds of aristocrats, yeoman farmers, laborers, women and slaves. Some of the happenings of the Revolution were beyond the control or the wishes of the astounded founders as many took opportunity into their own hands.

The Tea Party is incoherent in that it wants to establish continuity with all these competing elements. Simultaneously, the protesters connect with Madison and Paine, the Constitution and Common Sense. In one video I saw one protester holding a sign that says "I believe in the Constitution." I doubt she is aware that the Constitution was a retrenchment by the elite founders against democratizing forces, as demonstrated in such works as Woody Holton's Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution and as acknowledged even by Gordon Wood, a scholar with a more positive view of the founders who argued for The Radicalism of the American Revolution. I also doubt many Tea Party participants are aware that Thomas Paine, upon returning to America in 1802 after a fifteen-year absence, believed that the ideals of the Revolution had been betrayed.

But such is the fate of history when it is made to serve current political needs and when its many shades are whitewashed in the name of idolatrous American exceptionalism. The American Revolution, a confused, tumultuous, violent spectacle, part triumph and part tragedy, has become a conflated unity and marbelized as the monumental backdrop to make any and every protest today noble because it is said to share a supposed common spirit.

Posted by Chris Schelin on Friday, March 12, 2010 at Friday, March 12, 2010 | Permalink