Now that the Tea Party is being credited with a couple of anti-incumbent primary victories around the country, they have become the subject of serious intellectual (which is to say liberal) scrutiny.  Commentators trying to "make sense" of the Tea Party "movement" (further legitimizing it in the process) are now writing thoughtful, empathic analysis about it everywhere from the New York Times to the New York Review of Books.

A prime example is a post in the Times online by J.M. Bernstein, University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research and the author of five books:

Tea Party anger is, at bottom, metaphysical, not political: what has been undone by the economic crisis is the belief that each individual is metaphysically self-sufficient, that one’s very standing and being as a rational agent owes nothing to other individuals or institutions. The opposing metaphysical claim, the one I take to be true, is that the very idea of the autonomous subject is an institution, an artifact created by the practices of modern life: the intimate family,the market economy, the liberal state.  Each of these social arrangements articulate and express the value and the authority of the individual; they give to the individual a standing she would not have without them.

If stated in enough detail, all these institutions and practices should be seen as together manufacturing, and even inventing, the idea of a sovereign individual who becomes, through them and by virtue of them, the ultimate source of authority.  The American version of these practices has, from the earliest days of the republic, made individuality autochthonous while suppressing to the point of disappearance the manifold ways that individuality is beholden to a complex and uniquely modern form of life.

The issue here is a central one in modern philosophy: is individual autonomy an irreducible metaphysical given or a social creation?...

Yeah, I think I saw that on one of those tea baggers' signs at that healthcare rally in DC....


The only thing I can say for sure about Professor Bernstein's analysis is that he got a big boner including the word "autochthonous" (which means "native" or "indigenous") in it.  But, hold on.  Here comes the money-shot:

Hegel’s thesis is that all social life is structurally akin to the conditions of love and friendship; we are all bound to one another as firmly as lovers are, with the terrible reminder that the ways of love are harsh, unpredictable and changeable.  And here is the source of the great anger: because you are the source of my being, when our love goes bad I am suddenly, absolutely dependent on someone for whom I no longer count and who I no longer know how to count; I am exposed, vulnerable, needy, unanchored and without resource.  In fury, I lash out, I deny that you are my end and my satisfaction, in rage I claim that I can manage without you, that I can be a full person, free and self-moving, without you.  I am everything and you are nothing.

This is the rage and anger I hear in the Tea Party movement; it is the sound of jilted lovers furious that the other — the anonymous blob called simply “government” — has suddenly let them down, suddenly made clear that they are dependent and limited beings, suddenly revealed them as vulnerable. 

Slow down!  We're talking about tea baggers here, prof!  Have you seen these people?  They're like zombies with signage.   

Granted, it's a less than satisfying analysis for those with an irresistible urge to quote Hegel, but isn't it just possible the Tea Parties are merely the most recent spasm of xenophobia and racism to sweep a nation in the throes of massive demographic change? 

No other explanation really accounts for the sudden rise of the Tea Party in the months after the election of our first mixed-race president.  If the Tea Party really were a reaction to big government and not rooted in knee-jerk racism and nativist conspiracy theories, the Bush administration would have been the perfect target for its rage. 

At the core of the cry of "socialism!" on the right is the fear that taxpayer money will go to entitlements for minorities and illegal immigrants.  That was at the heart of the opposition to healthcare reform.  "Why should I pay for them?" It has nothing to do with the metaphysical, the autonomy of the individual, or the "invisible hand".  Tea Partiers love their Medicare and Social Security, they just don't want to see the blacks, the Mexicans, and the "rag heads" getting theirs. 

It really is that simple. 

Now, I know that the Tea Party has gotten savvy about its racism, even to the point of carrying clever handmade signs at rallies reading “It doesn’t matter what this sign says. You’ll call it racism, anyway!” and the like ...


Case closed, right?  I mean, obviously racists can't deny being racist (although you'll note there is no explicit denial in these clever retorts).  Another brilliant strategy is to blame racist incidents on liberal "plants", or to claim reverse-racism.

Sad to say the Tea Baggers have had some success with the old "I'm rubber, you're glue" strategy.  Tea Party racism is such an embarrassment for us all, in a nation that thought it had moved past this kind of thing, that it has gone from being a legitimate criticism to the elephant in the room.  Even Professor Bernstein opens his post by refusing to consider it. ("I leave aside the election of a — “foreign-born” — African-American to the presidency.") 

Racism itself may be a complex phenomenon, but the fact that the Tea Party is steeped in it, that only through the lens of virulent racism and xenophobia do any of their nonsensical positions make sense, is unavoidable. This actually fits Occam's razor to a T: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Sometimes a racist really is just a racist.