The Othello Element

What is the Tea Party? Why, it’s elementary. There is the “radical element,” everyone knows. And there is the “racist element,” which the “radical” element claims is just a “fringe” element, but was nevertheless condemned by a majority of NAACP elements. Lesser known is the “Tea Party” element, which -- get this -- actually believes in the Tea Party. The NAACP’s smears have taught this fringe something of the anguish of Shakespeare’s Othello: When he, too, was told his love was not pure, he replied:

Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore…
Her name, that was as fresh as Dian’s visage,
Is now begrimed and black as mine own face…
If thou dost slander her and torture me,
Thou hadst been better have been born a dog

Perhaps the NAACP risks less accountability if in error, but let’s have it: does the begrimed Tea Party merit its villains' claims?

Representative John Lewis claimed he was repeatedly called the “N word” on Capitol Hill last March, but he lacked something the ancient courts of Othello’s Venice called “proof.” After extensive googling I found some photos of people holding signs (supposedly at Tea Party rallies) depicting the President as a monkey -- though none with as much success as the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s cartoons of the previous President. And I found one picture of a loser holding an “N word” sign. But dost a few losers maketh thine love a whore? I happen to subscribe to the “Tea Party” element’s propaganda outlets -- my favorite being The Jason Lewis Show -- and I have yet to break any racist code.

And let’s not deny the liberal elements their due. “Barack the Magic Negro,” Barack the “light-skinned” man without a “negro dialect,” and Barack the “clean and articulate” black man were epithets from the Left. New York Times writer Matt Bai says there is a “generational divide” in the Tea Party, between the racist “older” element, and the naïve “younger” element. But it was the Left that profited from its own “generational divide” when it slandered Tea Partiers as “Tea-baggers” -- a term Bill Burton, spokesman for a White House full of twenty-somethings that know better, claimed was not derogatory.

Still, what’s so wrong with telling the Tea Party to “expel the bigots and racists in your ranks,” however few they may be? By all means, expel away. But assuming our guiding principle is contempt of all bigotry in all ranks, there are a few elements in a certain group of 1.3 billion that might complicate the expulsion’s logistics.

And let’s nix right now the idea that 1.3 billion Muslims get immunity from standards of political decency because their’s is a religion. (That’s precisely the problem, as when Othello’s lieutenant rebuts a Senator’s “Thou art a villain” crack: “Thou art -- a Senator”). A 2008 Gallup poll showed that “substantial majorities” of Muslims in Muslim-majority countries favor Sharia legislation. And it’s gross negligence to say they lack the Tea Party’s influence, thus owing less public accountability: It’s not Tea Partiers yelling “allah akbar” and pushing the IED detonator as American soldiers deliver aid in Afghanistan. Most of the American defense budget is a political calculation based on “elements” of Islam. So yes, expel away.

And the expulsion of bigots in Muslim ranks should be easier, because whereas the Tea Partiers at least have a core of noble classical liberalism to rest claims of innocence on, Muslims have the Koran. Anyone that praises the Koran as the best book ever written, as all Muslims do, owes you an explanation. It takes a bold imagination to read the Koran and not conclude it is hateful, fearful, and ugly. Its bigotry is of the misogynistic and xenophobic brand. Let’s just say it’s not a book you would let a child read, as almost every other paragraph has a chilling voice demanding “dread me,” or reminding the reader of the bloody punishment that awaits the unsure. Better that thou hadst been born a dog, indeed, than get your face scalded for eternity.

But don’t judge a book by its contents. Look at what Muslims actually do and think. One word: dhimmi. What's that? Just like the old poker saying, if you don’t know who it is, it’s probably you. Another word: Jews. Ninety percent of Middle Easterners view them “unfavorably.” 78% of Pakistanis and 74% of Indonesians. Gee, what could these people have in common that makes them all so bigoted? And a final word: jihad. Or man-caused disaster, or ADD or whatever we call it nowadays. It happens every day, and its victims are chosen for their beliefs. It’s bigotry by definition.

So where proportion and principle are concerned, the NAACP may be biting off more bigotry than it can chew. It’s easy to tell the Tea Party to expel its bigots, because there aren’t many to begin with. Do we have the patience to ask Islam to expel its inherent bigotry? Do we have the defense budget? These types of questions are mostly frivolous where the “begrimed” Tea Party is concerned, but they are horribly pertinent in Kandahar, Afghanistan and, more unexpectedly, Kampala, Uganda. No doubt Islam has its fair Othello’s too: let this radical element be the first to seek the villain’s proof.

Freedom and the Moral Imperative

In a piece published by Forbes today, the writer poses an enormously important question: what are we to do about the economy? But he frames the debate in a meaningful way. Typically, pundits and “academics” (I use the word loosely to describe the delusional Paul Krugman) spend their ink debating the merits of a centrally-planned, welfare state versus the laissez-faire, market mechanism for creating wealth in our economy.

The thing I found refreshing about this piece is that it transcends that argument, as we ought to as citizens. It is clear to both me and the author that central planning, government intervention and manipulation, and the redistribution of wealth result in misery. It has been discredited in theory and practice countless times. The government cannot create wealth; at its best it can only protect it.

I have no doubt that more freedom, the laissez-faire, market-driven society produces more wealth. But, the author expresses a disbelief that uninhibited people left to do whatever their appetites and lusts drive them to do will create a stable society. His skepticism is well founded. Anarchy is no solution to a bloated and burdensome government.

In sum, when the government controls us and our economy it results in abuse, repression, stifled freedom and ultimately those in government, the empowered, dominating the weak. If we are left completely uninhibited, unchecked, it results in wanton orgies of consumer self-gratification, greed, dishonesty, and the powerful dominating the weak.

So what are we to do? We cannot embrace the domination of the government over its citizens. Nor can we condone the lawlessness of anarchy. The only hope is what the Founders of this nation set out to do hundreds of years ago. These United States are an experiment in self government. We must govern ourselves first. The primacy of restraint is vested in the individual. And how do we become self governing? The natural state of human liberty must be tempered by man’s outright embrace of a moral code. It is imperative.

Ultimately, the real root of the economic problems we face, the real crises is found in our moral, ethical, and social failures as a nation. We have a moral crisis ten times the size of the economic malaise.

We have broken homes and families and scratch our heads wondering why our educational system lacks support. We have built and entitlement society, where wealth isn’t earned, it’s a right, and wonder why people are greedy. We tell people it is just fine to murder their unborn children if their childhood would be inconvenient (92% of women cite “social” or “other” as the most important reason they terminated the pregnancy, 25% say they’re just not “ready”) to the parent, and can’t figure out why people are selfish. We have a government that forcibly steals from the wealthy to buy the votes of the poor, and wonder why charity suffers. We have eviscerated the moral authority of the Church, mocked and ridiculed people of faith, and wonder why people don’t behave ethically anymore. Moral relativism pervades our society today.

This nation has spent the past 50 years divorcing and divesting itself in the most valuable resource a capitalist, free market system has: the morals of the people living in the society. Until we embrace moral behavior, unless we resuscitate the social mores that once tempered lives of the citizens, people in this country will cease to be free.

Self government is the answer. The state should not be forced to dictate my charitable giving, my light bulb usage, or the distribution of economic resources. We must make the right choice individually. If we fail to answer the author’s question we will be a nation of slaves: whether it is an individual without morals, enslaved by their own intemperate lusts and desires for wealth power, or we are dominated by an oppressive government, the result is the same. Freedom dies and the experiment in self government expires in a tragic end.