The Modern “Tea Party” and Historical Ignorance
This is an extremely popular video among Tea Party groups that exposes their profound ignorance of both history, and political philosophy. This Party favorite video has been viewed 3,615,985 times and has received over 12,000 likes. The man in the video (Bob Basso author of “Common Sense”) thinks
he is today’s version of Tom Paine. Bob attempts to argue against Healthcare and “socialism” by dressing up like Thomas Paine, who, unknown to Tea Party people; was for progressive taxation, an estate tax, and for social welfare. He proposed Social Security in 1793, believed in free education, and a guaranteed minimum income.
Paine had a sincere and passionate hatred of the poverty he saw… This hatred led him to propose a strong and positive governmental program for the abolition of poverty… Accompanying this social security plan would be a progressive tax on income of estates, designed to redistribute property by inducing families to break up estates instead of maintaining them through the law of primogeniture. A national fund would also be raised by an inheritance tax on estates, out of which all young people would be given a modest capital to start them in life on arriving at the age of twenty one. -The History of political Philosophy, edited by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, p. 685
Cropsey concludes on the bottom of page 686 by proclaiming Paine to be the “prophet of the modern welfare state”.
The “Founders” feared Corporate power as much as a tyrannical government. As classical “liberals” they subscribed to four general principles:
1. Equality of rights and opportunity.
2. E Pluribus Unum (unity within diversity),
3. Freedom of conscious (religious freedom flowed from this larger concept)
4. The government’s responsibility to protect individual liberty while simultaneously ensuring our collective well-being.
“Bob Basso plays the role of Thomas Paine to ignite the fire of change in America. Patriotism and Pride for America lead Thomas Paine to help take back America!”
httpv://youtu.be/pKFKGrmsBDk
This video has been viewed 9,789,752. Bob mixes both radical Nationalism, i.e., fascism, with a Marxists call for a workman’s revolution.
httpv://youtu.be/jeYscnFpEyA
Open Letter to President Obama
In this video Bob criticizes Obama for being a “global citizen.” That’s really strange because Thomas Paine called himself a “citizen of the world.” Bob then continues to credit American principles for globalization, while blasting the social welfare Paine himself envisioned. These videos are saturated with points of historical and ideological errors. Definitely a piecemealed narrative you have there, Bob.
httpv://youtu.be/xxDwBYjL3Fc
As well, the original Boston Tea Party was a felony committed against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company, i.e., big business AND government screwing the little guy.
“To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.” -Thomas Paine, Agrian Justice
Agrarian Justice – In his last pamphlet, “Agrarian Justice,” Thomas Paine outlined a social insurance plan for old folks and for young people who were just starting out in life. The government was to pay seed money to young people! The money was to be paid from a national government fund accumulated for this purpose. The fund was to be financed by a 10% tax on inherited property. Yes, a plan for wealth redistribution…
David Richards · Friends with Steve White
I haven’t followed all the back and forth on this (I have a job) but would just like to point out to Chuck that *nowhere* in AJ does Paine mention the government — not the federal government, not a state government, not a local government. He mentions a bank that the fund would be administered through — but no government agency. Presumably it would have been a completely voluntary system. Let’s not go all revisionist on Paine’s writings in order to make a point.
Me – As I clearly pointed out by citing the article itself, he explicitly states that his plan is not voluntary, and is to be enforced through legislation and taxation, i.e., GOVERNMENT. He uses these exact words. How one would “presume” that this was somehow non-governmental and voluntary, is… well, retarded.
David Richards · Friends with Steve White
I have read AJ carefully. I don’t need anyone else’s analysis of it to see what it says. Don’t put words in my mouth. I don’t know who those two people are and I don’t care. By the way, when Paine wrote that pamphlet he was living in France as I recall, and it is written from the standpoint of a Eurpean, specifically English and French background. It does not mention the United States or America to the best of my recollection. At the risk of repeating myself, it reads like an insurance plan, not a government program.
Me- Where he was geographically when he wrote it, and who it was written too, has ZERO bearing on the philosophical substance of the article! As he says in the first sentence:
“THE plan contained in this work is not adapted for any particular country alone: the principle on which it is based is general.”
You read this carefully? Wow, you are slippery… but, you are also wrong, as any honest observer can clearly see.
RESOLVED: By the common Tea Party definition of the word, Thomas Paine was a socialist who devised a plan of governmental wealth distribution.