A Green State of Mind

The Tea Party movement that emerged last year presents itself as the heart of America, and a true political alternative, but is in fact an atavistic force embedded within the American psyche.

The year 2009, the first year of the Obama administration, can be seen as the year where everything changed. It was the year where the United States had the first black president, and the ending of the eight years where the nation stood closest to the precipice of an actual dictatorship in many a generation. But it was also the formation of a movement that came from a deep dissatisfaction with the status quo and that in turn reverted to a blind allegiance to the status quo. The Tea Party movement that assembled from various supporters of the Ron Paul presidential campaign quickly transformed into a political entity that labeled the new president a “socialist fascist” without an understanding of either term or any evidence to support this label. Their first target was the August town halls where any reasonable discussion of healthcare was disrupted by screeching propaganda supplied by conservative ideologues within the Republican Party and the health insurance industry. Then there was a rally during the anniversary of September 11th that sought to return the country to the day after the attacks and that was organized by Glenn Beck. This call to return to the day after the attacks implied a return to the fear and willingness to give up real political power and freedom that could have happened at that time. In other words, immediately after the attacks, George W. Bush could have declared martial law and suspended all elections, and the majority of the American people would have accepted it out of fear for their physical safety. The Tea Party and followers of Glenn Beck refused to acknowledge this fact in their rallies, all the while stating that they were “losing the country” while Obama was president. This complaint reveals much about how these individuals view themselves as the rightful owners of this nation, at the explicit expense of others who are marginalized both politically and economically.

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The recent Supreme Court decision on the Citizens United case has granted freedom of speech to corporate entities, and there is a need to illustrate how the unequal distribution of money results in the unequal right to free speech using the lens of a past Supreme Court case.

Any attempt to enact campaign finance reform in the United States must meet the obstacle of a Supreme Court decision on a case called Buckley versus Valeo in 1976. The case concerned the brother of conservative commentator and elder William Buckley. The brother, James Buckley, was a sitting U.S. Senator from New York and gigantic monetary contributions to campaigns were considered as a type of bribery due to campaign finance reform that was passed in 1974. The campaign finance law set limits to monetary contributions to campaigns. However, the Supreme Court did not agree, retaining some contribution limits in the law and officially stating that giving money to a campaign was an act of political speech and therefore was protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution. Since then, attempts to ban soft money and PAC contributions in campaigns have been hobbled by the argument that it is through these donations that individuals express their support and political beliefs. This connection of speech and money has been used to subsequently normalize the idea that large business interests and corporations also have the right to contribute money as free speech.

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