The Tea Partiers have a consistent message: they love the Constitution, and they want it enforced as the founders intended. It is a message they have pounded home so much that most people believe it without question, and the mainstream media has never scrutinized it. Often, the media refers to Tea Partiers as "constitutionalists" or "patriots" as though the mere appropriation of these terms make it so. In this post, I will demonstrate that the Tea Partiers are neither constitutionalists nor patriots.
The first thing you have to ask about the Tea Party's supposed love of the Constitution is "do they even understand it?" They seem to believe that the only parts of the constitution that exist are the only parts they like, namely, the Second and Tenth Amendment. And it is questionable as to whether they even understand them.
Let's look at the Second Amendment:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The offices of the NRA in Fairfax, Virginia have only a partial quote of the Second Amendment on the building's facade. It only reads:
“.. the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Why would constitution-lovers who supposedly LOVE the Second Amendment, delete twelve words of the Second Amendment? This is the first bit of evidence that the Second Amendment-loving conservative Tea Partiers are really no such thing. True lovers of the Second Amendment would quote the entire Amendment rather than only a snippet that gives weight to their absolutist ideology on gun rights. Wouldn't they?
The full text of the Second Amendment gives the purpose of the Amendment as well as its limits. "A well regulated militia" is necessary for the security of a Free State, and thus the people have a right to bear arms. It is not a right to hunt, and neither is it a right for the purposes of self-defense. Those might be rights we have, but they would fall under the penumbra of rights we have under the Ninth Amendment, not the Second. Instead, it is a right we have as part of a well regulated militia so we might defend our country. And the right is not absolute. The militia is to be well regulated. This means the government can limit who can partake in the militia, how they can partake in the militia, and under what circumstances they can partake in the militia. If, according to its regulations, you are unfit for the militia, you have no right to bear arms because the right is for this this purpose.
The NRA and its Tea Party supporters refuse to acknowledge the Second Amendment's full text, because it refutes their absolutist gun rights stance. Why? Because the Tea Pary and the NRA are not lovers of the Second Amendment. They are lovers of guns and the absolutist notion of gun rights.
Then there is the curious Tea Party obsession with the Tenth Amendment and so-called "states' rights." Let's quote the Tenth Amendment here so we can see what this is all about:
It seems straight forward enough: any power not delegated to the US by the Constitution are reserved to the states, or to the people. But, if we read the text carefully, the United States not only has the powers delegated to it by the Constitution, but any power that the states (plural) do not prohibit the US from exercising. So, even this is not as absolute as Tea Partiers assert. Further, the Tea Partiers seem to believe the United States has fewer powers delegated to it than it actually does. To them, it seems, the Constitution ends at the Tenth Amendment.
States' rights were limited by several amendments to the Constitution. For example, the Thirteenth Amendment delegates power to enforce the constitutional ban on slavery to Congress; the Fourteenth Amendment delegates to Congress the power to enforce the rights of due process and equal protection of the laws; the Fifteenth Amendment delegates to Congress the right to enforce voting rights, and this is just a sample. But the Tea Partiers have none of this. It is easy to find Tea Partiers who get squeamish when these amendments are mentioned in political debates about the Constitution. They tend not to be very fond of these amendments. If you cite the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection requirements in a gay rights debate, for example, they will often retreat to "but-but the will of the people" arguments.
And that helps to demonstrate that either they don't like the Constitution or don't understand it. The Constiitution is not merely a document that creates a representative democracy. While the will of the people most certainly matters and is an important feature of our constitution, the will of the people is LIMITED by the constitution. The purpose of the First Amendment, for example, is not merely to say we have a right to free speech or freedom of religion. Rather, it is meant to limit the majority's power to repress the speech or religious freedom of the minority. Tea Partiers reject this idea. They believe that mere numerical majority is enough to force their will on others.
It is all Tea Party hypocrisy. In their view, the constitution gives them the right to own uzis and carry them in public, regardless of the desires of the majority, and despite the expressed intent of the Second Amendment to create and sustain a well-regulated militia for security of a free state. Constitution-loving for a tea partier isn't about loving all of the Constitution and the liberties it guarantees, but about finding convenient phrases out-of-context to justify their reactionary politics. The Tea Party doesn't love the Constitution. It just loves saying it loves it, in the same way an abusive husband loves saying he loves his wife.
Their claim of being patriots is just as shallow. Patriots love their country. The Tea Partiers don't love their country. They love their idea of the country. And their idea of the country is a white, heterosexual, Christian, gun-toting, patriarchal country that oppresses non-Christians, and non-whites, non-heterosexuals, and women. This is why they ignore the vast majority of the constitution, claim religious freedom only applies to Christians, take-up narrow understandings of equal protection, or ignore it altogether.
Sure enough, they like to wave the flag, wear flag pins, shout "USA! USA!" and talk about freedom. But this is just a saccharine demonstration. They don't really mean it. Just as they don't accept all of the words of the Second Amendment, they don't accept all of the Constitution, or all of the country. Often you will hear them speak of "real America" and "real Americans." What the hell is "real America"? What the hell is a "real American"? To tea partiers there are real and fake Americas. To tea partiers there are real Americans and fake Americans. Their patriotism is only to that "real America" of their fantasies, not the whole of it, just as their love of the Constitution is the love of the Constitution of their fantasies and not the whole of it.
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