The Tea Party's Growing Slavery Obsession
The controversial meme identifying taxation with slavery seems to be spreading amongst Tea Party followers.
A scandalous new video has been circulating among conservative blogs. It shows Rep. Pete Stark announcing that there are no constitutional limits on what the federal government can do. All the conservative blogs are focusing on his embarrassing quotes. None of them are writing about the Tea Party meme that the questioner was pushing.
In the video of a townhall style event, Stark is asked to explain how the new healthcare law is not in violation of the 13th amendment (which abolished slavery) and, if it is constitutional, what limits do exist on the federal government. Stark gives the worst of all possible answers:
I think that there are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from rules that could affect your private life. The basis for that would be how would it affect other people.
The questioner, aghast but calm, follows up and points out:
When you tell somebody you have a right to get a service from another, that’s essentially saying you get to make that person do something for you. That is a form of slavery.
Does that sound similar? Because Tea Party candidate Rick Barber used nearly identical language in his commercial for the Alabama congressional primary, where a President Lincoln reenactor agrees with Barber that “slavery” is “when someone is forced to work for months to pay taxes so that a total stranger can get a free meal, medical procedure, or a bailout.”
(Pete Stark is no hero in this interaction since he nonchalantly asserts: “The federal government can do most anything in this country.”)
The question is did the Tea Partier get the idea for the question from the ad, or is the idea that taxation is literally identical to slavery so deeply ingrained and mainstream among the Tea Party that she didn’t need to look to Rick Barber for inspiration?
Follow me on Twitter: @noahkgreen