Debate with a Tea Partier

I recently concluded a lengthy correspondence with the author of one of the ranting emails that I posted a month or so ago. As it turned out, this guy would have denied being a Tea-Partier, and thought he was being quite reasonable in his arguments. He is an atheist, not an overt racist, apparently not a gun-nut (guns didn't really enter into our conversation), doesn't support Sarah Palin, and readily agreed that Bush and previous Republican administrations were far from perfect. I never met the guy and didn't talk to him - our only contact was email. When I replied to his email with facts, not rants, he replied in the same civil tone. I thought this might be the opportunity to understand the mindset of otherwise reasonable and educated guys like him.

He is certainly an advocate of personal freedom, but I was not successful in getting him to define freedom in anything beyond the usual bromides of personal responsibility and the caricatures of rugged individualism and American exceptionalism so beloved by the right. When I pointed out that in my opinion universal healthcare would be good for personal freedom because it freed you from the worry of bankruptcy due to illness, the freedom to move to another job or the freedom to start your own business without worrying about insurance. He replied that yes, that would be good, except that you'd be trading freedom for security, implying that the more secure you are the less free you are! I replied that using his logic, the best place for personal freedom is a country like Somalia where there is no security. He acknowledged my point, and didn't want to follow the Somalian model, but didn't (or couldn't) elaborate further.

He had a distinct nostalgia for what America used to be and bemoaned the direction in which we're headed. He was one of the air traffic controllers who replaced the striking PATCO controllers who Reagan fired back in '81. He hates unions and loves Reagan and what he thinks Reagan stood for, even though he was unable to say what Reagan stood for beyond the bumper sticker sound bites. I acknowledged that unions had their excesses but that on balance it was unions that built the American middle class and created the "good old days" that he longs for. I pointed out that inflation-adjusted wages actually declined during the Reagan years and that the only reason household income rose was because more women entered the labor force. In fact inflation-adjusted wages actually peaked in 1972! To support his argument, he replied by sending me a chart showing household income had risen during the Reagan years at least partly due to the increase of women in the labor force!

He talked a lot about economic freedom being linked directly to personal freedom. I sent him a paper by done by the Heritage Foundation (not a left-wing fringe group by any means) ranking the economic freedom of countries around the world. #1 is Hong Kong, #2 is Singapore - not exactly beacons of personal freedom in anyone's books. Interestingly enough, #3-#6 are Western democracies that he would define as "socialist." Canada is ranked #7 and the good ole USA is #8. What does that say about the link between economic and personal freedom?

He talked a lot about the constitution and what the Founders originally meant, but was like talking to a person who believes in the literal truth of the Bible in spite of the many contradictions. No, he didn't want to reinstate slavery, but he certainly was for State's rights. I couldn't pin him down on the line between federal government and state power.

Deficit spending was a huge issue for him, but he wouldn't (or couldn't) point to anything substantial he wanted to cut. He thought that the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income tax were free riders on the rest of us tax-paying patriots. He neglected to include the payroll taxes, property taxes, sales taxes that those 47% still pay. He also neglected to acknowledge that many of those non-income tax payers simply didn't make enough to pay taxes, and he neglected to say how much income tax he pays. I suspect he's retired and pays little or no income tax. He definitely wanted to keep his social security and medicare but wanted them "reformed" - whatever that means. He agreed that military spending would have to be trimmed, but big cuts weren't necessary.

I could go on and on, but at the end of the day (don't you hate that expression?) it wasn't a very satisfying dialog. He acknowledged the points I raised, but towards the end or our correspondence, he essentially said that he couldn't raise the facts or statistics to support his arguments, but he knew what he felt in his gut.

It's impossible to reason with a "gut feel."