This terrific article was shared today by a Facebook friend from Oklahoma.
It makes a number of points with respect to understanding Tea Party rhetoric and strategy.
I recommend it highly!
http://weeklysift.com/...
The "money" quotes:
Here’s what my teachers should have told me: “Reconstruction was the second phase of the Civil War. It lasted until 1877, when the Confederates won.” I think that would have gotten my attention.
The essence of the Confederate worldview is that the democratic process cannot legitimately change the established social order, and so all forms of legal and illegal resistance are justified when it tries.
(emphasis mine)
The article continues on to explain and give examples of how the Confederate worldview is at the core of Tea Party (Republican base!) narratives and drives the actions of that movement.
Progressives have been shocked in recent years to find ourselves re-litigating and re-hashing struggles that had seemed settled for decades. I think that it behooves us to consider the possibility that we have grossly underestimated the antipathy of our opponents, the violence that they are prepared to engage in, and the depth of their commitment to ideas and ideals that we expect would be repugnant to most reasonable people.
Our rarely examined historical assumption that the issues of the Civil War were settled in favor of the United States in 1865 has contributed to a flawed assessment of the struggle in which we are presently engaged. This article challenges that assumption and offers an alternative perspective.
7:01 AM PT: Update: so I wake up this morning to an article from The New Repubilc in my feed about the end of the Civil Rights movement in Alabama that fit so well with this article that I just had to add it.
http://www.newrepublic.com/...