Why I won't be tea-bagging...

... and only part of the reason arises from my idiosyncratic dislike for symbolic protests.

I'll keep this short and bitter, because this opinion is certain not to make me a lot of friends among libertarians, not to mention those who style themselves as libertarian republicans.

So here are my top ten reasons why I have reached a decision not to support the tea party movement:

#10: Too many of the people who never stepped up and criticized the Bush administration budgets, destruction of Constitutional rights, or interventionist foreign policy have suddenly developed a social conscience.

#9: To condemn the neo-Keynesian approach to beating this recession (which they have disingenuously compared to the Great Depression for purely political purposes) without understanding why that approach is seriously dated by modern economic research into complex non-linear systems pretty much shows the same understanding of the issues at hand as millions of knee-jerks who voted for Change They Could Believe In without the slightest understanding of public policy.

#8: Because the people who set off the original Boston Tea Party had something to lose. This is a nice, safe, domesticated protest.

#7: Because the people collecting tea bags are being spurred on--at least in part--by demagogues quite unlike Samuel Adams, demagogues whose major motives in pushing this movement is not political change, but profit.

#6: Because the original Boston Tea Party was viewed as a conscious overture toward armed rebellion; and we are not there. We don't want to be there.

#5: Because the people involved in this new tea party movement either don't understand what the original was about, or do understand and are consciously distorting history: I hate the creation of a useable past no matter who articulates it for political gain.

#4: Because the rate at which the Obama administration is lining up to out-Bush Bush on issues of civil rights and Constitutional protections is accelerating, and the tea parties are giving it cover to continue consolidating and extending the powers we never should have given the Federal government in the first place.

#3: Because the participants in this tea party movement are, unknowingly, helping to cement the two-party system even more firmly into place.

#2: Because the media and the Obama administration are poised to make the protesters look like buffoons in the MSM (which still has 10,000 viewers/readers for every one in the blogosphere) and set back legitimate criticism of the administration's dangerous policies on the Constitution, foreign policy, and deficit spending.

#1: Because--even if the other nine reasons had no validity [and you can bet that readers will let me know that each and every one of them are wrong], it's too early. I'm not a believer in political honeymoons, but the simple fact of the matter is that tens of millions of Americans still do [they also put their teeth under the pillow for the Tooth-Person-of-differing-sexual-orientation]. I believe that many of President Obama's economic policies are going to fail, and may well fail disastrously. But they haven't yet, and while there is virtue in being able to say, I told you so, right now most people whose minds need to be changed are only going to see sore losers with nothing new to offer. President Obama and his team are every bit as good [if not better] at media manipulation that Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan ever were. They're going to come of this premature, pseudo-populist protest with more effective spin than you would possibly believe. Hell, they've already started.

None of which is to condemn my fellow libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and other patriotic Americans who disagree with me. Many fine people are going to step up and do what they think is right. I may get there some day, but this is not my time.

I will be, as usual, exercising my personal tax protest by paying my accountant's fees to help me structure my income in whatever way the government demands to reduce its ability to take my money to the lowest extent possible, and I will be sharing everything I learn about that process with anybody who will listen.

F**k Joe Biden's faux patriotism of over-paying my taxes to show I'm a real American; I'll take Learned Hand any day.