Joel Mathis

I suspect that Peggy Noonan is being over-optimistic in her praise of the Tea Party in today's Wall Street Journal : The tea party did something the Republican establishment was incapable of doing: It got the party out from under George W. Bush. The tea party rejected his administration's spending, overreach and immigration proposals, among other items, and has become only too willing to say so. In doing this, the tea party allowed the Republican establishment itself to get out from under Mr. Bush: "We had to, boss, it was a political necessity!" They released the GOP establishment from its shame cringe. Sounds nice -- the Tea Party has helped the GOP see the error of its ways! -- but who will the Tea Party actually push to power in Congress next month? In all likelihood, um, John Boehner. He voted, of course, for the Bush Administration's unfunded Medicare drug plan -- probably the best example of the GOP's shamelessness about deficit spending -- and he s

John Yoo believes that during wartime there's virtually no limit -- legal, constitutional, treaty or otherwise -- on a president's power. He can suspend the First Amendment . He can order the testicles of a small child crushed . It was his legal advice that helped pave the way for the American torture regime . So, of course: John Yoo is a featured speaker at Tea Party events. Now: There are undoubtedly many fine and sincere Tea Party participants who legitimately want to see government restrained and fitted for a Constitutional straightjacket. That's fine. But even now, it's easy for me to believe that there's also a sizable chunk of people who didn't mind expanding deficits and tyrannical government overreach as long as a Republican is president. Tea Partiers who turn out for a John Yoo speech? Almost certainly in the latter group.

The farther I read into the Federalist Papers, the more I'm convinced the Tea Partiers only know about half their history. Back up: I didn't start reading the Federalists with the aim of debunking the Tea Partiers. But it's impossible to read historical documents about the nature of governance in America when there's a coalition of folks out there who so strongly identify with those historical personages . Their narrative, I believe, goes something like this: America was born, essentially, in a tax rebellion. And the Founding Fathers then created a limited government in order to avoid oppressing the people either with burdensome taxes or directly tyrannical rule. And maybe, just maybe, if the tax burden gets too large -- well, maybe, Americans have the right to resort to rebellion again . Like I said: I think that's only partly right. Because the Federalist Papers -- the documents we most use, aside from the Constitution itself, for insight into the Founders&#

I've long believed the Tea Party phenomenon is mostly about sore loserdom -- the people who've been taking to the streets and raising hell at Congressional town meetings these last 18 months say they're alarmed at deficits and runaway government spending. But they were nowhere to be found while those same things were getting started under George W. Bush. The complaints of Tea Parties have, generally, fallen under the rubric of "tyranny." The Obama Administration is infringing on our freedoms, it is said, to a degree unimaginable outside of historically extreme circumstances. But really, I don't believe the Tea Partiers on this front, either. Why? Well, let's look at today's Washington Post: The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation. Cr

National Review's Victor Davis Hanson reports his frustration with a business-owning friend who won't buy equipment or expand his business. It deserves quoting at length: I asked a businessman two weeks ago why he said that he was neither hiring nor buying new equipment. He started in on “rising taxes.” “But wait,” I interrupted. I pointed out that income-tax hikes haven’t taken effect. The old FICA income caps are also still applicable. Health-care surcharges haven’t hit us yet. He countered with “regulations” and “bailouts.” I said, “Come on, get specific.” He offered up “cap and trade” and “the Chrysler creditors.” I parried with more demands that he tell me exactly how the federal government has suddenly curbed his profit margins, or how his electric bill had gone up since January 2009, or whether he had lost money on any investment because the government had violated a contract. Exasperated, he talked now instead of more cosmic issues — the astronomical borrowing,

One has to give credit to Matthew Continetti for appraising Glenn Beck's ideas thusly : This is nonsense. Whatever you think of Theodore Roosevelt, he was not Lenin. Woodrow Wilson was not Stalin. The philosophical foundations of progressivism may be wrong. The policies that progressivism generates may be counterproductive. Its view of the Constitution may betray the Founders’. Nevertheless, progressivism is a distinctly American tradition that partly came into being as a way to prevent ideologies like communism and fascism from taking root in the United States. And not even the stupidest American liberal shares the morality of the totalitarian monsters whom Beck analogizes to American politics so flippantly. Maybe there's hope for rational civic dialogue, yet.

Matthew Continetti's piece about the Tea Party movement replays -- like so many similar pieces before it -- Rick Santelli's famous CNBC rant from 2009. But this quote leaped out at me like it hadn't before: In Santelli’s opinion, American elites had neglected the people surrounding him, the commodities traders who made up “a pretty good statistical cross-section of America , the silent majority. We already know that Tea Partiers are wealthier than most Americans , but it's worth pointing out that the median income for a commodities trader in 2008 was $68,680. The median household income nationally the same year was $52,029 . Now: $68,000 a year doesn't put silver spoons in your mouth. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a good income. But the Tea Partiers aren't a "good statistical cross-section of America" -- and the commodities traders who surrounded Santelli that day aren't either. Let's not pretend otherwise.

I had thought I'd be taking these Federalist chapters in big chunks, rather than one-by-one, but it turns out there's a lot to think about in all of these. So we're going to have to go slowly. You might remember that I said -- somewhat near the outset of this project -- that I expected some of the context of the Federalist would reveal itself as we proceeded through the papers. I wasn't entirely wrong, because we're now at Federalist 15, and Publius is ready to start telling us why the Articles of Confederation stink. Not, of course, that he needs to make the case. From what I can tell skimming through the Antifederalist Papers, there's no great love for the Articles among any huge segment of the nascent American society. And Publius -- Alexander Hamilton in this particular chapter -- acknowledges as much. The point next in order to be examined is the "insufficiency of the present Confederation to the preservation of the Union." It may perhaps

Over at Slate, Hanna Rosin asks if the Tea Party is a "feminist" movement. To the extent that "feminist" isn't used as a synonym for "liberal woman," I think the answer is probably ... no. Yes, women are taking lots of leadership roles in the Tea Party movement -- and good for them! -- but I'm guessing that movement might lose some of its coherence if it became focused on "women's issues." That said, I'm always perplexed when journalists turn up these types of folks: For the last few years Anna Barone, a Tea Party leader from Mount Vernon, N.Y., has used the e-mail handle annaforhillary.com: "The way they treated Hillary is unforgiveable, and then they did it to Sarah Palin," she said. "I've been to 15 Tea Party meetings and never heard a woman called a name just because she's powerful. I guess you could say the Tea Party is where I truly became a feminist." Wait. Really ? Don't get me wrong