The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History (The Public Square)

"The Whites of their Eyes" by Jill Lepore is an excellent attempt to rescue America's past from what she terms 'historical fundamentalism'. Ms. Lepore's comparative work blends insights from the American Revolution with competing views of history from the Left and the Right to shed light on how reality is often distorted for partisan politics. The result is a fascinating book that challenges us to look anew at the American Revolution and ourselves.Ms. Lepore might not be a Tea Party supporter but her main concern pertains to the movement's abuse of history. Ms. Lepore believes that the Tea Party's narrow reading of the Revolution erroneously sacralizes certain texts and ideas that should properly have little relevancy to contemporary issues. In this sense, Ms. Lepore contends that the Tea Party represents a latent desire by the Right to repudiate the work of Jeremy Rifkin's Bicentennial Commission which had previously used the occassion of America's two hundredth anniversary to critique the rise of corporate power in America.Ms. Lepore is at her best when comparing modern Tea Party rhetoric with the realities of yesteryear. On the one hand, Ms. Lepore recalls the struggles of Benjamin Franklin's sister Jane Mecom to remind us how women had generally been treated as second-class citizens in colonial times, thereby exposing the fallacy that the Tea Party might somehow achieve social progress by championing a return to the values of a bygone era. On the other hand, Ms. Lepore suggests that if one wishes to play the Tea Party's game, then opposition to health care reform might be reasonably countered by a reminder that John Adams signed a bill providing taxpayer-funded health care services to Navy seamen. In any case, Ms. Lepore is persuasive when she states that most arguments grounded in 'originalism' (or the belief that the Founders' intent is the final word) make little sense within a contemporary context that would be all but unrecognizeable to the Founders.Possibly the most important section of Ms. Lepore's book is her refutation of the standard fundamentalist canard that America was founded as a Christian nation. Indeed, the fact that the American Revolution was a product of the Enlightenment (see  Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers ) and not an act of divine inspiration has not prevented the myth from fading away. To her credit, Ms. Lepore brings honor to her profession by strongly criticizing the Texas state school board for the latest crude attempt to erroneously rewrite Constitutional history along Christian fundamentalist lines.Unfortunately, there are times when Ms. Lepore's passion for the topic leads to small amount of recklessness. For example, on page 11 she cites a bit of  Common Nonsense  from Glenn Beck who had cited a quote that is often erroneously attributed by Tea Party followers to George Washington: 'It is impossible to rightly govern without God and the Bible'. To clarify the matter, Ms. Lepore could have simply added something like, 'Washington never said that...' either immediately afterwards in the paragraph or in the footnote; but chose to do neither. The problem, of course, is that while Ms. Lepore might assume her readers can differentiate authenticity from revisionism (see  Inventing George Washington: America's Founder, in Myth and Memory  for more on this point), she probably should not take the risk.Notwithstanding this very slight omission, I highly recommend this timely book to everyone.

...begins with racism and religious bigotry, and Jill Lepore PROVES it! To claim that racism and religious bigotry are not the `energizer bunnies' of the movement is either foul hypocrisy or blind ignorance.Jill Lepore makes no such audacious assertion, of course. She's a responsible professional historian, and historians don't deal in `proof.' They ask questions and seek provisional answers. They're as chary of `final answers' as of `final solutions.' As a reader, however, I get to be a jurist -- my first post-graduate degree was in law at UNAM Puebla -- and I vote for conviction. Here's a sample of what Lepore herself writes:"" Originalism as a school of constitutional interpretation has waxed and waned and has always competed with other schools of interpretation. Madison's invaluable notes on the Constitutional Convention weren't published until 1840, and nineteenth-century constitutional theory differd, dramatically, from the debates that have taken place in the twentieth century. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Supreme Court rejected originalist arguments pute forward by southern segregationists, stating, in `Brown v. Board of Education' in 1954, that "we cannot turn back the clock" but "must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the nation." Constitutional scholars generally date the rise of originalism to the 1970s and consider it a response to controversial decisions of both the Warren and Burger Courts, especially `Roe v. WAde', in 1973.""And here's what she cites from the sanctified Founding Fathers:""In 1816, when Jefferson was sevety-three, many of his Revolutionary generation having already died, he offered this answer, when asked what the framers would suggest about how to deal with the problem. "This they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.... laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind." .... Jefferson put it this way: "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenent, too sacrde to be touched." ... In Federalist 14, Madison asked, "Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their situation, and the lessons of their own experience?""What could be a clearer manifesto of constitutional Pragmatism than that?Another quote from Lepore's text:""Set loose in the culture, and mingled together with fanaticism, Originalism looks like history, but it's not; it's historical fundamnetalism, which is to history what astrology is to astronomy, what alchemy is to chemistry, what creationism is to evolution.""[Alas, Dr. Lepore, that analogy may backfire in the USA, where an astonishing number of supposedly educated people do believe in astrology and reject evolution.]The notions held by the current crop of reactionaries -- the ranting righteous, states-rightsers, Tea Partiers, extremist libertarians and such -- about the American Revolution and the writing of the Constitution are mostly absurd. Mythical, magical humbug. All that a brilliant historian like Jill Lepore can do is to point out the absurdities -- reductio ad absurdum -- in sad foreknowledge that her message will fall on stuffed ears. Ears stuffed with well-funded demagogic propaganda. The reactionaries have no time for history lessons, certainly not from an academic who has spent a career studying the sources, comparing the interpretations, and accumulating a fund of knowledge. That "knowledge" is suspect, they will hoot; it gives her a vested interest. They, the Right-eous, don't need any further knowledge or any dispassionate study of the Founders and the Constitution. Everything is already known; they were born knowing all they need by virtue of `right' opinion, as a stable history chromosome on their patriotic DNA.Lepore's book follows a three-strike strategy, chapter by chapter, of matching an account of an episode in the Revolution with an event in later American history that involved remembrance of the first episode, and then both with pertinent statements or demonstrations among the current Tea Party. Lepore gathered the latter by direct immersion, through ingenuous interviews and on-th-spot observations, rather amusingly like a serious Borat."The Whites of Their Eyes" is fine entertainment, well written, chock full of `Believe-It-or-Not' moments -- for instance, that the Pledge of Allegiance was actually written by a Socialist, Francis Bellamy, also author of the lecture/sermon `Jesus the Socialist' and the brother of a more famous Socaialist Edward Bellamy, author of the 1888 futurist novel Looking Backward -- and temperate in its refutation of all the mock-history that Tea Partiers love to cite. Most reasonable public-spirited people don't need this book to recognize that the Tea party is simultaneously ridiculous and dangerous, but Lepore's calm voice of reason is worth listening to, if only as evidence that sanity has not gone extinct in America.

Interesting look at an interesting moment

This is a book about the politicization of the history of the American Revolution. Lepore switches back and forth between the events of the actual revolution and the interpretation of those events during the 1976 bicentennial and by the tea party. This is an important work for people concerned about our history is taught to kids.

Jill Lepores Arbeit zur Tea Party ist zu recht als eines der besten historischen Bücher des Jahres 2010 gewürdigt worden. In ihrem Buch "The Whites Of Their Eyes" gelingt es ihr Interessantes und Erhellendes spannend miteinander zu verweben.Dreh- und Angelpunkt der Arbeit ist Boston. Hier verfolgt die Harvard-Professorin Lepore in journalistischer Recherche die Tea Party-Bewegung des Jahres 2010. Immer wieder springt sie zwischen intelligent eingeordneten Erzählungen aus der Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart hin und her. Als dritte Zeitebene tauchen die späten 1960er und frühen 1970er Jahre auf. Dort werden z.B. die Anti-Vietnamkrieg-Bewegung und die Desillusionierung nach der Watergate-Affäre thematisiert.Was hat es mir gebracht, das Buch zu lesen? Zunächst einmal sind Lepores Insiderberichte von den Versammlungen der aktuellen Tea Party sehr aufschlussreich. Hier sieht man, wie die Bewegung geschickt versucht, die Vergangenheit (genauer die originale Boston Tea Party aus der Revolutionszeit) für sich zu vereinnahmen. Dazu wird immer wieder mal ein bisschen was umgedeutet und immer wieder mal ein bisschen was in die Geschichte hineininterpretiert. Erhellend ist dann immer wieder das gut recherchierte Material, das Lepore zum Themenkomplex Amerikanische Revolution mit diesen Versuchen kontrastiert. Die "Gründerväter" (ein Begriff, der erst im 20. Jahrhundert aufkam) waren z.B. keineswegs so sehr von christlichen Motiven beeinflusst, wie es heute im politisch rechten Spektrum der USA gerne dargestellt wird. In einem mehr als 20 Jahre dauernden und hart umkämpften Prozess wurden die Ziele und Ergebnisse der Revolution vielmehr unter dem Einfluss der verschiedensten Denker, Unternehmer und Krieger entwickelt. Einen Masterplan, den viele Akolythen Sarah Palins etwa in der Gründung der USA sehen, hat es nie gegeben. Und wenn doch, dann gewiss keinen christlichen, sondern einen aufgeklärt-pragmatischen.Lepores Vergleich zur Friedensbewegung der 60er Jahre zeigt, dass die Instrumentalisierung der Boston Tea Party und damit des Widerstandes gegen Autoritäten auch ganz anders aussehen kann. Steht heute das "Tea" in Tea Party für Taxed Enough Already, so verbanden die Protestler vor 50 Jahren den Widerstand der revolutionären Ahnen als Widerstand gegen Kosten für Militär und stehende Armee. Sie wollten die originale Boston Tea Party als Menetekel für die Gefahren zunehmender Militarisierung deuten. Dieses Thema taucht dagegen heute kaum auf.Alles in allem ist Lepores Buch ein spannender Einblick in aktuelle politische Strömungen, in geschichtliche Hintergründe und in die Mechanismen der Instrumentalisierung von Geschichte. Dass das Buch dabei flüssig geschrieben ist und ohne viele Fremdwörter auskommt, macht das Lesen um so kurzweiliger. Das einzige Manko waren aus meiner Sicht die teilweise zu detaillierten Anekdoten zu Leben, Familie und Wirken einiger Gründungsväter wie etwa Benjamin Franklin. Auch wenn sie es als Entzauberung der Glorifizierung seitens der Tea Party-Bewegung meint: In dieser Hinsicht ist Lepore auch wieder Teil der Maschine, die immer wieder wenige Männer auf einen Sockel stellt.