When “they” start giving you a name – and especially when they attempt to use it in a derogatory fashion – you know you’re having an effect.
So here comes the new one – “The Tenthers.” I recently started seeing a few references to this term in the standard places, Alternet, ThinkProgress, and elsewhere. But now it seems to have come from on high like the NeoCons did with every new buzzword during the Bush years.
These days, everyone from MSNBC on downward is disparaging those who invoke the principles of limited government that the 10th Amendment stands for as something awful. And they’ve got this cute little word for it too!
In fact, its usage has come on so fast and so regularly that someone over at the Washington Times picked up on the newly-approved jargon:
Health care reform supporters at the Center for American Progress, the American Prospect, MSNBC and other outlets have deployed the term against Republicans who cite the 10th Amendment as reason not to create new programs. Some of the leading Republican proponents of the allegedly “dangerous” and “conspiratorial” theory include Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina, and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.
“As the nation emerges from the worst economic downturn in three generations, the tenthers would strip away the very reforms and economic regulations that beat back the Great Depression, and they would hamstring any attempt to enact new progressive legislation,” worried the American Prospect’s Ian Millhiser in an essay that said the “tenthers” were “no less radical but infinitely more dangerous” than the birthers.
I wonder if they call Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley a “Tenther”? She invoked the 10th amendment in a federal lawsuit that’s in favor of gay marriage. Or how about the many marijuana legalization activists that see the 10th as prohibiting the federal government from being involved in that area?
I’m sure they’re just a bunch of partisan hacks and don’t really care – or maybe they’re too involved in their national political party to even notice.
Either way, I’m pretty happy about it. It’s much easier to describe myself as a Tenther than saying “I don’t have a political affiliation – neither party represents my interests or supports the Constitution. ”
Now it’s just one word. It’s so simple that we’re taking it on and even adding it as a category here on the Tenth Amendment Center blog.
Thank you whoever you are!
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