Glenn Harlan Reynolds: Town Hall, Tea Party protests have long history in America

The American public has come awake. President Obama promised to get the people more involved in government and - though this probably wasn't what he had in mind - that has certainly happened.

With Tea Party protests and town hall questions, Americans are exercising their First Amendment rights to a degree not seen in decades. This surprises some people, but it shouldn't. And while some people have complained that such demonstrations are uncivil and sometimes downright rowdy, that, too, is an American tradition.

As Pauline Maier writes, "From the late seventeenth century, it was again and again stressed that resistance had to be brought to bear against the very first abuses of power. The least attempt upon public liberty was alarming. . . . And, as always, tyranny was 'much easier to prevent than cure.' "

As Maier notes, "Eighteenth-century Americans accepted the existence of popular uprisings with remarkable ease. . . . Not that extra-legal uprisings were encouraged. They were not. But in certain circumstances, it was understood, the people would rise up almost as a natural force, much as night follows day, and this phenomenon often contributed to public welfare."

That's what's happening now, in a mild sort of way, and what's bringing people out is spending, taxation, and overreaching government - the very same things that have brought Americans out in the past.

In fact, if today's champions of massive spending and regulation had paid attention, they could have found a cautionary example from recent history. In my own home state of Tennessee, an effort in the 1990s to install a state income tax yielded a robust grass-roots resistance that ultimately prevailed. Ten years later, there is still no enthusiasm among the state's political class for another try. This came to a head in a protest rally at the state capitol in 1999.

Just a few days earlier, the adoption of an income tax had appeared all but certain. Tennessee's pro-tax Republican governor, Don Sundquist, had used a combination of pork and arm-twisting to bring many legislators over to his side.

Though the Tennessee Supreme Court had previously ruled that an income tax would violate the state's constitution, tax proponents believed that the current elected court, fearing revenge by the powers-that-be, could be counted on to uphold a tax next time around.

Leading opinion makers, newspaper editorialists, and academics were firmly on board. The Legislature was meeting in special session, and the main question seemed to be what kind of

income tax would emerge, not whether there would be an income tax.

All of this evaporated overnight in the face of overwhelming opposition. Thanks to a combination of talk-radio discussion - particularly from hosts Steve Gill and Phil Valentine - and an e-mail campaign spearheaded by the state Libertarian Party, the Capitol found itself, almost literally, under siege.

Thousands of cars circled Capitol Hill, bearing down on their horns and tying up traffic throughout downtown. Hundreds of protesters occupied the Legislative Plaza, with many barging into the capitol building itself carrying signs and -- in one case -- a can of tar and a feather pillow. "Put a stop to this or we'll get you," said one protester in the Senate speaker's office. Phone and e-mail systems were jammed with complaints and threats.

Despite vows to "do the right thing" notwithstanding popular opinion, the Legislature cracked. One legislator was rushed to a hospital with chest pains; many others complained about the "incivility" of the public response.

The Legislature recessed, hoping the protesters would leave. They didn't. Finally, the special session adjourned, leaving the income tax question to be taken up -- if at all -- in the regular

session next year. It was never passed.

Ten years later, we are seeing something of a reprise on a national level, as taxpayers and citizens rally in opposition to the politics of stimulus and ObamaCare. The protests began with bloggers in Seattle, who organized a demonstration on Feb. 16, 2009.

As word of this spread, rallies in Denver and Mesa, Ariz., were quickly organized for the next day. Then came CNBC talker Rick Santelli's Feb. 19 "rant heard round the world" in which he called for a "Chicago tea party" on July Fourth.

The tea-party moniker stuck, but angry taxpayers weren't willing to wait until July. Soon, tea-party protests were appearing in one city after another, drawing at first hundreds, and then thousands, to marches in cities from Orlando, Fla., to Kansas City to Cincinnati.

As word spread, people got interested in picking a common date for nationwide protests, and decided on Tax Day, April 15. More than a million people, by some estimates, showed up at hundreds of rallies nationwide, and the tea-party protests continued without letup into the summer, morphing into the "town hall" protests as members of Congress returned to meet their constituents over the summer.

As I write this, we don't know how things will work out with ObamaCare. But one thing is already plain: While the establishment organizations were either ineffectually spinning their wheels (as was the Republican Party) or cutting their own deals in exchange for support (as were the AARP and the pharmaceutical industry), the people themselves were rising to the occasion.

And although some groups tried to join the bandwagon once it was in motion, they were clearly

followers, not leaders.

Complacency, it turns out, can't be counted on. When liberties are threatened, Americans will still "rise up almost as a natural force, much as night follows day," and that's a very good thing. At least, for those outside the political class.

Examiner Contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee, and hosts InstaVision on PJTV.com.