Putting the Tea Party in Perspective

Harvard historian Jill Lepore puts the modern day Tea Party movement into historical perspective.

The modern Tea Party, like other political movements before it, self-identifies with the spirit that moved eighteenth-century Bostonians to cast imported tea into Boston harbor. In a witty account of the uses and abuses of history—mostly for political ends—Jill Lepore’s new book, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History, describes the recurrent misappropriation of our national heritage since the Revolution and the mythologizing of its “Founding Fathers.” The Kemper professor of American history says the modern “Tea Party” movement is a form of “historical fundamentalism” with reactionary precedents that she recounts in wry detail.

“Historical fundamentalism,” Lepore writes, “is marked by the belief that a particular and quite narrowly defined past—‘the founding’—is ageless and sacred and to be worshipped; that certain historical texts—‘the founding documents’—are to be read in the same spirit with which religious fundamentalists read, for instance, the Ten Commandments; that the Founding Fathers were divinely inspired; that the academic study of history (whose standards of evidence and methods of analysis are based on skepticism) is a conspiracy and, furthermore, blasphemy; and that political arguments grounded in appeals to the founding documents, as sacred texts, and to the Founding Fathers, as prophets, are therefore incontrovertible.”

Lepore identifies the death of the newspaper as a destabilizing influence in American politics, one reason for the rise of the latter-day Tea Party. Even as she points out the ironies and inconsistencies of the Tea Party platform, she musters some sympathy for the cause, in which she sees a “heartbreaking” “nostalgia…for an imagined time…less troubled by conflict, less riddled with ambiguity, less divided by race.…A yearning for a common past…” That common past exists in all its complexity, as Lepore teaches us, but in a partisan age, the nuanced view of American history becomes harder to restore.

A 2005 Harvard Magazine article discussed Lepore and two of her other books for popular audiences.

You might also like

Off the Shelf

The wealth gap, shamanism, the life of David Nathan, and more

Making Money Funny

Matt Levine’s spunky Bloomberg column

Reconstructing the Berlin Wall

David Leo Rice explores the strange, unseen forces shaping our world.

Most popular

House Committee Subpoenas Harvard Over Tuition Costs

The University must turn over all requested materials related to tuition and financial aid by mid-July. 

The Professor Who Quantified Democracy

Erica Chenoweth’s data shows how—and when—authoritarians fall.

The Power of Patience

Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention

Explore More From Current Issue

Harvard’s Plant Collection Meets Space Science

Light-based analysis of botanical collections link plants to Earth’s changing climate.

Harvard’s Comedy and Improv Scene

In comedy groups, students find ways to be absurd, present, and a little less self-conscious.

Your Guide to Summer 2025 Along Boston Harbor

Enjoying the Boston Harbor’s Renaissance This Summer