Sample Summary Plan for Kinsley S My Country, Tis of Me

Sample Summary Plan for Kinsley’s “My Country, ‘Tis of Me”

According to Michael Kinsley in “My Country, ‘Tis of Me,” even though Tea Party supporters style themselves as bold patriots, their ideas are in fact muddled, self-serving, and unlikely to have lasting impact.

§  Tea Party Patriots are currently getting plenty of media attention and stirring up plenty of energy—and angst—within the political process.

§  Despite comparisons to 1960s protest movements, in important ways, the Tea Party is the diametric opposite of the student protest movement of the ‘60s.

§  Most worrisomely, Tea Party adherents seem to support policies and goals that are vague, confused, contradictory, and unrealistic.

§  In the long run, the childish, self-serving attitudes of these “patriots” are seriously at odds with the sort of altruistic, public-spirited commitment we usually associate with patriotism.

Sample Summary Draft for the Kinsley Article

According to Michael Kinsley in “My Country, ‘Tis of Me,” even though Tea Party supporters style themselves as bold patriots, their ideas are in fact muddled, self-serving, and unlikely to have lasting impact. Kinsley admits that Tea Party Patriots (or TPPs, as Kinsley calls them) are currently getting plenty of media attention and stirring up plenty of excitement—and anxiety—in American politics. Despite its current high profile, however, the Tea Party “is not the solution to what ails America,” but rather, “an illustration of what ails America” (43). In contrast to the protest movements of the ‘60s—to which some mistakenly compare it—the Tea Party looks rather pathetic: youthful energy and idealism versus “middle-aged and old” (42) rancor and self-promotion, a commitment to fundamentally altruistic goals versus a fixation on inconsistent and self-interested ends. For Kinsley, this movement’s fundamental problem is its “self-indulgent premise that none of our challenges and difficulties are our own fault” (43). Rather, TPPs see “big government” as the root of all evil, even though much on the political wish lists of Tea Party followers—from job protection to maintenance of Medicare—can only be achieved by means of a large, activist government. Tea party adherents seem to willfully ignore the costs and tradeoffs involved with significant government programs—including many such programs that they themselves view as important. Instead, they prefer to whine about how horribly high their taxes are and what a rotten state the country’s in. Indeed, it is merely this “abstract resentment” (43) that unites TTPs, for their particular goals and agendas are so disparate and inconsistent that if they “ever developed a coherent platform or agenda, they would lose half their supporters” (43). In the long run, the childish, self-serving attitudes of these “patriots” are seriously at odds with the sort of altruistic, public spirited commitment we usually associate with patriotism, and thus, Kinsley views the Tea Party more as “the flavor of the month” (43) than as a significant driver of our country’s future.

Work Cited

Kinsley, Michael. “My Country, ‘tis of Me.” Atlantic Monthly June 2010: 42-43. ProQuest. Web. 30 June 2010.