David Cowan: The Tea Party's roots are in Aberdeen, not Boston

SCOTS may look perplexedly or even bemusedly at American politics and the success of the Tea Party Movement. It seems so different from our domestic political scene. We may well ask, what has this to do with us? The answer is, rather a lot actually as the Tea Party Movement owes more to Scotland than we might imagine.

The Tea Party self-consciously conjures up the tax revolts in Boston Harbour against the British. It is a populist conservative revolt against any big government, but more precisely the growing government of President Obama. It is also a revolt against Washington DC, and embodies a distrust of the wealthy elite with their hand firmly on the levers of power. The reaction against President Obama and the Democratic Party is a distrust of elitism and idealism perceived to reign in his administration.

However, we have to be cautious in dismissing this simply as Republicans at the gate. Many in the movement are just as critical of Obama's predecessor George W. Bush for also greatly increasing the size of government. There are many Democratic voters signing up for the Tea Party as well. The fact that Democrats are joining is partly explained by the fact that the Democratic Party is traditionally centrist, more like the Liberals of old than Socialists. Some go as far to say there is no Left Wing in America.

The Tea Party is thus carving out a presence in a space uniquely America, for this is a conservative movement that speaks to the "small c" conservatism of the American heartlands. It is also a conservatism whose fundamental thinking stretches back to Scotland. More specifically, it stretches back to Scottish Common Sense philosophy.

This philosophical school came to prominence in the 18th Century, and was founded by Thomas Reid. Reid, whose birth year has its tricentenary this year, was born in Strachan, Kincardineshire, in 1710, but raised in Aberdeenshire. He studied and taught at Aberdeen University, then moved to Glasgow University in 1764 to replace Adam Smith in the Chair of Moral Philosophy. His Common Sense ideas were a reaction to the scepticism of David Hume in Scotland and the idealism of Bishop Berkeley in England.

This philosophy argued that we know we are right because we believe ourselves to be right, based on our ability to understand the world. Reid argued that when we are confirmed in our common beliefs by philosophy, all we have to do is to act according to them, because we know what is right, and what is right is simply self-evident and 'God-given'.In the political dimension, Scottish Common Sense philosophy emphasized the capacity of the individual to recognize the common sense solution to communal problems, rather than resorting to fanciful idealism.

It also called for the mobilization of the common people. Reid believed that the right answers do not derive from a clique of people trained in the art of human reason. Hence, all people have the capacity to know the world directly, and so can have a perspective on what is the right thing to do. The only caveat he added was the exclusion of philosophers and lunatics, who he thought were equally capable of doubting the existence of the world they found themselves in!

Over the course of a hundred years, Scottish Common Sense philosophy held a central place in intellectual thought, and went on the boats to America, and there formed the basis of the philosophy taught in the American education system. It shared these boats with Scottish Calvinism, and the two became integrated into American thinking. It translated in American terms into the participation of the people in the political process, and against standing back to let the elite control all the levers of power.

In thought and deed, the Scottish-American diaspora greatly influenced the intellectual development of America and its founding documents. Historians regularly expound this influence on the formation of a nation that believes itself to be exceptional. The American Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and the writings of Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton and others, sweat Scottish Common Sense philosophy through their intellectual pores.

The risk, as critics ever since have keenly pointed out, is that common sense can rapidly dissolve into crass and uncritical bias. The Tea Party receives that criticism ad nauseum. Another weakness is that this philosophy points only to 'ideas' of truth, which may only 'appear' to be self-evident. It comes as no surprise then that the American Constitution starts out with 'We hold these truths to be self-evident'. They only held them to be true, it doesn't mean they are necessarily so!

Whatever the policy truths or fallacies of the Tea Party Movement advocates, we should not disguise the deeper story of what is happening in America. They draw deeply from the well of populism and the evident common sense of the common people. Like the Scots, Americans do not like being taken for granted, nor do they like to be told what to think by the elites. There has been a preaching tendency since Obama swept into power on a cloud of idealism, and the Tea Party movement has tapped into the disappointments of falling expectations to push a conservative cause. After all, Common Sense philosophy does not define a political policy, only direction.

However, and this is a huge however, Scottish Common Sense philosophy also espoused a belief in common principles.Reid himself wrote "For, before men can reason together, they must agree in first principles; and it is impossible to reason with a man who has no principles in common with you." The Tea Party Movement sees the Obama agenda of healthcare, bailouts, education and the attack on business as too European and too much about government power, and that makes it lack common American principles. In short, it is un-American.

So what might be the electoral effect of this Scotish-influenced movement? The mid-term elections are only a matter of weeks away, and the Tea Party Movement is wreaking havoc with the campaigns of the elites who run the party machinery, be they Republican or Democratic. An NBC/Wall Street Journal this week shows 71 per cent of Republicans are Tea Party supporters and hope candidates succeed on 2 November. A CNN survey indicated 26 per cent of Americans had a favourable view of the movement, with 4 in 10 undecided. Tea Party meetings and rallies held in all states of America and nationally range from the low hundreds to over 10,000 at major rallies.

The Tea Party is a non-party without a leader. However, former President Jimmy Carter has drawn parallels with his own unexpectedly popular 1976 victory, which may encourage former Republican vice-presidential candiate and Tea Party evangelist Sarah Palin to seek a 2012 presidential run. She is influential in gathering electoral support and candidates have affected some twenty State races so far, with high profile victories including Scott Brown's taking of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in California, and most recently Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, something of a Palin lookalike.

This is a popular judgment on a mid-term President, setting limitations on his remaining agenda, but to what effect? The Tea Party Movement will not give birth to a new party, nor will it take over the Republican Party. It is a populist movement that reaches deep into American roots, and draws on its Scottish Common Sense thinking. For this reason, its main achievement will hopefully be to knock common sense into the existing two parties, and that might not be such a bad thing.

• David Cowan is completing a PhD on the Religious Right and American Foreign Policy at the University of St Andrews