Tea party supporter Jonathan S. Linowes is angry—especially with “Washington.”
His grandparents were Russian immigrants who had four sons. All were enormously successful and influential—in Washington.
[caption id="attachment_5016" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Jonathan Linowes dressed in full colonial regalia for 273rd reenactment of the original Boston Tea Party"]https://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/linowes.jpg[/caption]
His father, David F. Linowes, was a mergers and acquisitions specialist, a professor, author of five books on economics, and chair of four federal commissions—in Washington. “Uncle Harry,” Harold M. Linowes, is a certified public account, a corporate strategist, a financing consultant, and a leader of the United Jewish Appeal—in Washington, with a home in Rehoboth. His uncle R. Robert Linowes, a federal lawyer and developer, chaired a tax commission that proposed $800 million in new taxes and was named Washingtonian of the Year in 1980—definitely a man of Washington. And “Uncle Sol,” Sol M. Linowitz (who, unlike his brothers, did not change his name) was a lawyer, board chair of a company that became Xerox, an ambassador to the Organization of American States, and a confidant to presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter, and Clinton, who said getting Linowitz’s advice on international diplomacy was like “getting trumpet lessons from the angel Gabriel.” Thoroughly Washington.
So what makes Jonathan so angry enough to peel off politically (though not socially) from a family rooted in federal government policy and progressive politics?
“I am angry because I feel like the American dream is being eroded at a very rapid pace, and that is threatening to me and my family and my neighbors,” said Linowes.
“We are becoming a second-rate nation going so far in debt that it’s difficult to do business, and younger children have been brainwashed by public education,” said the self-described “black sheep.”
A tall, thoughtful man, Jonathan Linowes attended public schools in upscale Scarsdale, N.Y., but credits Hebrew school as having protected him from “brainwashing.”
At age 53, Linowes is married to an executive trainer; they have two boys and two girls, ages 11 to 20, and they live on “Parkerhill,” an idyllic 92-acre former dairy farm near New Hampshire’s White Mountains. They also own the Moulton Hill Forest, a nearby 575-acre preserve. After working for others for years, Linowes started his own software development company in 2002 and named it Parkerhill Technology Group.
Sounds like a good life. What could be so bad?
“The liberal Democrats and Obama are taking me in the wrong direction with government solutions like Obamacare, which doesn’t let insurance companies compete to drive medical costs down,” he said.
“I believe in the natural wisdom of free markets,” he said. He credits FedEx and UPS with “giving us reliable mail service.”
Linowes says that in a free market, businesses that take on too much risk should be allowed to fail. He believes that unemployment benefits should be limited, that the federal “Cash for Clunkers” program was an illusion, that the federal government has no role in education, and that social “safety nets” should come from private charity.
Although Linowes avoids comment on a key right-wing issue, creationism vs. evolution, he is conservative to the core: He believes it is unnatural for people to be governed, and therefore government should be limited and sanctioned by the governed. Climate change, he says, may have been a valid scientific inquiry at first, but is no longer an issue because evidence was falsified and billions of dollars went to agenda-driven scientists. And he gets “really mad” when he thinks of the debt the United States owes to China from borrowing to finance federal programs.
“I’m not angry at Pelosi and Obama and Reid as individuals. But I am angry about what they’re doing,” said Linowes. “I don’t see Obama as a black person or Pelosi as a woman—just what they’re doing. Obama is so anti-capitalist I’m stabbed in the heart by him and also by his apologizing for being an American. Bush wasn’t great, but at least he was a free marketer.“
The college undergrad liberal who went to Vietnam antiwar protests because “it was the cool thing to do then” transformed into a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition who advances the Second Amendment argument for individuals’ right to own firearms. When his book discussion group took up tea party activism, he was so delighted that he rented a patriot costume to participate in historic reenactments.
“In my 20s I read Ayn Rand, and that had an impact on me,” he says of the novelist whose philosophy of objectivism is described by admirers as a brilliant exposition on individual rights, while critics consider it pure selfishness.
More recently Linowes voted for the John McCain/Sarah Palin presidential ticket in 2008. He describes tea party icon Palin as “cute” in the way she conducts herself.
“She’s intellectually honest, earthy, unpretentious, and these are the core values that I like about the tea party,” Linowes said. “Karl Rove said the tea party was unsophisticated. Well, they’re not elitists or high-brow. And that’s how I see Sarah Palin. She was hammered in her first speech as the V.P. candidate, and sexist, vile things were said about her. But she draws a great crowd.”
Linowes values tea party gatherings as an outlet with “like-minded people where we can certainly disagree, but it’s intellectually honest.”
And how does he get along with his siblings and 12 first cousins on the Linowes-Lowinsky side of the family—the children of that generation of men so engaged in a strong federal government and community service?
“I don’t talk politics around family because you step on toes,” said Linowes. “But we’re a very close family,” and his own children are aligned politically with him.
Linowes says that while he is the black sheep of a politically liberal family, he believes his relatives all are patriots in their hearts. “Some may be terribly mistaken, but everyone in my family is incredibly generous on multiple levels.”
But Linowes’ anger will continue unabated if the Democrats are not routed in Tuesday’s election.
“The United States is the greatest country on the planet,” he says. “We can talk about the problems among ourselves. But when the prevailing interest is to say we’re the bad guys in the world, that gets me angry. I would rather celebrate who we are instead of apologizing for who we are.”