The Tea Party: What Do We Do Now?
By Leslie Carbone | Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 | Catch-All
“The Republican Party agenda has become the tea party agenda, and vice versa,” Democratic National Committee chairman, and former Governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine said at a news conference last week.
I wish! If that were the case, I might still be a Republican.
But what does the Tea Party movement really stand for? What are its main ideas? What is its philosophy? Well, that can be hard to pinpoint. As Doug Bandow noted recently in the Daily Caller, “The Tea Party movement incorporates several philosophical influences. Polls show adherents split between Sarah Palin and Ron Paul, suggesting philosophical confusion if not schizophrenia.”
But despite this apparent split-personality disorder, it’s clear that Tea Partiers are on to something. What the movement captures is the popular outrage that began to brew with former President George Bush XLIII’s bail-outs and boiled over with President Barack Obama’s government stimulus and health-care power grab. And its passion for justice is heartening.
But passion is not enough. Grasping that it’s wrong to rob Peter to pay Paul is not enough. Having a feeling that something isn’t right, like the Mama Grizzlies, is not enough.
Where the movement desperately needs growth is in understanding the philosophical influences that Mr. Bandow notes and in developing a well-considered philosophy of its own. The principles in favor of economic freedom are far richer than a two-year-old’s cry of “Mine!” And Tea Partiers, as our movement turns two, need to continue learning to understand these principles in order to become truly effective. We need to be conversant with the factors that make the market economy work, factors like price signals, incentives, and comparative advantage. We need to study which kinds of taxes are the most and least damaging to prosperity, moral as well as economic. And most of all, we need communicate why economic freedom–not spreading the wealth around–is what makes things better for everybody.
In the last few days, a spate of opinion pieces has lamented the woeful state of knowledge in the modern conservative movement. This is a welcome thing. We are in the right, and our nascent movement grasps the obvious truths that generations of leftist intellectuals have sought to erase from our minds. Buttress that grasp with a robust understanding of history, philosophy, and economics, and we may just have a movement that can restore American freedom.
In the meantime, the liberals seem intent on driving folks away. Tying the Tea Party to the GOP, Gov. Kaine insists that Republicans would repeal President Obama’s health-care takeover and the new financial regulations. “We’re determined to make sure Americans understand this,” he said. And if I were still a Republican, that would be very good news indeed.
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About the author
Leslie Carbone is the author of "Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform" (Potomac, 2009). Her writing has appeared in magazines including "The Weekly Standard" and "The American Enterprise", in newspapers from "The Philadelphia Inquirer" to "The San Francisco Chronicle", and on Web sites like "BreakPoint" and "National Review Online". She has appeared on more than 200 radio and television talk shows, been quoted in national newspapers including "The Wall Street Journal" and "USA Today", and spoken at venues across the United States from Tea Parties to college campuses, including Northwestern University, UCLA, and Cornell University. Ms. Carbone has served as Chief-of-Staff to the late Assemblyman Gil Ferguson of California, Executive Director of Accuracy In Academia, Director of Family Tax Policy at Family Research Council, Senior Writer at Koch Industries, Inc., and Speechwriter for former Secretary of Labor of the United States Elaine L. Chao.
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4 Responses to "The Tea Party: What Do We Do Now?"
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The Hampton Roads TEA Party has plenty to do – and we are at work doing it.
And “No” – it is not about the Republican Party – far from it. The GOP does not acrtually support the TEA party-like principles that TEA Party patriots believe in – and demand of our government.
Welcome aboard, Leslie!
The title of this article is perfect for this hour in history. Sadly the same question needs to be asked of both political parties as well, as modern Americans discover anew the words of Cicero: ” You may not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you.” Or perhaps Plato’s observation might resonate anew that if fail to get involved in politics, “we will be ruled by our inferiors.”
What indeed are the main ideas of the Tea Party followers and both major parties? How do they conflict and where are they in agreement? What are the basic philosophies of all three parties and how are they about to collide?
While Leslie and other close friends have even recently said they are done with the Republican Party, I dare say that neither the Republican party nor the Democratic party nor any other third party are fully done with them. Yes there is a great need to understand and discuss the various “philosophical influences,…confusuion and schizophrenia” in major both parties as well as in the various loosely organized Tea parties across the continent, but also there is a greater need to take specific action at times within the constitutional framework to preserve those moral and economic freedoms we have long chrished but taken for granted yet only now recognize as being threatened by federal, state and local legislation, regulations, executive orders, and court rulings.
Talk is cheap but some actions speak louder than words. For example despite increases in the federal budget the past 19 months to increase border security, the border is still porus and law enforcement officials in Arizona recently pleaded for 3,000 troops to help them do their jobs of safe guarding the people of Arizona. Instead of sending those troops what does this administration do, it sends one lawyer to file suit in federal court to sue Arizona for passing a law to do the very thing the federal government will not do (eg., to “provide for our common defense.”) Now opponents are lining up on both side of this lawsuit as they are on almost ever other issue in the country. While few politicans are even willing to help build a stronger fence, others create sanctuaries cities for some of those breaking the law to come into this country illegally and also willingly help them to apply for in some cases reap certain other civil or social benefits (like gaining ‘anchor baby’ citizenship) that require those already here to pay for them.
The same is true with almost every other entitlement that has been created. I recently found a great bumper sticker for my truck that says “Entilements discourage initiative.” Samuel Adams warned us about “leveling” two centuries ago and maybe one demand we could make of our next Congress is require all the money that is being redistributed, at least on the federal level, to be treated as “taxable income?” This would include the “earned ‘income tax credit’”, medicare payments, food stamps, housing allowances and social security (at least to that level above which you have contributed into the system).
As someone who feels at home yet at times alone or very at odds with a number of fellow members in both the Republican Party and Tea Party, I think if both of these parties would take Tim Kaine’s 16 point “Republican-Tea Party” platform as a badge of courage and actually take steps to enact all 16 fear mongering planks much like we came to actually sing the former satirical British inspired tune of our first revolutionary period: “Yankee Doodle Dandy”: we might actually have moved this county (back) to where the founders envisoned we should be.
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