Tea parties to protest government spending and taxation are fine. But be careful. Make sure you’re clear on what you support, and why. An anarchist could support a tea party because he doesn’t want any government. A socialist could support a tea party because billions are still going to defense, and while medicine is about to be socialized, day care and computers and automobiles are not yet “free.” An advocate of limited government can support a tea party, too. I gather that most involved in this movement are opponents of big government. That’s well and good, but it’s more important to be FOR something — and to know what you’re for.
This is the big weakness of the current powerholders in our government. They’re for things like increased expenditures on this project or that program. They’re vehemently against capitalism, freedom, and individualism — other than the extent to which these things are required in order to create the loot to plunder. It really isn’t hard to defeat such a dismal and uninspiring program as the Big Government bankruptcy and waste the tea parties are justifiably designed to oppose. Only Republicans could have been defeated by such a program. The reason they were is that they stand for nothing. They stand against “big government” but they had nothing to offer in its place. In practice, they often proposed the expansion of government, as Bush did when he increased Medicare prescription drug expenditures by billions of government dollars. To say Republicans lacked credibility is putting it way too mildly. That’s why proponents of these tea parties don’t even want speakers from the Republican party establishment at their rallies. This is all to the good.
The United States began as an opposition to big, tyrannical government, like our own government is becoming today. The first American revolution only took hold once a positive prescription — the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — was put forward. We need a new tea party, but also a resolve and legal mandate to return to the principle of limited government established by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights did NOT guarantee the “right” of Peter to elect Barack, who in turn would rob Paul and give half of Paul’s money to Peter, keeping the rest for himself and his cronies. This is the old way of government, not the new way established in that bright, rare moment of history by America’s founders. This will be change that self-responsible lovers of freedom can believe in, as opposed to the vapid and reckless expansion of bankrupt government policies currently being peddled as “change.”