The Tea Party represents a great attitude in America. It’s either the last gasp of freedom and liberty against the socialist-fascist steamroller headed by Obama — or the first indication of a tidal wave to come. Either way, the notion is a good one. But the Tea Party has daunting challenges. One is that the Republican Party establishment cannot be trusted. Proponents of a new Tea Party must drive out the Republican career politicians — the ones who gave us the expanded welfare state and (at that point) unprecedented domestic spending of the George W. Bush years — and replace them with citizen-legislators who can credibly claim to be different. Another thing to face: The fact that a party based on liberty and individual rights cannot seriously be grounded in religion, nor in the policies of the religious right. A political party (as opposed to a philosophy) should neither be in favor of, nor against, matters such as homosexuality, belief in God, birth control or other concerns that are properly left to the individual in a free society. The best thing a politician can do about these things is, quite frankly, shut up. Abortion is particularly contentious in the political realm, although it is within the Democratic Party, as well. I see no prospect for a liberty-based party of the future seriously proposing a return to outlawing abortion, although now that Democrats (thanks to ObamaCare) favor tax subsidies for abortion, opponents on the other side may find important common ground.
A pro-liberty, pro-individual rights, pro-capitalism party is something that the United States desperately needs. It cannot replace or override deeper cultural trends in a society. But at least it can offer a voice and an alternative as the policies of our corrupt and inept government lead us into a darker place. In a sense, it wouldn’t take much to produce a unified party for individual rights since the opposition, the Democratic Party, has gone so very, very far to the left on socialized medicine, appeasement of terrorism, and much more yet to come. If nothing else, the Tea Party movement demonstrates a recognition that America has not had a genuine choice in political direction for many, many decades now. The answer is not a third party, which of course would only split the non-liberal “right” and keep the Democrats in power forever. The answer is a second party: But one that will expand and eventually restore liberty, individual rights and hands-off capitalism. The choice between these goals, and those of the wanna-be dictators who have seized power in Washington DC, has never been clearer than now. Today’s liberals mean business, and they have demonstrated that. Now it’s time for their opposition to do the same. It starts by actually becoming an opposition.
In one sense, I have never (in my lifetime) seen the United States of America in worse shape, politically. But in another sense I am more hopeful than ever before. People will now be forced to confront the fact that ideas matter, and that ideology matters. We have perhaps the most ideological President in history (aside from America’s founders), a man whose ideology rests exclusively on the unlimited and unrelenting expansion of government power at the expense of the free individual. Obama is the anti-America. So, under his reign, Americans will be forced to finally decide: Is it America they want — or not?
Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin,”Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
America is losing its republic. It may take a Tea Party to bring it back.