Richmond.com ran an article about the Tea Party, saying it offers more questions than answers. While there is much I could respond to in the article, I will focus on what, to me, is the most fundamental issue and easiest to clarify:
While there are reasons to expect the Tea Party to eventually run out of steam, what if it doesn’t? If the Tea Party continues to gain strength, where would its brain trust want to take America? And, what does the now familiar slogan, “I want my country back,” really mean?
No doubt, plenty of conservatives wouldn’t mind going “back” to the Reagan-dominated 1980s. There are others who might like to undo the entire FDR era (1933-45), which reacted to the Great Depression. The ideal time for them might be the days with Calvin Coolidge or Herbert Hoover in the White House. Still others would probably like to go all the way “back” to the Gilded Age, before trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt advanced the cause of government regulation.
So, isn’t it fair to ask if the Tea Party phenomenon isn’t more of a collective longing for another time, than it is a reaction to the challenges of today’s fast-moving world of borderless economies? If that’s the case, might the Tea Party be more appropriately named the Nostalgia Party?
I can’t speak for every Tea Partier, but to me “I want my country back” doesn’t refer to any specific era in American history I want to replicate when I thought things were perfect (that era never existed). Instead it represents a broader commentary on how far our nation has strayed from the founding principles that made us unique and a haven for the oppressed.
“I want my country back” is shorthand for “WE THE PEOPLE want our country back from WE THE GOVERNMENT.” America was set up on the revolutionary principle of self-government: “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Government answered to the people, not the other way around.
Gradually, though, politicians expanded their power enough to flip the system into one resembling that which we originally fought a war to separate from. The people now indeed answer to the government.
The Tea Party wants to flip it back. We aim to remove the corrupt career politicians who seek only greater and permanent power, and replace them with honorable individuals who seek to humbly serve their constituents and communities instead of themselves. Then, We the People will again be in charge.
And we will have our country back.
I run into this argument all the time: “you people are just longing for the good old days of June Cleaver when everyone fit into a role”. I also frequently encounter people who make the argument: “It’s not the eighteenth century anymore, you have to accept some limits on your freedom.”
It’s complete crap. The individual liberty enshrined in the Declaration and the Constitution are more important now than ever. How else can we really embrace diversity? Think about it; and I don’t just mean racial / ethnic diversity, I mean the massive diversity of specialization in the economy, leading to massive diversity of individual wants and needs, which is all made still more complex by our personal individual preferences and lifestyles.
What person or group of people are smart enough or fair enough to actively manage a system as complex and diverse as a modern economy? The answer is obvious: THERE IS NO SUCH GROUP. Any attempt to do so will crush creativity and entrepreneurship, the driving engines of any economy.
And that is just what has been done. And in order to support his trend the government must smash us all into tiny little molds so that they can categorize us and so more effectively control us. What do you think all of the unconstitutional extra questions on the census are about? Putting us in boxes, that’s what. Actually, they want us to put ourselves in boxes for them, by literally checking boxes on a form: “Yes, I am in that box”. Then they can use the information on our differences to pit us against each other demographically most effectively.
Jon, your response to the RTD article was right on! You summed up the expression “we want our country back” in an easy-to-understand explanation. Bravo!
The writer is correct. Our form of government was deliberately crafted to limit the powers of the Federal government substantially. In order to protect the people from the tyrannical hand of an unresponsive government like the one we replaced, the Constitution specifically spells out the named powers of the federal government and further states ‘ any powers not specifially granted to the federal government are retained by the States’. The wisdom of those words is manifestly evident in the current state of affairs (no pun intended). State governments, being closer to the citizens, are in a much better position to gauge the needs and respond to the sensibilities of their citzens than is the federal government which has very little if any understanding of local issues.
If the federal government were pared back to it’s original role, the economy would be freed to expand, social issues would be addressed in ways that truly improve the lives of people rather than keep any special group in power, and would provide adequately for the common defense without compromise.
I ask you, what is wrong with that scenario? No it won’t be easy or quick, but it must be started now. There is no time to loose. If we fail to return the country to it’s citizenry, we will surely loose it. There is a reason that the west is not mentioned in the Book of Revalation. It could be because the west is no longer a power or world player. It may also be that the west has returned to it’s creator and is no longer is a stronghold of the world. I pray that it is the latter but it will take the commited efforts of all Christians and the blessing of Almighty God to bring about such a dramatic upheaval. It is not beyond comprehension. Nothing is too hard for God. Let us begin the task that lays before us.