Real goals of the Tea Party

In this thread I hope to warn libertarians about the Tea Party's real agenda.

ECONOMIC POLICY.

The economic policy of the Tea Party revolves around one thing and one thing only; job creation. In this sense they are no different from the Obama Administration in its emphasis on creating jobs so that lower- and middle-class American families can afford to consume goods, thus stimulating the economy by generating demand. The key difference is that the government believes that jobs can be created through positive intervention in the economy. The Tea Party, on the other hand, takes up the Neoconservative banner of "job creators" and reifies the wealthy. Let's look at the popular demands of Tea Partiers on this site and in the news media.

1. Slash corporate taxes.
This policy relieves America's largest businesses of their tax burdens. According to the Tea Party, this means that their bottom lines will be improved and they will be able to hire more workers and expand their enterprises. The Tea Party line is that taxes are so restrictive and so high that businesses are unable to hire; government is restricting the natural growth of the free market.

2. Abolish income taxes.
This policy has much the same effect as the one above, but has the added populist benefit of removing the citizens' tax burdens. These two policies effectively coincide with the third...

3. Abolish the Federal Reserve.
For the Tea Party, this policy has several key effects. It prevents the government from interfering in the economy by generating inflation. Tea Partiers (or at least everybody's favourite ATS poster, neo96) believe that inflation destroys the value of the wealth held by massive corporations and the rich. Apparently the rich hold all of their investments in the form of cash! Removing the Fed also involves repealing the 16th Amendment, which grants Congress the power to levy an income tax. Depriving the state of its economic control and its revenue-generating abilities has this key goal;

4. Minarchism: demolish the state and leave only a stump.
To Tea Party economic theory, the state exists only as a hindrance. Its intervention in the eocnomy is always seen as interference with wholly negative effects. Raising taxes means depriving 'job creators' of money that they would otherwise generously bestow upon their employees. Inflation and currency devaluation are supposed to weaken the purchasing power of individuals and corporations. Government regulations, above all, stand in the way of a truly free market and the utopia that Tea Partiers believe it embodies. By starving the state, they would devolve more power to the super wealthy, the 'job creators.'

The anti-tax minarchism of the Tea Party has as its chief goal the liberation of businesses from any sort of government intervention. This effectively grants massive corporations unlimited powers and permits enormous, anti-competitive monopolies. They can drive any and all small businesses out of the market through vicious policies; they can destroy the entrepreneurialism of the middle class and assimilate all wealth into their own coffers. At this point, Tea Partiers believe, the 'job creators' at the top of the pyramid will not longer be threatened by losses to their bottom line and will start hiring en masse, to exploit the vast unused labour resources of the country.

The irony in this is that "government can't create jobs" and "don't depend on the government" are mantras of the same people who think that it is a good idea to depend on corporate employers to provide them with a wage.

SOCIAL POLICY

The social policy of the Tea Party is largely driven by Christian Conservatism, as embodied by Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Sarah Palin. As we shall see, all of these policies revolve around the ideal of making America stronger. We will see what this means.

1. Homophobia.
Homosexuality is despised by conservatives because, they claim, it undermines and destroys the traditional family and traditional family values. New family types can emerge when strict heterosexual monogamy is not enforced. The other dimension of this homophobia was described by Richard Nixon in the White House tapes; homosexuality makes society weaker. There is the obvious stereotype of effeminate men, of course, but this is a much deeper concern for conservatives. Homosexuality is a degenerate mental disorder, something that is a choice or a disease to be cured and not a valid way of life. This is why conservatives love ex-gay therapy. 'Curing' homosexuality strengthens America by protecting the traditional family and producing legions of tough, macho men.

2. Family Values.
Family values are the vaguely-defined set of norms that make the traditional American family sustainable. These include the obedience of wives to husbands, the obedience of children to parents, the rejection of divorce, the enforcement of strict heterosexual monogamy, and the absolute intervention of parents in the lives of their children. The traditional American family is a militant institution. It is a top-down hierarchy in which children have no rights or freedoms. They are inferior to their parents and are regarded under law as mentally and physically incompetent. Wives are regarded as inferior to their husbands, who hold the prestige position of 'breadwinner.' The entire institution is held together by the oath of marriage, which the children have no part in but are subjected to anyway. Wives are to be domestic and to care for the husband's children and home while he pursues greater prestige at his place of employment. It is a penal institution where corporal punishment is required and strict discipline rules.

3. Reification of the military.
The Tea Party loves the army. They love soldiery and the uniformity of military life. Military life instills 'values' and 'discipline' and 'respect' in soldiers. It breeds out inferior personality traits and transforms ordinary men into REAL men, and fierce patriots. No matter what they are engaged in, no matter how they conduct themselves, the armed forces of the United States are regarded as heroes to be admired and imitated. Their individual identities are of no account, only the group identity of the military. This ensures that homosexuality, which reduces martial morale in the eyes of the Tea Party, is rooted out for the sake of the institution and its sacred moral mission.

4. Islamophopbia and Religious Revivalism.
The central power in Tea Party social policy is Christian morality and the Church. The Church as an institution is used to reproduce Christian morals by indoctrinating the youth of America. This code of conduct is the source of all Tea Party policy, and that of many other groups besides. The fear and hatred of Muslims is bred in Christian conservatives so that they believe that the Church is under immanent threat from a heretical outsider. Atheism is used as a similar bogeyman, to rile up the faithful into believing that their way of life faces extinction unless they take drastic action. The Church uses militant metaphors and passages from the Bible to emphasize this, for example referring to the 'sword' of the Gospel in the Book of Revelation. Christian militarism is conflated with the US armed forces, and all other social policies are based around this desire to enforce Christian morals. The Church, in effect, is the moral backing of a militant society championed by the Tea Party.

I don't have much to say about Tea Party foreign policy. What little has been said has been that foreign intervention should be abandoned, that the world should fend for itself. However, this is said by a tiny minority of the Tea Party - the actual Libertarians. The vast majority of Tea Partiers are rather conventional conservatives that are becoming increasingly radical. It appears to me that they are more concerned with State vs. Federal issues than with Domestic vs. International issues. That brings me to the States' rights issue.

States' rights has been a rallying cry for Conservatives since the Republican party was founded. Before and during the Civil War it was demanded by Confederates and Southern conservatives that the rights of the state be respected and the power of the federal government curtailed. In recent years we can see the same cry coming from the Red States, largely in the South. States' Rights, as a political movement, is a revival of Confederate sentiments.

Anti-tax minarchism not only empowers corporations, it empowers the States at the expense of Washington. It deprives the Federal government of its powers over the States, its powers to intervene in their internal affairs with institutions such as the FBI or IRS. A key Tea Party goal is this shift of power away from Washington D.C., increasingly seen by the public-at-large as incapable of getting any meaningful work done.

States' rights benefit corporations, as well. They take away the regulatory power of the federal government to enforce business rules in the states and to normalize them between states. The individual states, being smaller institutions with narrower interests invested in their futures, are easier to lobby and control than the large and powerful Federal government, where there is great competition between lobbies. Nation-wide and international corporations have much more power relative to the States than they do to the Federal government. It is easier for them to corrupt the States than the central government. Without federal oversight, this becomes even easier.

Of interest to those who believe, as I do, that the Tea Party is by and large an 'astroturf' movement funded by powerful corporations is Rick Perry's position on the 17th Amendment. In his book Fed Up!, published last year, Perry espoused the belief that the 17th Amendment was passed in a fit of populist rage, that it gave too much power to the public and thus undermined the stability of the Republic. The 17th Amendment provided for the election of Senators by the public, whereas they had previously been elected by the State governments; remnants of this older law can be seen when a Senator retires and a replacement is appointed by their state's governor. Repealing the 17th Amendment would turn the Upper House of Congress into one elected solely by the power elites of the states and not the people governed. Obviously this would further serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful.

Clearly, those who back the Tea Party and feed them the party line benefit from keeping a weakened Federal government around, so that they can more effectively control it. The reason for this is very simple; America cannot have a strong military to satisfy conservative demands unless it has a unified command in Washington. It needs to keep the federal government so that the military can be co-ordinated, and so that Tea Party social policy can be enforced across all 50 states, regardless of their sovereign rights.

The end goal of the Christian conservative populists that make up the bulk of the Tea Party is simple; to transform America into a powerful militant society that derives its moral authority from the Bible as interpreted by the consensus of American priests. The conversion of all Americans into Christians of some sect or other preserves the democracy of the nation within this theocratic framework; if everyone elected to Congress is Christian, then a Christian consensus can be achieved. It is no different from sharia law, which is defined by the consensus of imams on Muslim jurisprudence. It is a theocratic law based on democratic interpretation of the source of law in scripture.

The end goal of the corporate conservative elites that direct the Tea Party is also simple; to place themselves above the burden of taxation and above the law by giving themselves ever-greater powerful to control and change the law to protect their own interests. Their goal is to turn the government into an instrument for the control of the populace and to permanently maintain their own supremacy in American society. This is why they resent welfare, social security, and many other pittances that help ordinary Americans to survive and overcome hardships. They want the end of social mobility. They want to stratify American society so that the only mobility is sideways, not upwards. A caste system suits their interests well, and the military is the most popular hierarchical system in America. By promoting America as a theocratic crusader state, the corporations not only gain valuable footsoldiers for their resource wars; they convince the American public that it is a duty to respect their hierarchical superiors and to obey all orders from the top.



This is the anatomy of the Tea Party. A rigidly structured society in which liberty and freethinking are sacrificed in favour of group solidarity and austere morality. A nation that becomes a prison for the citizens, overseen by a small caste of aristocrats outside of the law.

Outside of this are the true Tea Partiers, the real grassroots founders of this movement: libertarians. They stand for the exact opposite of these goals. The Tea Party is irredeemable as a national brand image. Libertarians cannot and should not rally behind it. It has become the banner of the ravenously greedy and the rabidly stupid. It is the standard of aristocratic wolves and their plebian pitbulls.


THA END

Have fun criticising me, I am sure that this 3 part post will get ripped to shreds.

Originally posted by SmedleyBurlap
The end goal of the corporate conservative elites that direct the Tea Party is also simple; to place themselves above the burden of taxation and above the law by giving themselves ever-greater powerful to control and change the law to protect their own interests. Their goal is to turn the government into an instrument for the control of the populace and to permanently maintain their own supremacy in American society.

This is why they resent welfare, social security, and many other pittances that help ordinary Americans to survive and overcome hardships.

Have fun criticising me, I am sure that this 3 part post will get ripped to shreds.

You make it quite easy with the above glaringly -- trying to think of a nice word for ignorant -- "disconnected"? statements.

The Tea Party wants to reduce the size of the government dramatically and in doing so give them a means of 'controlling' the populace and 'maintaining' their supremacy?

I just shake my head - year by year the government gets larger and the 'control' get larger and what I am 'permitted' to do gets smaller. I just don't get it. Put everything else aside - I honestly don't understand you people that advocate for what we have - larger and larger government with larger and larger regulation and 'control' decrying the 'control' of the decentralizationists... its hard to wrap my head around. I'm a TPer and I want more liberty, more freedom, less regulation and less control - not for corporations but for people. I despise the pyramid building the fascists have been doing (left and right) where year by year corporations are swallowed up by other corporations with little or no assets (just monopoly money) - the devour corporations and centralize control just as the government has been doing.

More freedom means more small business and less international corporate control via government mandate. What in the world do you advocate and can you seriously defend it with the above diatribe?

A wise man once said:

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so."

Well, you've fallen into the sticky trap of collectivism -- over simplifying the many viewpoints and ideologies of a complex group of people.
The Tea party label just isn't going to fly anymore. You can beat up on that strawman all day as far as I'm concerned. I know that what you really don't like are IDEAS.

Come back when you can talk about Ideas instead of taking pot-shots at my scarecrow.

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap

1. Slash corporate taxes.
This policy relieves America's largest businesses of their tax burdens. According to the Tea Party, this means that their bottom lines will be improved and they will be able to hire more workers and expand their enterprises. The Tea Party line is that taxes are so restrictive and so high that businesses are unable to hire; government is restricting the natural growth of the free market.

Tell me something... how do you tax a business? A business provides a good or service (or a combination thereof) for a fee. If the taxes go up, a business doesn't pay more to the government - a business raises their fees to satisfy the tax.

So, who is really taxed by corporate or business taxes?

2. Abolish income taxes.
This policy has much the same effect as the one above, but has the added populist benefit of removing the citizens' tax burdens. These two policies effectively coincide with the third...

Why should one be taxed based off of their income? Perhaps they should be taxed based on their purchases? A person with more money is going to spend more, yes? A person with less money can save more and not be practically forced into taking out loans at an interest. You do realize that our loan-focused economy is the primary reason for the concentration of wealth in this country, no?

3. Abolish the Federal Reserve.
For the Tea Party, this policy has several key effects. It prevents the government from interfering in the economy by generating inflation. Tea Partiers (or at least everybody's favourite ATS poster, neo96) believe that inflation destroys the value of the wealth held by massive corporations and the rich. Apparently the rich hold all of their investments in the form of cash! Removing the Fed also involves repealing the 16th Amendment, which grants Congress the power to levy an income tax. Depriving the state of its economic control and its revenue-generating abilities has this key goal;

I'll first draw attention to your sudden swap of words: "Fed" and "State." Or, rather, you equated the two words. You start talking about the Federal government, but suddenly charge that the State is going to be deprived of power. Nothing is further from the truth. The State is the primary governing body in the U.S. system of government. The Federal Government is a secondary system meant to preserve the relationship between States.

You also make quite invalid argument. The Federal Reserve doesn't create inflation directly, but it does remove the requirement for financial accountability on behalf of banks and thus is a major reason for the extremes of fractional reserve banking we see - which promotes the development and growth of market "bubbles." You then claim that the reason for wanting to eliminate inflation is to benefit the rich... which is simply quite silly. The rich often have a number of different investments that, if used intelligently, will see them through just about any foreseeable economic catastrophe. The lower, middle, and lower-end of the upper class rely upon the value of the dollar most extensively for their daily life and quality of life.

Taking action against the federal reserve's inherent destabilization of the economy and slowing the rate of inflation doesn't really do much for or against wealthy people. It does, however, do much to benefit wage earners and the investments of the middle class (often passed on to successive generations).

The irony in this is that "government can't create jobs" and "don't depend on the government" are mantras of the same people who think that it is a good idea to depend on corporate employers to provide them with a wage.

This is where you just don't gaheet it, good buddy. People should be free to pursue an income/standard-of-living through the use of their skills and abilities. For some - this will be as a wage-earner. For others, it will be as a business owner - perhaps a small business, perhaps as a founder of a much larger business. And, still for others, it will be a combination thereof.

What many conservatives - commonly affiliated with the Tea Party - want is for our country to return to the days when almost anyone could open up a business or personal practice. The current system is so restrictive that the legal work to start a business pretty much guarantees a stagnation of the market with large super-corporations dominating the landscape. These efforts to "protect" the consumer often end up setting the precedent and standard for government regulation that later attract lobbyists of large corporations seeking to protect their own interests and choke out competition.

For such a long-worded fellah, you really aren't too bright.

I notice that most respondents to any criticism of the Tea Party miss the exceptions that most critics make. Most critics seem not to make the exception explicit, but I think that I did so in the intro and conclusion of my post.

The libertarians are no longer in control of the Tea Party. I disagree with Libertarians, yes, but I do not think that the Tea Party itself is a Libby phenomenon. The mainstream Tea Party is a meme virus that has infected and radicalized mainstream American conservatives. I outlined my little meme virus theory in this post.

Originally posted by SmedleyBurlap
There is a difference between the GOP and TEA parties, although it is a subtle one.

The TEA party is essentially a meme or, word virus that has infected the Republican Party's popular support. This virus is a strain of revolutionary fever, specifically.

The cause of the TEA party's revolutionary fever is discontent with the government's response to the economic crisis and the perception that the public is being robbed to keep the oligarchs afloat.

Those most vulnerable to infection by the TEA party's meme virus are supporters of the Republican Party. This is because the bulk of the bailouts were handed out after Obama was elected, and the GOP leadership shifted blame away from Bush and onto the new President. As the virus spreads among the GOP's popular base, it mutates according to the specific criticisms that the infected have against the Obama government. It changes form from a general tax revolt to a populist conservative social movement.

In a democratic society like the United States revolutionary fever is endemic, like the common cold. Every election cycle irritates the disenchanted electors and brings on a mild case of the fever. Sometimes the inflammation is more severe, and sometimes a new mutation is introduced to the mainstream. In the case of the Tea Party, Libertarians successfully introduced a novel strain of Revolutionary Fever to mainstream political discourse. Tea Party memes have infected a very large number of ordinary American conservatives. However, I do not believe that the Libertarians can ever control the infection. They lack the political clout and the financial backing to compete with entrenched social engineers in the news and commentary media (i.e. Fox News). I think that what has happened has not been an awakening of the public through contact with Libertarian Tea Partiers. I think that what has happened is that Libertarian sentiments have been added to the meme pool and that they are very, very useful to the hidden backers and engineers of mainstream conservative opinion.

So, I am explicitly not criticising Libertarian ideals. I hope that some Libertarians can come to this thread and get past the naming convention. I look forward to constructive criticism that addresses my actual premises and not my choice to separate Libertarian Tea Partiers from the mainstream Tea Party.

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap


I think you're a few demonstrators short of a riot - looking so far between the lines that you're staring at noise.

Since you seem to be under a rock - a lot of criticism has been thrown at the Republican party by "TEA Party" members, 'leaders,' and media proponents following the failures demonstrated in August.

Sure - there will always be those within a movement who are just going along with it because they are upset with the way things are going (just look at Obama's campaign - how much of that incessant psychobabble came from people who had a clue what they were advocating?). The "TEA Party" is going to be no different. There will be people tagging along with it because it's just some way of saying "I'm angry and am blaming it on you!"

However - the deeper roots of the movement are genuine in their desire to take things back to a more Constitutionalist form of government - and don't allow for too much in the way of favoritism. The Republicans are getting blasted right now, and few in the "TEA Party" seem too enthusiastic about the Republican primary contestants. The only one I'm at all interested in seeing on the ticket is Bachman - and, admittedly, that's simply for the chance to have the first female President/VP voted in on the conservative ballot as a giant flaming birdie to the Liberals. (When the lack of real reasons to vote exists, shallow reasons are better than making a Christmas-Tree out of your ballot - Hell, she can't do much worse than the one we have now... *knocks on wood*).

Honestly, though, the real issue is in the House/Senate, and that's where I see most of the "TEA Party" activity. It's a serious shift in focus from years past, where we did simply blame everything on the President. Right now - we may as well not even have a President, to be honest. It's just a foregone conclusion that he's going to suck regardless of what happens. There's no point in even paying heed to him. Perhaps a blessing in disguise as Congress begins to take a center-stage.

reply to post by SmedleyBurlap


I'm curious--where did you get this information about the Tea Party's "real" goals?

All I can say is that if everyone who's running around claiming they "know" what the Tea Party members think or stand for actually TALKED to the grass-roots supporters, you'd be singing a different tune.