Outstanding comment!
TEA Party
“The TEA Party was never intended to be about abortion, homosexuality, etc. It’s strength was that people who think we are Taxed Enough Already could unite around the issues of taxes, debt, and spending, regardless of where they stand on social issues.”
To be consistent, the conservative world view *must* encompass the the so-called social issues—those things that used to be called morality.
If we have a right to be free from excessive taxation, that right must have a source. For the Founding Fathers, that source was our Creator. If we have a Creator who endows us with unalienable rights, rights that precede and supersede government, then it is also incumbent upon us to take seriously what that Creator has told us about His nature, and about the nature of good and evil.
If we say, “Yes, I will accept the Creator’s gift of unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property, but I will scorn Him when He tells me that adultery is bad for me,” then our world view is not consistent.
I hope your clear headed post doesn’t get lost in the fervor.
Thank you!! Excellent comment and excellent post :)
Thanks for saving me the keystrokes.
Well said
Well said, Hugin. Great post.
That's right.
Jim, one difficulty in trying to assert ourselves and our tight socially conservative group as the spokespeople for the Tea Party is the Tea Party is much bigger than us and ours. Casting the "true" Tea Partiers as social conservatives will make the tent much smaller than it really is and wouldn't be either as effective or accurate. The Tea Party is a large tent movement for fiscal responsibility and it is alive and well. Ask Governor Walker, he can attest to that. The Tea Party was formed as a grassroots protest movement uniting various and sundry folk who are all strongly against the ever-growing, intrusive, over-taxing, over-regulating, growth in government.
You should have stopped right there. It makes no sense to say what it was not intended for because it was not intended for anything else either. It just spontaneously happened.
Now from my perspective it makes no sense at all to say: "thou shalt not steal" or "thou shalt not covet" and then turn abound and say that murder and adultery are valid lifestyle choices.
Anyway, it's not a "group" and apparently not "political force" either and I could not care less about any of my TEA co-belligerents if they can't care less about the spilling of innocent blood. In that case we all deserve to be tread down.