Tea Party Taboo: Tackling Social Issues
The Tea Party’s success has been due in no small part to its avoidance of social issues. By focusing on economics and the rule of law, the movement maintains a broader appeal than previous conservative coalitions.
It is so taboo to discuss social issues within the Tea Party that activists sought for comment fled from this author. Some feared that exposing their positions on social issues might undermine their viability within the movement.
Nevertheless, Tea Partiers do have positions on issues like gay marriage, abortion, immigration, and drug control. Those positions differ one Tea Partier from another, and can be diametrically opposed. Rather than engage in those arguments, Tea Partiers seek to preserve their coalition by focusing on points of agreement.
That said, it’s interesting to consider what a Tea Party social policy might look like. How does the movement’s political philosophy apply to social issues? What makes a pro-life Tea Partier pro-life? What makes a pro-choice Tea Partier pro-choice? And how is it that both agree on economics?
It all comes down to morality. It’s tempting to differentiate social issues as moral questions as if economic issues are not. However, economic issues are every bit the moral consideration that social issues are. It’s not just practical to let people keep what they earn. It is the right thing to do. The uncomfortable truth underlying the social issue taboo is that fundamentally different moral codes can lead separate people to similar conclusions.
An evangelical Christian, an agnostic libertarian, and a Randian objectivist may all agree on repealing Obamacare. But it is unlikely that they arrive at that position in the same way. The differences among their moral codes are not readily apparent so long as their conversation is confined to economics. However, when you throw issues like abortion or drug control into the mix, the differences become stark and arguments result.
For this reason the question of what a Tea Party social policy might look like quickly reaches an impasse. The simple fact is, there is too much philosophical diversity within the movement to craft a coherent social policy. Otherwise, it probably would have been done. Nevertheless, the principles embraced by the movement can be applied toward how social policy is made.
Most applicable is constitutionally limited government, the notion that federal power is strictly enumerated. This single idea, if applied according to the Framers’ intent, would sap much of the controversy out of national debates. Should a woman be free to terminate her pregnancy? Let the states decide. Should a cancer patient be able to smoke a joint? Let the states decide. Should a union of two men be recognized as marriage? Let the states decide.
Appealing to states’ rights may seem like a cop out, as it sidesteps taking a position. However, a greater concern than any particular social issue may be the overall health of our republic.
Our constitutional framework has endured for more than two centuries while many others have come and gone. The secret of our success is the durability inherent to our system. On one axis, there is the separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. On the other, there is the division of power between the federal, state, and local levels. Taken together, these combine into a kind of basket weave which is strong but flexible, able to endure social change by bending without breaking.
If the Tea Party falls into the trap of social engineering it will self-destruct.
I’m a Tea Party guy. When I read about any of these I’m pretty indifferent. I read the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and realize that the Federal Government should be indifferent too.
I’ve noted that the Tea Party is already extensively slandered by the straw man assertion that the ‘social conservative’ goals are the Tea Party goals. Constitional limitations on government power is never discussed once the straw man is presented.
“The Tea Party’s success has been due in no small part to its avoidance of social issues. By focusing on economics and the rule of law, the movement maintains a broader appeal than previous conservative coalitions.”
I’m sure that if you ask any member of the Tea Party their views on social issues, they would be happy to discuss them with you. I’m not sure who you asked, but, like all things, everybody has an opinion. However, we just don’t feel the need to focus on them. There are plenty of people out there who can do that for us. The real need is to get back to basics, the Constitution, and to reduce the size of our government, reduce taxes, reduce spending, and reduce government regulations that are destroying this nation. THAT is what we need to focus on, while there is still time. And, believe me, with the way our economy and our government are doing today, that’s enough!
My guess is the author, Mr. Hudson, if he actually did go out and ask Tea Partiers their opinions on social issues, approached leaders of the Tea Party. These people would not want to discuss their opinions on social issues publicly for fear that people might begin to associate that Tea Party with that persons specific social issues.
If the leader of the Springfield Tea Party says he is pro-life, the mass media gets a hold of it and reports this, all of a sudden, the Springfield Tea Party stands for Pro-life – whether they really do or not and they lose pro-choice supporters. It’s one of the many problems with having an adversarial national, and even international, media. Since the old media doesn’t like the tea party, they will do what they can to sabotage the Tea Party.
That is correct. I sent the call out to leaders whom I have a relationship with and asked them to pass the invitation on to any members they thought might be interested. There was a short window for people to get back to me. But I’ve yet to hear from anyone with more than a “no thank you.” I think your speculation as to why is correct.
I, on the other hand, am quite comfortable expressing my opinions on social issues. For one thing, I think they are very defensible. I don’t worry too much about the media taking things out of context because there’s nothing I can do about that. The media and the Left are going to do what they do. The people worth swaying will come to me for clarification. People who take the word of others aren’t worth my time. I think that’s the attitude the Tea Party ought to embrace as a whole.
I think you made the point well. The primary effort of the Tea Party is less intrusion by the national government and a return (at least to some degree) to constitutionally limited national government powers. The obvious answer, when asked about a non-enumerated power, is “The Tea Party is concerned about an unconstitutional power grab by the national government. The question asked is not a constitutional government question and is, therefore, outside of the concern of the Tea Party except that it should not be considered by the national government either for or against.” I believe that Americans generally want to play by the rules and want to know what the rules are. Americans become frustrated when the rule book is ignored.
Good thoughts, but I was kicked out of the Tea Party web site because Judson Phillips wrote an article condemning the Methodist Church because of some pro-queer thing. I objected and was censored. I like the Tea Party, I’m not a Methodist, and I don’t care for queers, but the attack on the church is a clear No-No.
Find another tea party site. Most I’ve visited wouldn’t even care about such things.
Rather than believe that the Tea Party is inherently wrong because one article, please evaluate other Tea Party alternatives. For instance, I’m a registered Tea Party voter even though I have never attended a Tea Party rally. I know that my beliefs in limited government and a restoration of sanity to our government are important. Outside of those two things, nothing else matters.
Any Tea Party that discusses anything outside of strict economics and government theory can’t really be considered a Tea Party. As indicated in this article, a true Tea Party acknowledges that everyone is different and calls upon the states to determine how their voters live. If a homosexual couple lives in a state that does not recognize homosexual marriage, they are free to move to a different state that would endorse them.
The difference between then and now though lies in who makes the ultimatum. Right now, essentially, the federal government doesn’t care if their state is anti-homosexual. If they don’t follow the “federal law” (said in quotations because under the Constitution it isn’t a legal law) then they lose their share of goodies.
Just vote according to what you believe. If there is no one in your area who will be true to the Tea Party philosophy, go it alone. You could even start your own, should you wish to.
I would advise against considering any single website “the Tea Party website.” Tea Party Nation is one of many groups. I’ve conversed with Judson Philips in the past, and likely will in the future. I think his organization fills a vital role within the overall movement. But it is not “the” Tea Party. The beauty of a public domain brand like the Tea Party is that no one can tell you whether you are in or out. They can only police their own organization.
Nope. No way. The Tea Party needs to stick to its basic creed: economic liberty. Taking on the social issues is the road to perdition, as the coalition of tradcons, libertarians and Randists fractures completely over what are, let’s face it, pretty peripheral issues right now.
First of all, I agree with your prescription. I don’t think the Tea Party should take up social issues. Nevertheless, in a forum such as this, it is provocative and entertaining to speculate about what a Tea Party social policy might look like.
The other food for thought I have for you is this. I certainly agree that social issues are, for the time being, peripheral. That said, wouldn’t you agree that the underlying philosophical differences which inform different social views are tremendously important?
I didn’t have space to get into it more deeply here. But I think a large part of the reason we face the economic and legal crises we do today is because we lack a widely held philosophy of government which would dictate fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. Even among people who agree on the economy and the Constitution, I have detected philosophies which if implemented would not preserve Tea Party principles into the future. So many people know what they want, but not why they want it. To my mind, that is a problem which discussion of social issues can help reveal. Of course, you need to be in company dispassionate enough to discuss it honestly and openly.
I’m libertarian all the way on social issues. I hate it when the fed mandates stuff nationwide. States should put whatever issue to a vote with no state legislative or judicial fiats allowed. Then people can either except the outcome of the vote or vote with their feet.
The separation of powers into federal, state and municipal and into executive, legislative and judicial is a recognition of reality. Spatial and temporal reality!
That is, there are some issues that are relevant to the entire nation and others that are relevant only to the local domain. To refuse to recognize these differences and try to set up a monolithic governance sets up a governing mode that is rigid, inflexible, unable to adapt to local realities because it refuses to acknowledge them. To instead set up one that is multileveled and has local interests introduces adaptive flexibility and enables a community to react quickly to local issues.
It’s the same with the multileveled modes of governance; each level has different roles and thus, introduces a different function. The judicial, for example, has the role of ensuring stability to a basic infrastructure, the Constitution. The legislature has the role of developing the public capacity for progress, enabling new modes of interaction with modern technologies and modern interests. The executive, in my view, has a lesser role than the current incumbent sees it as having and has, in my view, the role only of overseeing that both the legislative and judicial branches are operating as they legally should – and – providing a general but clear set of goals but not a legislative leadership; that is, he can develop and suggest policies within those clear goals but cannot insist on their passage. Power belongs to Congress, i.e., the people, not to the President.
As for social issues, the Tea Party is right to focus only on the federal govt’s role in goverance, and that role excludes social issues, which are the property of the state.
If you haven’t already, check out “Power Divided Is Power Checked” by Jason Lewis. It’s a quick read, and does a fantastic job laying out the research to back up your thesis.
The Tea Party doesn’t operate solely on the national level. A lot of good work is being done on the state and local level. However, even close to home, the Tea Party seems quite reluctant to address social issues. I think that’s strategically wise. However, as I indicate above, it’s entirely possible to apply Tea Party principles to social policy arguments.
I don’t think we’ll ever see a national Tea Party social policy. Nor do I think we should. However, I can see state and local groups going there if we ever get our fiscal house in order.
Read the Constitution again. The federal government has limited powers and social engineering isn’t on the list.
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it is the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. To secure these Unalienable Rights endowed by our Creator, governments are instituted among men. We created government and laws for the PROTECTION of EVERY person’s life, liberty, and property.
No, no, no. A major part of the attraction of the Tea Party is sticking to the economic issues. Keep the Federal Government out of the social issues and leave it to the States. Most of the economic problems can be traced to the Federal Government trying (ineffectively) to address social issues.
Bad, bad, bad idea. Approximately 3 nanoseconds after opening the TEA Parties up to social issues, you will have a complete blow-up of the group.
And, we haven’t dealt with those pressing economic problems, yet.
Let the TEA Parties do their work, together, with focus. Then, assuming victory and some time to get acquainted via small side discussions that don’t yet count in the larger picture, we may have a calmer atmosphere in which to discuss social issues. Not now.
The day they take on social conservatism is the day it dies.
“The dividing line on abortion is the same within the Tea Party as it is outside it. The issue always comes down to whether or not the unborn are human.”
Not to a lawyer, which all the members of the Supreme Court were for the Roe v. Wade decision. If you had read that decision, which is in normal english and not all that difficult to read, you would know why the straw man argument you use as a basis for decision is inadequate to the task. The Court in that decision of course assumed that the unborn are human.
The Roe v. Wade decision turns on a question of governmental power. Once the government is granted the power to make a decision, there is no way to control the end result of the decision. Had the Court given the government the right to intervene in abortion decisions, it would have paved the way to a bureaucratic slaughter of the innocents, as China has indeed already done. If you think that’s not true, recall all the nasty propaganda from the supporters of the current administration when they discussed Sarah Palin’s decision to continue the pregnancy that gave her a baby with Down’s Syndrome.
This has got to be the strangest argument I have ever seen about abortion. The fact is that abortion was illegal in most states for the majority of this country’s existence. In most states, it was a serious felony to knowingly procure an abortion.
I’m a lawyer who has read Roe v. Wade. Though it has been a while my recollection is that the core of the opinion turns on precisely the issue the article identifies. The power to regulate, it is held, kicks in once there is a life to protect, and not before. To this extent the opinion starts from the premise that government cannot interfere in our lives unless we are doing some real harm to another, which is a good fundamental principle that would help us a great deal if it were followed more broadly. Anyway, absent scientific proof of when life starts the court used viability as the trigger for regulatory power. Agree or disagree with that conclusion. But the question is and always has been about when human life starts. No one is pro-murder. We just don’t agree on whether early term abortion is, in fact, murder; and, perhaps for some, on whether the government or the individual has the burden of proof on that thresshold question. We must realize that we will never agree on these issues. People of faith believe life begins at conception and so find it difficult if not impossible to leave this to individual conscience. People who reject that belief, likewise, find it difficult if not impossible to accept having the religious beliefs of others imposed on all. This is why most of the comments here wisely counsel that we put these issues aside while we try to save our Country. If we ever restore something resembling freedom for the born, we may resume our insoluble quarrel about the unborn.
That’s absurd, though. We all know when and how human life begins at conception. It is scientific fact, not a religious belief. Only the pro-abortion Left (which includes libertarians) lie about that.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln didn’t coin that phrase, Jesus did. If human rights are denied to the unborn, we are incapable of defending them for the born.
I wasn’t citing the legal argument. I was evoking the moral argument, which is infinitely more important. The Court circumvented the moral argument entirely. Futzing about with the question of authority, as they did, first presumes that someone has the authority to terminate an unborn life. It’s as if the court were to argue whether you should be robbed by Peter or Paul instead of recognizing that you shouldn’t be robbed at all. When you acknowledge the fundamental right to life, there is no room for the kind of government intrusion you imagine. Government’s role is to protect rights. Recognizing the right of the unborn to life leaves no pretext for forced abortions.
Is it social engineering to oppose gay marriage or is opposing gay marriage STOPPING social engineering?
The creator of “Glee” has created “American Horror Story” which he says is his vehicle for bringing more and more “unusual” sex to TV. He says his goal is to break down the barrier against gay sex on TV and he wants to depict “rear entry.”
The government has a role in protecting standards of decency. If that’s “social engineering,” then I’d say the Right has been infected by libertarians who have been infected by anarchists.
If you gave the Constitution to Sodom & Gommoragh it wouldn’t have solved any of their problems. If America becomes a shore-to-shore orgy of meaningless, irresponsible sex, then no economic system can save it.
Maybe the TEA Party isn’t the place for the decency fight, but the fight HAS to be waged.
And right away, you illustrate the problem identified by the author. Who is going to define what decency is? Same argument for mandated prayer in public schools. Who writes the prayers?
There WILL be a culture, so there WILL be dos and don’ts. You may not want to stand up for your moral code, but believe me: they’re standing up for theirs. You don’t want to marginalize perversion, but the perverts are freely willing to marginalize monogamy and marriage. Somebody’s going to be marginalized. While the intellectually superior are saying “there’s no way to enforce a moral code, so just let it go,” the hedonistic are gladly (or should I say “GLAADly”?) pushing a moral code where muttering “homosexual sex is icky” is a crime that can get you thrown out of your career.
The live and let live culture is a fantasy that, like socialism, can’t exist outdside of a classroom discussion. One side will emerge victorious; better if it’s the structured and responsible side.
Well said, RKae. For anarchists, there should be no laws at all. Live and let live. Should the general public, including young children, be forced with no recourse to listen to profain language because some claim we are unable to define decency? Such irresponsible promotion of anarchy where individuals do what they want with impunity has serious negative affects on the freedom and well-being of others, and leads to societal disorder and political confusion.
In a two-party system the idea is to gather people together who are of like mind about one or two key issues. The issue of the day–in case you hadn’t noticed–is beating back the Marxists as they destroy our economy on their road to social utopia. The second issue is wresting back the personal freedom we are rapidly losing as a concomitant of the Left’s totalitarian policies and avoiding becoming serfs of the state with Obama as perpetual Great Leader.
Everything else is b.s. Stop writing about b.s.
While I agree with your priorities for activism, I couldn’t disagree more with your conclusion. Social issues are hardly “B.S.” They are intertwined with economic and legal issues, as I demonstrated. The same philosophies which dictate our positions on economic and legal issues inform our positions on social issues. While separating discussion of these categories is a good political strategy, separating our consideration of them is intellectually dishonest.
Why do we need to even go here? We will never get everyone to agree on social and moral issues and there is plenty of work that desperately needs to be done.
Why does it feel like Thanksgiving dinner and my sister is waving her wine glass in anticipation of spoiling a perfectly good dinner?
You’d think this was a liberal Democratic plot to cripple a movement that most Americans support.
I am not a Tea Party member. I support fiscal responsibility. I am interested in limited government, not having a too big and too powerful government pursue anybody’s pet cause, including yours. I notice it is always at my expense.
ahem has it exactly right. Start your own control freak party – or join with the Dems. Start the Bible Party. Or the GLBT Purple Dinosaur and Green Party. Leave me, and mine, alone. The Constitution is supposed to limit the powers of the Federal Government. Too bad it’s ignored.
As a Christian, I do not look to the government for my moral beliefs. It is troubling that so many of us do, but that is a result of our secular culture: Consider this quote attributed to a Czech newspaper:
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.”
Raymond Ibrahim rightly concludes:
“In short, individual leaders do not cause societies to become what they are; rather, these leaders are symptoms — reflections — of their respective societies.”
If you follow fiscal conservative values, do they lead you to social conservative values or the other way around? I have had this discussion at TEA Party events, but it is basically based on a person’s perspective.
I was at a seminar about being a better activist. It wasn’t really geared towards being a TEA Party activist, but they attempted to shape it that way. One point was made that a group should find a similarity with another group in order to increase their numbers to get a politician elected. Create a coalition. I was annoyed by this because I already see the TEA Party as a coalition under the banner of “fiscally responsible and smaller government”.
To your first question, I don’t think it’s either. Both economic and social positions are informed by a root philosophy which is either consciously chosen or subconsciously adopted. That’s what causes arguments around the Thanksgiving table. That’s why it’s said you shouldn’t discussion religion or politics in polite company, because religion and politics reveal the root philosophy of the individuals discussing them. People take great comfort in their philosophy, whether they are conscious of it or not. If they are not prepared to defend it, they don’t like having it challenged. That’s what informs this taboo.
All of the disagreements I see between various T.E.A. (am I the only one who remembers that is the original Tea party name) Party members are states issues, and so on a federal level it shouldn’t matter if one person is pro-drug use, or anti-drug use. What we all have in common is that we want the federal government to stick to following the constitution as the contract that it is, between us and the people we hire (elect) to run things. They take an oath to do so then proceed to ignore that oath for the most part.
What if we all resigned from the Republican party and joined the Constitution party en mass? Their platform seems to agree with the T.E.A. party platform.
http://www.constitutionparty.com/party_platform.php
Sorry, didn’t mean to exclude democrats or libertarians or green party etc. members who believe in their representatives following the constitution. My bad.
No, gays do not want to legalize gay marriage for the sake of benefits or hospital visitation or any of that crap.
They want to legalize gay marriage so that they can “normalize” their deviant behavior– and criminalize anyone who condemns it.
I’m probably just feeding a troll here, but … Hospital visits? Hospital visits? Seriously, there are significant reasons for a same-sex couple to want legal parity. If they’ve been together any length of time and own a home, there’s avoiding a crippling property tax reassessment when one dies (one of my own small government awakening moments was realizing that California’s Prop 13 tax limits was saving my behind on property taxes). Inheritance of community property, and death tax issues. Presumption and enforcement of durable power of attorney (not just for hospital visits).
Or being able to file income tax returns jointly – there’s a T.E.A. party issue for you. What couple wouldn’t want that? (Well, depending on how the tax bite plays out …)
Survivor’s benefits: I once got to attend a union organizer’s party at which someone gave an award to the ILWU (Longshoremen’s Union) for voting to pay survivor’s benefits to domestic partners. The case that prompted the decision was that of a good 35-year union man … after his bereaved partner had lost their house during the stretch before they voted him survivor’s benefits.
Occam’s Razor says same-sex couples really are looking to provide for each other and have parity in terms of benefits. So does basic Christian charity, which was completely absent from RHJunior’s very snarky remark.
I think RHJunior and those who cry “hate speech” totally deserve each other.
Don’t be silly. Civil Unions legally took care of all the scenarios you’ve mentioned. The only reason gays want to marry is to destroy the church. They will find a church that refuses to marry them then they will either leagally force the church to change their doctrine or they will sue them out of existance. This has been their stated goal for 40 years. Something about being testy regarding God calling them an abomination. They want revenge.
I have a dumb question about this. Are hospital visit rules federally mandated and enforced? Are hospitals private or government run? I would have assumed they are private, so why on earth can’t they make whatever rules they want to about who gets to visit? Would it really be that hard to have hospitals allow the patients to actually get to select what visitors they want to see and who gets to make decisions for them? That should be a pretty basic thing to allow, I would have thought. I find the tenacity of the whole question bizarre in the extreme that it requires a total set of legislation and revamping of humanity just to deal with this issue. But then again, to come up with some simple solution would blow the foundations out from some of the argumentation going on.
Indeed. All the rest is just smokescreen.
Well said.
I, for one, don’t care if they cohabitate and rut like pigs. I won’t stop them. But homosexuality is, at root, a power trip. It starts with holding one’s breath until blue as children, and escalates until they’re Broadway drama queens. The worst thing you can do is ignore them. It makes them wild!
I reserve the right, under the first amendment, to call them stupid children and perverts, as long as they reserve the right to shove their crap in my face.
“The Tea Party’s success has been due in no small part to its avoidance of social issues. By focusing on economics and the rule of law, the movement maintains a broader appeal than previous conservative coalitions.”
That is one reason why the OWS groups look so ridiculous. What are they about anyway? They are Socialists, Anarchists, Marxists, and God-Knows-What-ists. What do they stand for? They want money. Well who doesn’t?
No, the Tea Party is looking better and better every day thanks to movements like OWS showing how stupid the other side is.
I think containing the message to just one thing, cutting taxes and curtailing government, is far easier to sell and far easier to ask for.
PRO GAY, PRO CHOICE TEA PARTY PERSON HERE
Represent! Yep, also pro-gay and pro-choice. Glad the Tea Party hasn’t been totally overrun by soc-cons, like I’d thought it might.
It is not the governments role to stick its nose in any of my business.
Period!
Get the hell out of my life!
At my local Tea Party monthly meeting last week, we heard a pro-family lobbyist emphasize the relation between social and economic issues. Divorce and single parenting and illegitimacy unlie a LOT of government spending. Right now this particular Tea Party’s focus is on tossing out the local council members who doubled our taxes last year, but they are not indifferent to the social issues.
What the author forgets is that the tea parties aren’t actually a national political party. Tea Partying is a “theme”, not an organization, and all it does is tie a common thread between thousands of *local* events that tried to revive the spirit of 1773 and move our political conversation. Local as the tea parties are, you can’t just wave your hand and say “We’ll leave issue X to the states.” Tea parties occur in states, and they address local issues. There are a lot of moral themes being struck in these rallies, and well they should.
I don’t expect everyone in the TEA Party to agree with me on social issues, but it seems that there would be agreement that the federal government has no business _funding_ abortion, ESCR, anti-Christian art, or removing “conscience” clauses for hospitals and doctors. I do believe that life begins at conception, but I don’t think “life from conception” legislation is likely (and would be ignored like the 55 mph speed limit of the ’70s). An overturning of Roe would put the issue back in the states’ laps where it belongs.
There is data indicating that children do best in a home where their parents are married to each other, living under the same roof, and of the opposite sex, so I think a state should be able to promote this family unit if they believe this data (by promoting hetero-only marriage, abstinence, etc). Conversely, if a state believes data to the contrary, it would allow same-sex marriage, easy divorce, etc. Although, if “usual legal benefits” is the only thing same-sex couples are after, it would be a lot less controversial if states merely offered “long-term roommate” registration and left the institution of marriage to churches etc, separating legal from religious aspects.
I’m pro-life as all get-out, but if I wanted to kill off all the liberals, I’d push gay marriage, abortion, contraception, euthanasia in states like Vermont, Massachusetts, California, Illinois, New York, etc. and watch them slowly go away, losing electoral votes all the while.
And something the libs can never do.
The Tea Party came about precisely as a response to disastrous federal financial policy. Social issues are not really the concern.
Gay marriage is not a pressing issue right now…we will face another massive global financial crisis quite soon if the US and Europe continue as they have before. Think of the Tea Partiers as emergency responders.
True Constitutionalists don’t get involved in petty squabbling about social issues or try to interject them within politics.
The Taxes Enough Already Party was and is about governing on a budget and respecting the Constitution of the USA. There more than enough “social lobbyist” to continue promoting the group rights agenda.
Thank you Mr. Hudson for bringing up the taboo issues – and taking them on!
“The Tea Party sits religious moralists alongside libertine Paulestinians and sees ecumenical revivalists joining hands with atheistic intellectuals.”
==>
And of course the cordial, respectful, benevolent atmosphere in the room is hard to miss!
I see “conservatives” walking around like regular people. They only see what they want to see. They don’t even know they’re liberals.
Anything left of Yahweh’s morality as found in His commandments, statutes, and judgments (as they pertain to us as individuals *and* to government) is left, liberal, and ungodly. This includes the Republicans, Tea Partiers, and Libertarians.
Except for those promoting Yahweh’s government (Isaiah 9:6) with Yahweh as king, judge, and lawgiver (Isaiah 33:22), based upon His perfect law and altogether righteous judgments (Psalm 19:7-9), there are no conservatives left in this country.
See “Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at http://www.missiontoisrael.org/blvc-index.php.
Immigration and sealing the border are not social issues, they are economic, constitutional, and security issues Freedom Works and Tea Party Express are examples of so called tea party orgs. In truth they are orgs that are headed up by old line GOP members that are trying to co-opt true patriot dedication for purely selfish reasons. Take immigration out of the equation and you will have an empty shell.
“Should a woman be free to terminate her pregnancy? Let the states decide.”
This will never fly with people like me: Social Conservatives. States rights didn’t work for slavery, and it won’t work on issues like abortion. Some matters are simply human rights issues and we will never accept a society that thinks those rights can be arbitrarily dismissed and stepped on. A state’s borderlines are completely irrelevant to the determination of whether or not a course of action is right or wrong.