Final Cup of Tea

In my previous post, I began to address 10 core beliefs of the Tea Party as presented in a certain website I found.  I covered the first five last time, saving the rest for this post, as I don't want my writings to become too lengthy.  As it turns out, the remaining beliefs of the Tea Party don't draw much commentary from me.  They seem to be minor points, perhaps added just to bring the list up to 10 items.  I do, however, have another point to address later, that relates to one my prior discussions, so make sure you don't miss that.

I hope this will be my last post on the Tea Party, at least for a while.  I think you perceive I'm not a fan.

Core beliefs of the Tea Party (cont'd from previous post):

6. Promote Civic Responsibility
As a grass roots organization, I can certainly see this as a basic tenet of the Tea Party.  However, it's not really a political topic.  Everyone, at least theoretically, would want to encourage civic responsibility and action.

7. Reduce the Overall Size of Government
I can only agree with this statement if it is actually shown that government is too big.  That may sound absurd, but it's too easy to be cynical and simply state that government should be reduced in size because of some ideology.  By what standard ought a government to be measured?  How will one know if it is "too big?"  Once it is reduced by any amount, will the ideologists still cry for reduced government?  I'm just saying, "Prove your case and know exactly what you are calling for."


That being said, I am sure (though I cannot prove my case) that there are vast areas, agencies, bureaus, offices, departments and functions within every level of government, especially federal, that have long outlived the purposes for which they were formed and ought to be eliminated.  In like manner, there are certainly items in the federal budget that were created for some good purpose long since forgotten and obsolete.  


8. Believe in the People
This is just a general, capitalist call to let the people figure things out for themselves rather than expect government to take care of us.


9. Avoid the Pitfalls of Politics
OK, this one is simply a call to Tea Party adherents themselves to tread through the world of U.S. politics without falling into the standard traps. It may be one of their core beliefs, but it isn't a political issue, per se.


10. Maintain Local Independence
As a grass roots group, local governance is important to these folks.  Is this a position against national parties?  I don't know and I don't have much to say here, as, once again, this really isn't a political issue, just a statement of how this group wants to be organized.


Basically, I didn't find much to disagree with in the party's 10 Core Beliefs.  However, in practice the group has consistently taken political positions on specific issues, not addressed in this list, toward the far right end of the spectrum, so as to not necessarily represent the majority of Americans.  And that brings me back to where I started this discussion with groups who claim to speak for us all.

And speaking of the majority of Americans, back a few posts I suggested that the American electorate probably looks much more like a normal bell curve distribution than the polarized population we read about.  I just came across a CNN article making the same claim.  The main point being made in this article is that the more Mitt Romney has to move to the right in order to secure the conservative faction's primary votes, the more he begins to lose the independent voters for the general election.  That is important because most voters are in the middle of the distribution (as I said,) while the GOP is being driven by the few at the far right.  Read this article here.

This exposes one of the flaws (and there are many) in our primary voting system.  Candidates must appeal first to one segment of the electorate (one's party).  Then the winning nominee must do one's best to appeal to all voters, perhaps requiring a different set of arguments and promises.


This situation exposes another flaw, and that is simply our two-party system.  As long as we have two major political parties, they will be driven to the extremes of the political spectrum so as to be as differentiated from one another as possible.  Each party must appear to be greatly different from the other; otherwise voters wouldn't care which party reigned.  This is what drives their abhorrence of appearing to be in agreement on any topic, and so stalemate occurs with regularity.  No wonder Americans are fed up with both parties: most of us are neither far to the left nor far to the right.  


On a slightly related topic, I have a book on order from our library that goes into the history of our cherished notion of "separation of church and state."  I look forward to reading it, and I'm sure it will be the topic of a future post.


As always, thanks for reading.  I believe I've had enough tea for a while, thank you.