Reassurance for the Tea Party

A Tea Party sympathizing writer opined recently that “the government controls all aspects of our lives and freedoms,” and this sort of sentiment does seem to capture what worries the movement most. So, to members and sympathizers of the Tea Party, and to all others who share the party’s worries regarding the state of the union and its future, I offer the following reassurances:

If you have the brains, guts, talent, and desire it takes to get moderately to extravagantly wealthy, nothing the government is doing, or not doing, is going to get in your way. That has always been true in America, it is true now, and it always will be true. We do not practice socialism here, and we are in no danger of taking it up. There are trillions of dollars in private hands in the U.S., and free enterprise – capitalism – is thriving. If you are dissatisfied with your general circumstances, you are absolutely free to improve upon them. “The government” is not stopping you. Politicians who argue otherwise are just opportunists who wish to gull people into believing that their problems were made by politicians and are therefore solvable by them.

Some people would argue that health care is a thing we ought to do collecitvely -- i.e. buy it by pooling our money in the form of taxation because it can be more sensibly and economically done that way. Many disagree, though, and would look upon such an arrangement as “socialized medicine.” Whatever. The Affordable Health Care Reform Act, however, is not evidence of Bolsheviks on the loose. Reasonable people can disagree about any or all of its provisions, but to characterize it as socialistic, much less a government “takeover” of health care, or as socialized medicine, is nonsense. So, health care reform isn’t socialism raising its ugly head. It’s a piece of legislation some people are for and some against. State your case – and quit characterizing ideas with which you disagree as being sponsored by Satan.

Government, no question, can be intrusive, involving itself, by way of massive bureaucracies, in areas where it’s not needed or wanted. But any discussion about government size – and presumably Tea Party criticism is directed primarily at the size of federal government -- is going to have to confront national defense, social security, and Medicare/Medicaid which together account for about 60 percent of the federal budget. As for other federal expenditures, we shall see how loud the Tea Partiers squeal when federal dollars that benefit them are cut. But – and here’s the reassurance part – they probably won’t be cut. Anyone who thinks that because their heroes, Democrat or Republican, got themselves elected, government is going to get appreciably smaller and is going to spend appreciably less money, does not understand how things actually work here on planet earth. The GOP's pledge to cut $100-billion from the federal budget is laughable.

As for deficits, many people see them as troublesome, while others do not. The latter category would include GOP and Tea Party icon Dick Cheney who said -- echoing another Tea Party icon, Ronald Reagan -- “deficits don’t matter.” But we can say the following things, which should be understood by Tea Partiers as reassuring: (1) Whether they matter or not, deficits are not unusual; since 1940 the federal government has run a multi-billion-dollar deficit in every year but twelve. (2) They go up and down, and occasionally disappear altogether.

What Tea Party folks have to come to grips with is that despite their enmity for government and their free-floating hostility for things in general, whatever problems or dissatisfactions they may have with the circumstances of their life are by and large of their own making. They are free to improve upon them regardless of what “the government” is or is not up to. Best they quit worrying about what government is doing and get on with their lives.