Here. The authors, Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, make it clear that fiscal responsibility and limited government are the central concerns of Tea Partiers.
The criteria for membership are straightforward: Stay true to principle even when it proves inconvenient, be assertive but respectful, add value and don't taking credit for other people's work. Our community is built on the Trader Principle: We associate by mutual consent, to further shared goals of restoring fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government. [. . .]
The big-government crowd is drawn to the compulsory nature of centralized authority. They can't imagine an undirected social order. Someone needs to be in charge—someone who knows better. Big government is audacious and conceited.
Note that the opposition is to big government, not to government as such. This simple point needs to be repeated again and again in the teeth of liberal-left slander.
By definition, government is the means by which citizens are forced to do that which they would not do voluntarily. Like pay high taxes. Or redistribute tax dollars to bail out the broken, bloated pension systems of state government employees. Or purchase, by federal mandate, a government-defined health-insurance plan that is unaffordable, unnecessary or unwanted.
This is perhaps OK for a manifesto. But surely government cannot be defined in this slanted way. But the authors are right to point out the coercive nature of government. They should have gone on to say that government and its coercion are necessary and legitimate when properly limited.
For the left, and for today's Democratic Party, every solution to every perceived problem involves more government—top-down dictates from bureaucrats presumed to know better what you need. Tea partiers reject this nanny state philosophy of redistribution and control because it is bankrupting our country.
Spot on. The main reason the Tea Partiers reject the liberal-left vision of an omnicompetent, omni-intrusive government is purely pragmatic: it is leading us to financial ruin. This is reason enough to oppose the fiscal irresponsibility of both major parties. We don't even need to get into the injustices of progressive taxation and redistributionism, and the assault on individual liberty -- though these are powerful additional arguments.
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