Does the Tea Party seek to return America to its principles?

I read an article from Reuters this morning that is either a sincere attempt to present an accurate description of the Tea Party movement or a very sophisticated piece of propaganda on behalf of the elite subversives threatened by its assertion of the sovereignty of the people. If the Tea Party movement is simply about the political challenges facing the Republican Party, the article is an accurate assessment of its character and prospects. If it is actually about the threatened destruction of constitutional self-government in the United States of America, the article deceptively misses the point. It focuses on the tension between the Tea Party movement and the current leadership of the GOP. But it skates by the tension between the Tea Party movement and such organizations as "Freedomworks, the chief instrument of the GOP leadership's efforts to co-opt the Tea Party movement. As a result it obfuscates the ongoing struggle over the meaning and future of the American conservative movement. Thanks to this obfuscation the article treats the deep differences of principle that will really determine the future of American constitutional self-government as if they are incidental facts affecting the Tea Party movement's electoral clout.

Of the possible challenges ahead for the Tea Party movement the two main ones are not from the left, but from the right.

The first comes from social conservatives, or the religious right. The Tea Party movement is dominated by fiscal conservatives and leaders like Eric Odom of the American Liberty Alliance say social issues like abortion and gay marriage should be avoided.

When asked about abortion, for instance, Tina Dupont of the Tea Party of West Michigan says the group does not discuss it. "Most of us are probably pro-lifers," she said. "But we avoid the topic because it is so divisive."

This has been noted by some on the religious right. "At the national level you have people saying it is all about fiscal issues and not about social issues because they say they are divisive," said Tony Perkins, president of Christian lobby group the Family Research Council.

Chris Merrill said while Tea Partiers can avoid divisive issues at meetings, they cannot if they run for office. "Running a campaign is different," he said. "At some point they have to take a stand on social issues."

Some say a showdown between social and fiscal conservative groups may be inevitable. "Fiscal conservatives want to limit the size of government, social conservatives want to use government to further their agenda," Henson said. "That will likely cause problems."

Thanks to the influence of leftist indoctrination, the term "divisive" has become a pejorative. The aim of NEA dominated education is to produce "citizens of the world", their features stamped with the plasticized smiley faces that connote successful suppression of the competitive thirst for individual achievement and distinction. "Unity" has replaced "solidarity" as the buzzword of socialist totalitarianism. Where unity is imperative, those who are "divisive" commit the cardinal sin.

What confirms the article's pejorative take on what it calls the "social issues" is the editorial choice to leave unchallenged an outright lie about the goal of "social conservatives." Those who emphasize government's obligation to respect unalienable rights (like the right to life) do not "seek to use government to further their agenda." Rather they seek respect for the fundamental principle of justice from which the very idea of limited government arises. Apart from that principle, succinctly articulated in the most famous words of the American Declaration of Independence, the motives for opposing government action can plausibly be portrayed as avarice, greed and selfishness. Conservatives can easily be caricatured as heartless opportunists, who care nothing for the common good.

In fact, the conservatives who defend the moral principles set forth in the Declaration act for the common good. They defend the understanding of justice that distinguishes America's constitutional union of states and individuals from the homogenized "unity" imposed by all forms of socialist totalitarianism. But because they are sincere in their advocacy of individual and states' rights, they give careful attention to respecting the obligations and responsibilities that substantiate and sustain those rights. First and foremost this requires individuals to respect in themselves and their own actions the justice they demand of government. It also requires them to demand that all levels of government to respect in others (regardless of physical development, color, race or creed) the rights they recognize and insist on for themselves.

True conservative positions are the direct result of this consistency. Conservatives cannot embrace a "right" to health care that destroys the right of health workers freely to negotiate the terms on which they offer their services. They cannot embrace a "right" to housing that destroys the right of investors to decide the terms on which they will lend their resources. They cannot embrace a "right" to abortion that destroys the unalienable right of each and every human being to be secure from murderous destruction of the life imparted to them by God's creation. They cannot embrace a "right" to adjudicate, or legislate or immigrate that subverts the right of the people to government based upon their consent.

The lack of such consistency is what reveals the hidden hand of the "RINO" forces whose influence now pervades the controlling leadership of the GOP. Organizations like Freedomworks purport to defend limited government, yet disdain to defend the Declaration principles that rescue fiscal conservatism from charges of heartless self-interest. They purport to defend a constitution wholly devised to implement the sovereignty of the American people, yet (in statements such as those Freedomworks Chairman Dick Armey made recently at the National Press Club) they ridicule and seek to exclude from public platforms those who seek effective action to remedy illegal immigration and the neglect of U.S. border security, either of which will be fatal to that sovereignty. ("'When I was Republican leader, I saw to it that Tom Tancredo could not get on a stage because I saw how destructive he was,' Armey said of the anti-immigration former congressman. "Republicans have to get off this goofiness.'") These organizations also purport to seek limited government and the preservation of private sector economic approaches, yet eschew, as "divisive," efforts to the defend the natural rights of the family (the indispensable unit of the private economy activity.)

From a strictly electoral viewpoint, the refusal to defend the natural family is instructive. Every election involves a division of the electorate. Whenever people in the various states have had the opportunity to vote in support of the natural family, they have done so by solid majorities. The defense of the natural family is "divisive" alright, in a way that brings together a winning majority in its support. If every election for office could be made to turn on the choice between a candidate who defends the natural family's rights and one who supports an understanding of family based wholly on government fiat (like gay marriage), the proponent of natural rights would win every time. People who reject the issue as "divisive" are therefore rejecting a chance to unify an electoral majority around the core constitutional principle of natural rights. What can explain this perverse rejection of a winning issue except an ideological preference for the opposing viewpoint? The slobbering embrace of the homosexual agenda at this year's CPAC gathering in Washington offers evidence that this is the correct explanation.

Those who refuse to assert and defend the moral principles on which America's framework for constitutional self-government is based are not true conservatives. Their stand in favor of limited government and fiscal conservatism is little more than opportunistic posturing. More importantly, their tacit refusal to defend the natural rights basis for constitutional self-government indicates their ideological surrender to or alliance with the socialist forces they pretend to oppose. For at its heart, the concept of legitimacy on which constitutional self-government relies depends, in turn, on a concept of natural justice. That concept derives from the simple premise that right and wrong are not arbitrary human fabrications. They are expressions of the authoritative will of the Creator God.

Most of the people participating in the Tea Party movement feel strong allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. What remains to be seen is whether their understanding of its essential moral principles is as strong as their feeling. If it is, they will see through the inconsistencies of false flag conservatism. They will be wary of Freedomworks, and Romney's work and all the works of those who pretend that liberty can be revived and sustained without recovering America's allegiance to the moral principles on which it was founded. They will come together in a stand that accurately reflects the union made possible by these principles. If they do, Tea Party people will inspire all Americans to reaffirm their identity as one nation under God, a nation secure in both liberty and justice thanks to our decent respect for the truth that makes us free.