Why Libertarians Should Get Involved in the Tea Parties

[George Miller]

Presented at Ventura County Libertarian Party meeting, 3-16-11

By George Miller, Ventura County Tea Party.  This is the original text the speech was based upon.

 

My presentation tonight is to discuss how we can work together to meet common objectives. Just the fact that I’m here means that both groups see the potential and endorse it at some level. We have a recent history of cooperation on projects and want to explore enhancing it.

I’m speaking from the perspective of a political neophyte, now a couple of years into his education, who was awakened by repeated outrages and assaults on our nation, its principles, its people, to the point where it is in serious jeopardy of ending and I felt compelled to help do something about it.  It’s been quite a journey and it’s not nearly over. I had a busy and mostly good personal and professional life, for many years only paying minimal attention to politics, which I despised and still don’t hold in high regard. I am frequently of two minds—trying to decide whether to stay and fight—or head for the hills, or even out of the country.  I started my education intensively about the time of the credit crisis in 2007 and jumped on board with the Tea Party movement when it got underway in February, 2009. I’m now a “tactical” Republican, Tea Party activist and GOP state delegate.

Tonight’s Objectives are:

-      Show commonality of Libertarian and Tea Party objectives

-      Summarize who we are and where we’ve been

-      Contrast LP- TP differences (mostly very close)

-      Explore how  to work together to achieve common objectives

 

In many ways, the Tea Parties (NOT Party) and the Libertarian Party are kindred spirits. We should be natural allies. We complement each other in most respects, but have a few significant differences, which will be addressed.

One is a political party with great intellectual content and influence on ideas, but little electoral success.

The other is a mass movement with an amazing effect on events, but without a historically strong intellectual and political grounding to support it. In fact, we made it up as we went along, borrowing ideas from Conservatives, the Founders, the Bible and also Libertarians. Also, we were named after the Boston Tea Party, not any political party.  We’re not a political party, in spite of our name.

 

Show commonality of Libertarian and Tea Party objectives

We agree on most of the really important stuff:

-      Personal liberty and freedom, of expression and action, without infringing on others’ rights, voluntary associations

-      Fiscal responsibility

-      Free enterprise

-      Constitutional republic, minimization of state (Tea Parties tend toward “Minarchism” and  “Right Libertarianism”)

 

Who we are and where we’ve been

In their first year, the Tea Parties had already exerted massive political influence, helping the Republicans move rightward sharply and more fiscally and socially Conservative We played an important role in switching political control in many states, not only from Democrat to Republican, but also somewhat more Conservative and Libertarian (but only somewhat and not so much in CA). We have few illusions about some of the Republicans in office and even fewer about the extensive corruption that has seeped into the system.

The animating ideas of the Tea Parties are fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, lower spending, reduced role of govt. and restoration of a Constitutional Republic.  Initially, many of us really weren’t very familiar with the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution.

Libertarians have been around a long time, have a definite body of knowledge, are a known quantity, although adherents are even more varied in some of their beliefs than Tea Partiers.

In contrast, Tea Parties were a spontaneous, unstructured, even chaotic occurrence, born in turmoil, as a massive protest movement, probably the largest and most dramatic such one in the history of our nation. It was composed heavily of the white, middle class, largely Conservative formerly “Silent Majority,” although there are increasing numbers of others entering the movement. Our last meeting, In Oxnard appeared to have in excess of 10% of attendees outside that base, much better what MSNBC thinks, but pretty poor for a town that is 73.5% Latino. Women are in the majority.

The long running descent into fiscal and economic disaster, helped along by things such as 911, the artificial real estate bubble, repeal of Glass-Stegall, loosening of bank reserves, trading limits, credit standards, accelerated spending, deficits, artificially depressed interest rates, stock market bubble……All led to the real estate bust, credit crunch, market crash, TARP and  attendant abuses, massive secret, off-balance sheet bailouts.  The election of a more strongly Progressive Congress and an unknown, inexperienced , unqualified, Marxist community organizer as a faux “President," who immediately started appointing scores of unaccountable, often corrupt, Marxist, even criminal and perverted “Czars,” to circumvent our set of checks and balances, was also a factor in stimulating the Tea Party movement. They in turn immediately started restructuring the government.  Congress quickly passed the first of several massive “Stimulus” bills that dwarfed even TARP, which by then had been illegally diverted into buying “toxic” assets and paying off massive derivatives claims, much of them to foreign banks, mostly in secrecy.

All this reached critical mass in February of 2009. The spark that touched off the Tea Party was said to be Santelli’s rant on the Chicago exchange, conveniently televised and shown nationwide.  I don’t dispute that some powerful Conservatives helped the pieces fall into place—but the country was already locked, loaded and primed to move on something like this anyway. By the end of February, numerous informal “Tea Parties were virally underway, nationwide. The rest is history.

 

Tea Party 1.0

In the beginning, what I’ll call Tea Party 1.0 had a modus operandi of carrying signs, chanting, and haranguing legislators who wouldn’t change their votes anyway. The highly visible rallies were exciting and fun for the early participants and served as a network and recruiting tool, supported by the strongest ever use of the Internet by the Right.

At first, the big rallies caught the opposition totally by surprise. Although the initial focus was on taxes and fiscal policy, elements of attacks on big government, etc., came into play quickly. The biggest symbol and personification of what was wrong was Obama himself- so he became a huge target, only getting bigger as he committed more and more offenses and people began learning more about him. Besides trying to jump start the economy and reward the constituency with trillions of conjured up dollars (debt), our opposition immediately started trying to formulate and ram through the infamous, unconstitutional OBAMACARE health law, which became a major focus of Tea Parties' activity and a poster child for almost everything wrong with the Progressive model.

 

Evolution & Revolution to Tea Party 2.0

So far, what I described must seem rather alien to the culture of the Libertarian Party people, who are not normally out on the barricades, or figuratively breaking down the doors of legislators. The force-fed passage of Obamacare effectively sealed the doom of a Progressive-dominated Congress and became a major rallying point for Tea Party activism in the mid-term 2010 elections.

Toward the end of the first year, 2009, we started to see the effects of the learning curve.  The national Tea Parties and stronger local ones focused on organization, fund raising, candidate recruiting, vetting, support and political action, becoming far more effective than Tea Party 1.0

 

Contrast LP- TP differences

While we have very strong agreement on most aspects of fiscal responsibility and what a Constitutional Republic should be, which is the primary focus of the Tea Parties, there are some significant differences as well that we need to consider. Keep in mind that the Tea Parties are far from a monolith of orthodoxy and contain some disparate elements. Most Tea Partiers appear to be Conservative, with some Libertarians, recovering Moderates and hybrids.  Also, most of us have very little political background—we were busy being the backbone of the real USA—remember?   

Major differences in policy positions (not all Tea Partiers think alike, so this is a composite view). We should focus on the fiscal and government role commonalites.

1- Defense- Libertarians really take seriously the farewell addresses of George Washington (avoid foreign entanglements) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (military-industrial complex). Some of our Tea Partiers think the sky is the limit and others see valid legal, moral and financial reasons to cut our scope, but nearly all Tea Partiers believe that defense is the primary raison d’être of the USA and why it is not just a bunch of independent states. Many of us have a conflict when we hear about things like helping the Libyan rebels. On one hand, it is bad to see them killed and a dictator triumphant. On the other hand, some of our people may have to die if we get involved and we really can't afford a fifth war now, either.  We may help them win, only to find out later that they wish to impose Sharia law, or another dictator takes over. Also, we don’t really have a dog in that fight. We should only use force wisely and heed the warnings of George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower.

2- “Choice”- Actually, “abortion” would be a more accurate term. While a woman's right to choose is a Libertarian principle, so is life and liberty. The more a fetus grows, the more it is a fully developed human being.  Therefore a woman's right, or anyone’s, for that matter, doesn't seem absolute when it interferes with another's rights. 

3- Immigration- Some Libertarians advocate unrestricted immigration as a principle of rights. We see some constraints on that. We think that we have a right to control our own borders and determine who comes in and on what terms. In this manner, we can maintain law and order and give first priority to our citizens, so that they can live safely and well- the main purpose of any nation.  When we see parts of Europe become lawless and so-called Sharia "law" sometimes applied, which violates Judeo-Christian principles that our society and laws are based upon, it helps us to realize why there are separate countries and jurisdictions, to help prevent disparate cultures from harming each other.

4- Drugs-  Adults have free will, but we have a problem with drug use that causes people to lose control, then violate others' rights. Therefore, we don't protest too much about reasonably applied drug laws, although ours may go too far. This opinion is not unanimous among Tea Partiers. It makes sense to restrict dangerous drug ingestion by minors, although some Libertarians believe that is the responsibility of the family, not the state.

5- Marriage-  LP believes in free right of association and activity. Most, but not all Tea Partiers have religious or personal objections to such deviations from one man, one woman realtionships. Most are agreeable to so-called domestic partnerships, but wish to sharply differentiate these from traditional heterosexual marriage, which they believe is sacred and entitled to unique treatment in society. Nearly all seem to believe that schools and society should not be presenting, even promoting alternate sexual “lifestyles," as equally desirable alternatives.

 

Explore how to work together to achieve common objectives

We can work together in multiple areas:

1-   Educate society and each other on our basic principles, from cradle to grave, like the Progressives have so successfully done

2-   Pursue political action on common causes

3-   Cross-endorse and support candidates

4-   Infiltrate and attempt some reforms of GOP.

More detail on each of these …

 

1-   Educate society and each other on our basic principles, from cradle to grave, like the Progressives have so successfully done

 

Help ensure that children are educated in our philosophies. This entails helping parents in this, getting involved in educational bureaucracy and changing the curricula through legislation, school boards, penetration of academia teaching and administrative  areas and school boards.

 

Write and publish and distribute works to promote and educate the public on our views, have public forums, etc.

 

2-   Pursue political action on common causes

The current cooperative VC ISAG Agenda 21-fighting project is a good example of this. LP brought in TP, which is not only helping on this, but wants to do other A-21 fighting.  We are cooperating on raising citizens' consciousness, orchestrating action and letting officials know what we want.

 

We have other areas of cooperation, including fighting tax increases, combatting Socialist regimentation of schools and society, killing unconstitutional Obamacare, etc.

 

3-   Cross-endorse and support candidates

 

This has been problematical because parties are territorial and have mostly eschewed cooperation. The NY District 23 case study when Conservatives and Republican breakaways teamed up to support  Hoffman, the Conservative candidate, shows good potential, but belated action. We need to work to get the parties more open to doing this when it makes sense.

 

4-   Infiltrate and attempt some reforms of GOP.

Most ideals of the LP seem laudable to us and they provide important intellectual and moral input to the national political debate.  But the bottom line is that party showings are barely a rounding error on the electoral results. So, until such time as LP can develop a credible electoral presence, it would be desirable to help the Republican battle against the Progressives, including those intermal to the party.

 

Some, possibly many, LP's should join the Republican Party (more Tea Partiers should also be involved with LP), get active, campaign, get on Central Committees, CRA, TEA PARTIES, platform committees, become GOP delegates, debate, recruit, vet and promote candidates, or even “Ron Paul” it, running as GOP’ers, but sticking to your principles!   Help expose and promote corrupt people and practices.

 

We know most LP’s think GOP is hopeless and they might even be right, but it is the only bulwark between us and the Commissars right now, short of the Second Amendment. Understand that reality and act now, before it is too late!

 

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[George Miller]

Thanks to you too, Dana. Your LP efforts are helping to put more honesty into political thinking. LP has an influence far out of proportion to its electoral results. We appreciate your efforts, especially in helping to mitigate the VC ISAG environmental initiative.  See you there tomorrow.

[Dana McLorn]

Thanks for all you do George.

[Michael Miller]

Great Job George!!   Thanks for all your work.  You are a powerful force for Liberty!

 

Your loving Brother, MIchael