I would really take issue with that. The vast majority of Americans didn't show any care whatsoever as freedoms were eroded over the past 20-or-so years.
The reality is that the Tea Partiers have been kicked out of their debt-subsidized comfort zones and they want back in. They've been forced to swallow the blue pill when they really just wanted to keep taking red pills.
The real dose of cold water for them was when they realized that socialized medicine was going to disrupt our case of national hypochondria. That was accompanied by another dose when family members started being hit in the wallet by the poor economy.
In years past I've stood shoulder-to-shoulder with other Freepers to protest the loss of freedoms - and we were always woefully-outnumbered by our opponents on the left. Where were all these "sons of liberty" then?
I don't think most Tea Partiers are too concerned with their freedom - they just want their red pills back. Red pills that they can no longer continue to pay for with money loaned to them by the third world.
My bad on the context I posted, it seems to have confused some. That's not the thrust of the article, that's the idea being pushed by some people like Dick Armey. The author looks at the movement from a more philosophical perspective and asserts, "The passion behind the populist insurgency is less about liberty than a particularly American idea of karma."
He then goes on to summarize this American Karma as, "Kindness, honesty and hard work will (eventually) bring good fortune; cruelty, deceit and laziness will (eventually) bring suffering. No divine intervention is required; it's just a law of the universe, like gravity. "
He then asserts, "... suppose you learned that politicians were devising policies that might, as a side effect of their enactment, nullify the law of karma. Bad deeds would no longer lead to bad outcomes, and the fragile moral order of our nation would break apart. For tea partiers, this scenario is not science fiction. It is the last 80 years of American history. "