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Libertarians and the Tea Party
American Thinker ^ | 3/13/2013 | Ann Kane & M. Catherine Evans

Posted on 03/13/2013 5:30:16 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross

As we pondered this question, we also wanted to know when and where the two groups intersected. We started with an informal survey. We asked several people the following question: when do you think the Tea Party movement began? They answered: when Rick Santelli ranted on the floor of the Merc in Chicago in February, 2009.

But our research into the history of the Tea Party took us back to 2004, to its first inklings as an organized force for rousing ordinary citizens to fight back against big government. In that year, Libertarian David Koch founded Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit political advocacy group set up to educate the public on the principles of free markets.

Even though the term "Tea Party" was not used then, Koch's vision of "a mass movement, a state-based one, but national in scope, of hundreds of thousands of American citizens from all walks of life standing up and fighting for the economic freedoms" pretty much describes the movement we see today.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: libertarians; santelli; teaparty
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To: McGruff
If you are for legalizing heroin like Ron Paul you are not someone I want to be associated with.

If you are for using the government to coerse citizens then you have made a fundamental choice.

If we are free then we must be free to make stupid choices. Or is it just OK for government to coerce when it fits your idea of whats OK?

21 posted on 03/13/2013 6:38:29 AM PDT by corkoman (Release the Palin!)
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To: corkoman

>>So these establishment Republicans who kinda like that totalitarian thing as long as the government is pushing their agenda are just as bad as the rest of the Gimmiedats.<<

May I please adapt that to a tagline? I might not have enough space to credit you...


22 posted on 03/13/2013 6:55:24 AM PDT by freedumb2003 (I learned everything I needed to know about racism from Colin Powell)
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To: MrB

“We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

John Adams
1798, Address to the militia of Massachusetts


23 posted on 03/13/2013 7:00:30 AM PDT by TheGunny
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To: KC Burke; MrB
The age old L vs C argument: Does the virtuous man become free or is only the free man able to become virtuous.

I believe that this has been addressed very well by Os Guinness and his Golden Triangle of Freedom (Rick Santorum talked about this in speeches) ...

Freedom requires virtue, virtue requires faith and faith requires freedom and around again."

That freedom requires virtue was explained by the political philosopher Edmund Burke, who wrote: "Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites ... Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

Virtue requires faith because faith is the primary teacher of morality. That is not to say that one cannot be virtuous without faith, but for society as a whole faith is the indispensable agent of virtue. Faith requires freedom. Why has America remained a deeply religious country averting the road to secularism traveled by our European brothers and sisters? Again Madison's "true remedy," the combination of "free exercise" and no religious state supported monopoly, has created a vibrant marketplace of religions extolling everywhere the word of God to inspire people to fulfill His special plan for each of us. Our founders' inspired brilliance created a paradigm that has given America the best chance of any civilization in the history of man to endure the test of time. Time, this time now in American history is putting that to the test.

24 posted on 03/13/2013 7:03:46 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free)
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To: Servant of the Cross

As I see it, there’s a fine line between the Tea Party (limited government) and Libertarianism (little government). IMO that line falls somewhere around the 20% tax rate, i.e. with how much or how little government we’re willing to live with.


25 posted on 03/13/2013 7:03:58 AM PDT by Alex Murphy ("If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all" - Isaiah 7:9)
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To: Servant of the Cross

If a people is incapable of governing themselves individually,
external governance will be required in order to control them.

Did someone already post this quote?
Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants - William Penn


26 posted on 03/13/2013 7:06:07 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: montanajoe

Conservatives and libertarians can agree on the Constitution.

RINO’s don’t like the Constitutions limits any more than the Socialist Dems do.

Choose a side.


27 posted on 03/13/2013 7:14:33 AM PDT by Dead Corpse (I will not comply.)
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To: MrB
Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants - William Penn

Odin agrees.

28 posted on 03/13/2013 7:15:19 AM PDT by Dead Corpse (I will not comply.)
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To: kabumpo

“Libertarians are amoral, treacherous crypto Dems who must be purged from the Conservative movement.”

Yeah, the problem there is, there are not enough CONSERVATIVE, constitutional republicans to win anything without libertarians help.


29 posted on 03/13/2013 7:26:15 AM PDT by AuntB (Illegal immigration is simply more "share the wealth" socialism and a CRIME not a race!)
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To: McGruff

>> If you are for legalizing heroin

Why stop with heroin? The litany of depraved activity erroneously associated with libertarianism doesn’t begin and end with narcotics ya’ know...

Statism is evil. Don’t perpetuate it by demonizing libertarianism.

Differentiate values by contrasting conservatism and liberalism.


30 posted on 03/13/2013 7:30:26 AM PDT by Gene Eric (The Palin Doctrine.)
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To: Servant of the Cross

“The “Tea ‘Party’” is a movement, not a party. And it will not have the necessary power needed to throw the liberals out unless it comprises both libertarians and the more traditional conservatives. We need each other......
Regardless, of whether the ‘Tea Party’ roots are libertarian or not (they are), we need to merge this into a unified ‘One’. [can’t we all get along?”

The Tea Party problem at the moment is to root out the self serving political hacks who are trying to take over the name and in my opinion, destroy it. Dick Armey tried it with Freedom Works, and was finally ousted.

It’s going on at CPAC right now, and all over the internet. The culprits do not have any interest in Tea Party principals, only in using the name to raise money for furthering THEIR agendas, not ours. They will destroy the Tea Party. They are the people who run CPAC, including cuban born head of the ACU, Al Cardenas and radical islamist loving Grover Norquist, both pushers of amnesty. The phony ‘tea parties’ are teaparty.net and TPNN(Tea party news network)

We have to clear out these traitors, then we might get somewhere. Most people aren’t aware, or don’t want to be, that they are being USED.

http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/2013/03/all-tea-party-groups-are-not-created.html


31 posted on 03/13/2013 7:34:29 AM PDT by AuntB (Illegal immigration is simply more "share the wealth" socialism and a CRIME not a race!)
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To: kabumpo

What a foolish statement.

I have a friend who is a die-hard Republican. He has a special needs child. He’s all for ADA, government subsidies he recieves (because he deserves them) and government control of almost everything HE decides, according to his Calvinist doctrines, are “sinful.”

There is no difference between that kind of “conservative” and liberal, except in what they want to control.

Call me a conservative, libertarian, liberaltarian, or any other label, I believe in the America of Roger Williams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and many other founders of the United States.

If a belief that a man by his very nature is free to make mistakes that injure himself alone and that he has the responsibility of caring for himself and accounting for those mistakes makes me an “amoral, treacherous crypto Dem,” then so be it. If this be so, then our nation was founded on amoral and treacherous principles and your views would be better served in Europe where top-down, big government control of individuals came from.


32 posted on 03/13/2013 7:52:53 AM PDT by cizinec ("Brother, your best friend ain't your Momma, it's the Field Artillery.")
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To: Shery

“I was upset because they saw no problem with it being taught (forced down students’ throats) in school.”

The overwhelming majority of libertarians do not support the concept of public education in any sense, so I have difficulty believing you left “libertarians” because they wanted to force ideas down students’ throats in school. I suspect you were having discussions with liberals who liked select parts of libertarianism, not libertarians.


33 posted on 03/13/2013 8:09:40 AM PDT by cizinec ("Brother, your best friend ain't your Momma, it's the Field Artillery.")
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To: MrB
Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants - William Penn

And sometimes by tyrants claiming to act for God.

34 posted on 03/13/2013 8:18:04 AM PDT by JustSayNoToNannies ("The Lord has removed His judgments against you" - Zep. 3:15)
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To: Servant of the Cross

LIEberaltarians are mindless liberals. They suck up to socialists and empower them. Libertarians are a major amoral, globalist black hole, sucking all the virtue and brains out of everything it touches in power.

I am for American constitutional freedom and it’s Judeo-Christian culture and law - not Ayn Rand’s crazy cult of social liberal stupids and amoral, greedy bastids.

Can we get along? Not until liberal-tarians abandon socialist cultural goals and demands for political correctness and join the land of the living - the American-Americans.


35 posted on 03/13/2013 8:21:39 AM PDT by SaraJohnson
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To: corkoman

How about levellers. They are shockingly similar to libertarians.

Before tards come out and declare the levellers were commies, William Walwyn and “Freeborn” John Lilburne, the founders of the movement, were far from the so-called “true-levellers” (aka diggers) who were commies and who tried to take over the movement by using a similar name, but held radically different values. See the last provision of the leveller document “Agreement of the Free People of England.”

Read the Putney Debates. You’ll see the same debates we are having today. What should government do?

The Putney Debates: http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1322&Itemid=264

An Agreement of the Free People of England: http://www.constitution.org/eng/agreepeo.htm


36 posted on 03/13/2013 8:28:47 AM PDT by cizinec ("Brother, your best friend ain't your Momma, it's the Field Artillery.")
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To: SaraJohnson

Please. Most libertarians’ ideas hearken back to Roger Williams, Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Rose Wilder Lane, Patrick Henry and John Lilburne. Most do not subscribe to the ridiculous excesses of Ayn Rand’s philosophy.


37 posted on 03/13/2013 8:35:54 AM PDT by cizinec ("Brother, your best friend ain't your Momma, it's the Field Artillery.")
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To: montanajoe
Libertarians claim to fame is their supposed allegiance to the constitution yet they are isolationist in their foreign policy and weaker than the dims on defense.

I don't have to chose a side. Libertarians have made the choice for me...

38 posted on 03/13/2013 8:40:58 AM PDT by montanajoe
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To: Servant of the Cross

this is just a whisper effort to peal away another group of republicans and make it impossible to be a republican and win.

a house divided.

we need to unite as conservatives and with any differences and then deal with them in house. Those differences can be addressed without the view of the MSM.


39 posted on 03/13/2013 8:42:58 AM PDT by longtermmemmory (VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
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To: TheGunny; MrB
“We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion.

Exactly - government can't make a people moral.

40 posted on 03/13/2013 8:44:42 AM PDT by JustSayNoToNannies ("The Lord has removed His judgments against you" - Zep. 3:15)
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