A number of people overseas have asked me what this tea party thing is all about. Without wanting to alienate too many of my audience, here is an effort to define the phenomenon. Firstly, I am not a member of this movement as I have an aversion to wearing funny hats and carrying placards around. I also don’t know the words to most of the American patriotic songs that are needed at their events.
Basically the tea party is a loose affiliation of people who are fed up with the ruling class in all its forms. They want to return to the simpler days of Mom and apple pie. They are suspicious of the growing intrusion of big government into every aspect of life and they hate paying taxes to prop up programs with which they disagree. Mostly they are scared to death of the massive debt we have built up and they feel impotent in the decisions being made in Washington. Most of these people have been asleep for years, believing that the representatives they have elected will do a good job, but no longer. Admiral Yamamoto said after bombing Pearl Harbor: “I fear we have awoken a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve." Maybe Obama, Pelosi and Reed are saying something like that too. Socialism is best snuck up on a population and not rammed down it's throat.
A friend kindly sent this to me from the Financial Times. It's quite a long article but explains in detail a lot more about the tea party than I can cover here. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/88143c46-e1e1-11df-b18d-00144feabdc0.html
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