The Tea Party movement is marvelous because it is a return to bedrock principles of limited government and balanced budgets. The Founders were so committed to both of these ideas that they created a government not easily abused (checks and balances) and not easily manipulated by potential tyrants. The Founders also, from Washington on, paid down the national debt, and the U. S. became a nation with a national surplus by the mid-1830s, while James Madison was still alive. They gave us freedom from the British, a workable Constitution, and within the lifetime of some of them, a paid-off national debt. To paraphrase Churchill, few have given so much to so many.
In the early 1900s, the Progressives, by contrast, wanted to centralize power and make government more intrusive. They wanted a powerful executive to cure alleged abuses and fine tune the economy. The Founders believed that setting up freedom would produce inequalities of condition because people were unequal in ability, willingness to work, and in luck. As long as all had a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (the pursuit of happiness, not a guarantee of it) society would function well. The Progressives believed that by 1900, human nature had changed; we knew more; we could trust elected leaders with much greater power. They believed we could redistribute wealth and create greater equality of condition, which they deemed desirable. The original progressive income tax had a top rate of 7%. It was up to 25% by the 1920s; 63% under Hoover; 79% under FDR in the 1930s; and 94% at the time of FDR’s death. In other words, envy and greed–the taxing of the few to capture the votes of the many–became a political exercise that prolonged the Great Depression and would have sustained it after WWII if we had not cut taxes and increased freedom.
The Founders valued freedom and property rights; the Progressives did not like the results of freedom and property rights, and they favored an enlarged state to micromanage the economy and redistribute wealth. The Founders did not believe human nature was capable of managing this feat, and they would have been discouraged to see the results of Progressives’ tinkering with the Constitution. The Tea Party movement is an encouraging return to our inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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“the taxing of the few to capture the votes of the many”
This is an excellent way of explaining the reality of the matter. I have every intention to favorably refer to it countless times in the future. Too many people attempt to put lipstick on a pig when discussing the New Deal. At the end of the day, however, its number one purpose was to assist Democrats in bribing voters. The first, last, and foremost question dominating the FDR administration to determine who got the money was this one: will it help us win in the next election cycle? On a practical level, nothing else mattered.
Excellent! Thank you for the tip concerning your site (after I commented on your Freeman article). I will be visiting frequently.
Steve