Is The Tea Party Movement A Minority Movement?

September 22, 2009 / 1:10 pm • By Dr. Melissa Clouthier

Is the Tea Party movement a minority movement? I discuss the question in my latest AIP column:

This Tea Party movement isn’t a youthful rebellion. It isn’t a response of an obvious minority to injustice such as the women’s movement or civil rights movement. The Teaparty represents what used to be the silent majority: the people busy working, building families and businesses, and going about their lives.

My question: Are these people still the silent majority? Is the Tea Party movement, not the silent majority at all, but the new minority?

Before the election, it occurred to me that if enough working Americans accepted a check from the Federal or State government or worked in state-run organizations like public schools or received welfare assistance or were on social security and medicaid and medicare, then it would be nigh to impossible to ever elect a small-government conservative ever again.

Is there no such thing as the “silent majority” now? Have the silent majority become the vocal minority?

Posted in America • Political Animals
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  • Andy

    From an old magazine clip

    There is no “free” money. For every bond the government takes on or social program that government proposes the net result will be another yoke upon our and our children’s necks. There is no spontaneous generation of money to pay for these programs. There is no spontaneous generation of natural resources to fuel our economy, as the environmental movement seems to think, as they stop us from any resource recovery from our public lands. Both these agendas will doom our economy, freedom and the future of our children.

    “Economy is among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt is the greatest of the dangers to be feared.” —Thomas Jefferson

    Much the same way the environmental movement has fought to deny us the freedom to access our public lands to “protect the environment”, we will soon find a government that seeks to “protect the citizens” by providing for our every need will be the same government that will determine what freedoms we will enjoy.

    As a final thought; I love America; as a person of color it has given me all I have needed to succeed – freedom — and I ask for nothing more. I beg you to understand the ramifications if we continue along the path the following “Cycle of Liberty” describes.

    The Cycle Of Liberty

    At about the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in the year 1787, Alexander Tyler (a Scottish history professor at The University of Edinburgh) had this to say about “The Fall of The Athenian Republic” some 2,000 years prior:

    “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”

    The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

    From bondage to spiritual faith;
    From spiritual faith to great courage;
    From courage to liberty;
    From liberty to abundance;
    From abundance to complacency;
    From complacency to apathy;
    From apathy to dependence;
    From dependence back into bondage.

    Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, believes the U.S. is now somewhere between the “apathy” and complacency” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy; with some 40 percent of the nation’s population already having reached the “governmental dependency” phase.

    “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” —Herbert Spencer