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Saturday, August 28, 2010

Will excluding the social issues derail the tea party movement?

Bryan Fisher makes the case that the tea parties will fail if they censor the social issues. Here's a portion of his article:
Most folks in the Tea Party movement recognize that it is far worse for a nation to be morally and spiritually bankrupt than to be fiscally bankrupt, and are in the movement, at least in part, because they are alarmed at the moral drift in this country and want to do something about it.

This strain of moral libertarianism is a threat to the Tea Party movement. If the Tea Party is to be an effective voice, it must unapologetically press an agenda of fiscal, constitutional and social conservatism. Authentic conservatism is holistic, and knocking one of the three legs off the stool will prove fatal in the end to the Tea Party effort.

Authentic conservatives are economic libertarians and cultural conservatives. Not one or the other.

Cultural libertarians are not conservatives at all. They have far more in common with the hippies of the '60s than they do with George Washington and Thomas jefferson.

The Tea Party will forfeit its claim to reflect the values of the Founders if it does not affirm the message of cultural conservatism as well as economic restraint. Let's not forget that it was the father of our country who said that religion and morality both are "indispensable supports" of political prosperity
Read the complete article here. What do you think? Should the tea parties avoid social issues like the plague to support the big tent philosophy or should they openly affirm the social issues?

2 comments:

  1. Only three things stand in the way of our complete loss of liberty to the Obama administration: free markets, churches, and families. All three are under daily attack, and we must defend all three.

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  2. The republicans already tried the "big tent" schtick and it has proven to be an abysmal disaster. I will not countenance it any futher, even if that means "the democrat" wins. For instance, if Ehrlich wins the primary for governor, I'll go "third-party" in November. When are "politicians" going to learn?

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