The Tea Party vs Ron Paul

The period leading up to the 2012 Presidential election was an exciting yet confusing time in my life.  The emergence of the Tea Party and Ron Paul’s announcement that he was running for President inspired and gave hope to those that love liberty.  On the surface it seemed the Tea Party and Ron Paul were a match made in heaven.

The Associated Press’ Jay Root described Ron Paul In the following.

“Paul, a native of Pittsburg, is both a spiritual father and actual father in the tea party movement.  His son, tea party darling Rand Paul, won a Senate seat in Kentucky last year and has become an ardent proponent of spending cuts and smaller government.  As far back as 2007, long before people were evoking the fabled Boston Tea Party to symbolize their disgust with an overtaxing central government, Ron Paul was hosting a “Tea Party Fundraiser” aboard a shrimp boat neat Galveston.”

Ron Paul said the difference between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party was that the protesters of the former are “Scared to death they won’t get their handouts, while the latter are sick and tired of paying for it.  I’m on the side of sick and tired of paying for it.”

So why is it that Tea Party members supported candidates like Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney over Ron Paul?  It would appear as if the Tea Party would welcome Ron Paul with open arms.  They both wanted limited government and wanted to cut government spending, right?

In October 2010, a Public Religion Research institute study found that more than half of the Tea Partiers say America is a “Christian Nation” and that they are social conservatives on same sex marriage.

Ron Paul believed that government should stay out of marriage altogether.

Another poll conducted in 2011 showed that 60 percent of Tea Party Republicans said the best way to ensure peace was through “military strength.”  One of my hero's, George Carlin, referred to American foreign policy  as “bombing brown people.” 

On the Tea Party website it states that their founders are the “brave souls of the men and women in 1773.”  But didn’t they fight against a massive national military that tried to prevent their freedom?  I would think the Tea Party of today would have learned from the past.  The Tea Party says they want to cut government spending but the poll conducted in 2011 found that 81 percent of Tea Party Republicans want military spending to stay the same.

Ron Paul believed we should cut military spending and quit being the policeman of the world.

The problem was that Ron Paul believed in too much liberty and wanted a government that was too limited for the Tea Party.  Like so many Americans the Tea Party wants liberty in only the areas that they deem fit.  However, in order to be free from tyranny the principles of a free society must be followed and adhered to.  You don’t get to pick and choose which ones you want to follow and which you ignore.

Choosing to follow some and not the others is still tyranny which is what Democrats and Republicans have been doing for a very long time.  Neither party is willing to adopt all the principles but instead turn to their religious beliefs or “American Exceptionalism” as an excuse to violate individual rights.

This is why we need to work within the Republican Party to begin expounding on liberty and use the party as a vehicle to limit government in both scope and strength.  Until this becomes a reality we will continue to allow tyranny to persistently take away our freedoms.