Liberty is freakin’ awesome. So why is it the Tea Party movement, supposedly in favor of the preservation of individual liberties and deficit reduction, has ignored one of the biggest outrages regarding liberties and limited government? I refer — of course — to the War on Terror and the American imperialism it has spawned.
If, per the Constitution as the Tea Party members consider to be the supreme law of the land (their words, not mine: it’s under the mission statement at teapartypatriots.org), then the prosecution of the War on Terror is one of the most egregious assaults on our Constitutionally-protected rights. And despite the fact that I am, compared to most, something of a leftist, I see President Barack Obama’s conduct with regard to detention programs and methods for attacking terrorists to be just as reprehensible as the atrocities started under the Bush administration.
Tea Party members should be outraged at the assault on our rights to a speedy trial and the assumption of innocence until proven guilty. I am as outraged as the Tea Party when it comes to this assault on the Constitution: the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights apply to all PERSONS, not just Americans, meaning our judicial system does not treat those who commit crimes in an effort to terrorize the general populace any differently than a burglar or arsonist. For the Tea Party to have a consistent, principled stance supporting the Constitution, stopping indefinite detention should be one of the first priorities. And given how damning the arguments against simple, indefinite detention of alleged terror suspects are, I won’t even start to criticize the assassination program Obama has approved — it flat out places the powers of judge, jury and executioner into the hands of a military special operations unit and sets a dangerous precedent for the rest of the judicial system.
Further, if we wish to talk about fiscal responsibility, one has to consider the conservative approach to budgets, deficits and spending from the eight years of the Bush administration. The prescription there was to cut taxes while fighting costly wars overseas — does this even come close to making financial sense? If we are to protest government spending based on the deficits programs create, we must naturally oppose any imperialist follies and nation building. Wars cost money to run and rarely ever result in some sort of deficit reduction or cost controls. Compare this to the health care legislation, which is one of the first real efforts to reduce costs while expanding coverage — the spending at least attempts to bring some reductions in excessive spending by containing and, hopefully, reducing the costs of health care.
Do I agree with the Tea Party on some issues? Absolutely — I detest wasteful spending and believe in the legitimacy of the Constitution and capitalism. Do I believe in taking capitalism to its purest, free-market form, repealing the health care legislation or picking certain parts of the Constitution to support and justify certain opinions? Absolutely not.
We ignore the dangers of our indefinite detention program and the risks of our fixation on health care legislation as government gone wrong at our peril. I don’t ask the Tea Party’s supporters to stop their protests — to some extent, it is the principle of the Loyal Opposition. But I do ask for some consistency: don’t just oppose some forms of government spending and call them wasteful while ignoring others, and don’t pick and choose when it comes to standing behind the Constitution. If you really love liberty and want to have a government that is smarter and more efficient in its spending, consistency is a necessity.
