Tea Culture: This Party Is Not Just About Politics

by Chris Stolte - December 9th, 2010 - Daily Caller

American culture is complex, but most can agree that America is a culture of self-reliance and self-determination. These ingrained values are closely linked to past political movements. From the Women’s Suffrage Movement to the Civil Rights Movement, their origins can be traced to a clash between the political system and Americans’ most deeply held values.

Today we are witnessing the rise of another movement, the Tea Party, and its foundation is no less cultural. A point that’s often missed in the unending dissection of Tea Party motivations is that the movement is more inherently cultural in origin than political. Tea Partiers feel a political class is dictating that they should be submissive citizens — such orders directly conflict with the distinctly American values of independence and self-sufficiency. Tea Partiers became political because they didn’t want a new culture imposed upon them.

It is curious how many of the Tea Party prime movers are people who have either left our two political parties, or were inactive and passive about politics until the Tea Party movement started. Our few Democrats, the numerous independents, and even most of the large number of Republicans, cannot be said to be political activists... until now.

This article notes that the primary focus of the Tea Party movement has been on the war between statism of the Democrats and free enterprise by Republicans, with a strong undercurrent of anger at the abandonment by some Republicans with concern for free enterprise. That undercurrent is the source of much of the rage against George W. Bush and Karl Rove for their big government abandonment of free enterprise. It is amazing how many people in the Tea Party movement are committed to fixing what they see as a failure of our society to educate our own citizens on the principles that made us great. You hear peole talking about education at every meeting.