Aug 30th 2011, 18:35:53
The real heart of the tea party movement is that government should be limited and watched. The bigger government gets, the harder it is for 'The People' to do any realistic oversight and therefore it breeds more corruption and ineffeciency.
So we have the example of the bloated federal government. It is not the point of the tea party to turn 'historically government provided services and regulation back in the hands of private industry' so much as to get government out of things that it should not regulate in the first place. And to put the regulatory oversight at the appropriate level of government.
For example: schools. Education is not a federal issue. Not in the constitution and historically not controlled / directed / funded at the federal level. The feds got involved when the states were hurt in the 70's recession and the feds could deficit spend. The states avoided the hard choice of how to fund what is an essential state service and shifted the tax burden from local to federal. With federal management we have much more regulation, tons of wasted money, lower achievement and less control and oversight by the local people. That was a federal power grab with very little good to show for it (IDEA is a good thing, but could have been achieved with other legislation and without the huge DofED bureaucracy). And, in addition to the federal regulations we have a huge funding mess that virtually every state must deal with (and spend a lot of extra money on) that still avoids the issue of how to appropriately pay for education services.
Are the Tea-Party members mostly social conservative? Yes, but not all and those issues certainly are not the driving force being tea-party events and candidates. I am confused by your Jewish/Christian issue, since most references are to 'Judeo-Christian' values, referencing things like personal responsibility, property rights, rule of law, private charity etc...
Ref your concern for local government corruption: if we had less regulation and what we had was more common-sense instead of huge loophole ridden bills then we would have fewer lawsuits and special interests... That is the theory at least. But how much worse could it be than the armies of professional thieves we have now?
Bottom line is that I think you have a lot of goals in common with what the tea-party is all about. Esp with your work at local government oversight you are a Tea Party member in all but the bumper sticker. :)