Peace, Liberty, and the Tea Party

A couple of very good articles have surfaced recently taking on the hypocrisy in the Tea Party movement regarding war and its attendant attacks on domestic liberty, which the Tea Party activists supposedly hold dear. The first, by James Bovard, appeared in the Christian Science Monitor under the title "Tea Party Movement: Pro-War, Pro-Torture, Pro-Freedom?" The second, by Ivan Eland, "To the Tea Party: War and Liberty Aren't Fellow Travelers," was posted on Antiwar.com.

Both articles do a fine job of highlighting the consternating intellectual disconnect among many of the tea partiers in their simultaneous support for smaller government and the warfare state. I highly encourage you to read both articles.

Eland lays out a particularly clear historical case that growth in domestic government, which the tea partiers apparently so detest, has to a very large degree been the direct result of wartime policies. He goes so far as to say that "of all the causes of big government in human history, warfare is the most important."

Bovard recounts his experience at a recent tea party, where establishment Republican partisans spent more breath bashing Obama as a closet Muslim and fearmongering over Iran's nuclear program than espousing any principled defense of political and economic liberty. Bovard also points out recent poll results "showed that two-thirds of tea party members have a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin, and 57 percent have a favorable opinion of George W. Bush."

If warfare is the most important cause of big government, then G.W. Bush's boundless "war on terror" surely stands as one of the grossest excuses for the the expansion of government in American history. And yet a majority of small-government-supporting tea partiers still have a favorable view of him? What's going on here?

Now, I think it's important to point out that not all tea partiers are warmongers. After all, 43% don't view Bush favorably. We would do well to remember that the modern tea party movement began in late 2007 during the presidential campaign of Ron Paul, a true advocate of small government and peace. According to recent poll results the tea party movement is evenly divided between the originalist libertarian-leaning Ron Paul wing, and the usurping conservative-Republican-partisan Sarah Palin wing.

Since at least the Cold War, unquestioning support for the military and all its misadventures has been a core conservative doctrine. And with the election of a "liberal" Democrat president and Congress, conservatives have flocked to join libertarians in the tea party protests, bringing with them all of their Cold War baggage. Conservatives have been so inculcated for decades in their unflagging reverence for militarism, that it simply never occurs to them to reassess things in the light of their new found love of liberty. And now, with the popularity of the tea party movement attracting the vultures of the Republican establishment, the anti-Democrat message has become the loudest voice at most rallies.

If conservatives truly value freedom and limited government, then they must learn to recognize the ways in which the warfare state undermines and violates those ideals. I've heard and read conservatives say things like, "Thank God for the military, the one part of our government that works really well." I hate to break it to ya'll, but the military is just another bureaucracy, with all the attendant inefficiencies and perverse incentive structures as the DMV, the Post Office, or the IRS. In fact, it's not unreasonable to claim that the military is responsible for more pork and cost overruns than any other government department.

War profiteers...um...merchants of death...I mean...defense contractors bilk billions in profits from taxpayers to build unnecessary and notoriously unreliable weaponry. And the sole purpose of that weaponry: to destroy valuable resources, i.e. homes, buildings, roads, cars, sewage systems, schools. We may as well all have a giant money-burning orgy. At least then the purchasing power of the dollar might rise for once.

Conservatives still carry the Cold War fear of reductions in military spending. Do they know that the U.S. spends as much on it's military as the rest of the world combined? That we spend at least 7 times more than the second-highest country, China? Keep in mind that these figures only include the official Pentagon budget. Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute recently published a full accounting of military spending, which turned out to be 65% greater than the Pentagon budget alone. If conservatives want to shrink government, spending cuts must be made, and military spending should be the first candidate on the cutting table.

This is a rare time when libertarians and conservatives find themselves in common cause against government expansion. The pro-peace voices among us must speak out while this short window of opportunity remains. I'm sure it's quite tempting to hold back and concentrate on the issues held in common with conservatives. But this is a unique time in our history when conservatives are vulnerable to libertarian principles they would normally brush aside or not ever hear in the first place.

We must take advantage of this time to advocate for the cause of peace and liberty. We must expose and educate conservatives on the crucial link between peace and liberty, and the one that also joins war and tyranny. I'm sure there are many tea partiers who won't appreciate the message, and many who will refuse to see the light. But many will. How will they hear unless we tell them? This may be the one and only time in many conservatives' lives that they will ever be exposed to such ideas. We must rise to the challenge and boldly speak out for peace. Now.