Beyond Tea Parties

IT’S great to see the growth of the Tea Party movement, and especially to see that women are involved. The recent Orlando Tea Party with 4,000 attendees, was organized by two Orlando moms, Lisa Feroli and her friend Shelly Ferguson.

But the speeches were about the usual stuff, according to Orlando Sentinel reporter Helen Eckinger.

Several speakers addressed the crowd, estimated by Orlando police and event organizers at 4,200, on a variety of topics, including gun rights, freedom of speech, the dangers of communism and, most prevalently, the economy, especially the Obama administration’s bailout plan.

OK, that’s fine. But it seems to me that these are all guy issues, and they are issues that do not really resonate with the average moderate woman.

In my view we cannot really reverse the political direction of the nation until we change the conversation on women’s issues. I mean, of course, not the liberal feminist agenda, but the real issues that concern women: their children, their health, their safety.

In my view we have to take a completely new look at all this. Over the past century women have been convinced that a strong state is the answer to their concerns: strong state health care, strong state education, strong state intervention for women in poverty.

But I argue that we are sticking our heads in the sand if we think that the strong state does anything for women. Women would be much happier and much more secure if we revived the informal safety net of family and community to replace the iron cage of government programs that currently reign supreme. Here is a conservative manifesto to challenge the liberal strong-state status quo.

Women and Sex: The sexual revolution has been a very mixed blessing for women. The control of fertility is a wonderful liberation, but the unintended consequence is that unattached women are under constant pressure to have sex with partners who have not—yet—committed to them. The availability of abortion has the same effect. Uncommitted sex partners feel free to have sex and then suggest an abortion. For most women this is a nightmare. Women must be freed from the tyranny of sexual license; they must be free to say No.
Children and Education: Compulsory government education is a monster. It incarcerates children in government custodial facilities for 12 years, and it doesn’t seem to achieve much in the way of education. If you look back at the childhoods of famous people in the nineteenth century (those are the only people for whom we have information) you find that they had a perfunctory school education. What they did was: they worked, starting in their early teens. Children must be freed from the tyranny of compulsory education and the tyranny of child-labor laws.
Health care: Women instinctively want all the health care available in the world and then some. But it is clear that government is not the way to do this. Let us stipulate that people have a right to basic health care, and we mean by that the right to a sanitary environment of clean water, clean air, and clean food, access to vaccination, neo-natal care, and emergency trauma care. But if you want more, then you ought to work for it.
Broken Families: The cruelest feature of the welfare state is the destruction of the low-income family. This is the consequence of government interference into the lives of low-income people through welfare, easy divorce, stranger adoption, and the various government child protective services. There is certainly an argument to be made for government emergency assistance during natural or economic disaster. But in normal times people must look for protection from their families and their community, not from the agencies of force and compulsion.

Women instinctively expect support from the community as they go about their lives of caring for people. The question is: what is the best way to provide support to women? Is it through families and associations, or is it through government? In the last century, as women came into the public square of modern society, politicians offered the bounty of government programs to women and women were grateful for the support.

But was that the right thing for women to do? Do politicians have the interest of women at heart, or are they just using women as a means of ascent to political power? That is the question for us all this spring as we organize our Tea Parties and as we think seriously about what the welfare state has done to women, to children, to families, to freedom, to community, and above all, to the poor.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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