At The Seattle Tea Party

I WENT DOWN to the Seattle Tea Party at Westlake Park in downtown Seattle on April 15, 2009. It was organized and hosted by Liberty Belle Keli Carender.

This is what I saw, at about 6:15 pm.

It was a jovial occasion. People cheered at the idea of lower taxes and spending, and booed at the mention of Democrats like Jim McDermott and Patti Murray.

My takeaway was that the folks attending are good old mainstream Americans. They weren’t country club Republicans. They weren’t Randian individualists. They were just folks, and a lot of them seemed to be women-of-a-certain-age. They were, if they were anything, the Reagan Democrats that came over to the Republican side in the 1980s.

It set me to thinking. These folks haven’t been well served by the politics of the last 20 years, the years since Ronald Reagan stepped down as president.

They probably didn’t benefit in the tech boom. They probably didn’t cash in on the housing boom. They probably aren’t going to have much savings, not after the meltdown, and they probably aren’t going to benefit from the Obama initiatives in health care, education, and “smart energy.”

How can we help these folks? We can help them by steadying the economy. The boom economy of the past few years and the bailout economy of the next year or two are not good for ordinary people. The present setup benefits the people that are fast on their feet. It does not benefit ordinary people who go to work, live by the rules, and pay their taxes.

We need an America that has cranked down the risk factor. It’s not that hard to do:

Let’s crank down the debt economy. Less debt; more equity. That starts with the government.
Let’s crank down the government monopolies in health and education.
Let’s crank down the subsidies in energy, transportation, agriculture, and in other ways big and small that don’t even come up on the radar.

In a high octane economy, you have to be fast on your feet to do well, or you need to sign up under a powerful patron. That’s not the economy for a free society. It’s an economy that benefits well-connected liberals and their patronage clients.

Let’s do the right thing for America. For a change.

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

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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

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

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

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

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

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

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

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

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

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