It has finally happened. Years of Republican extremist ranting, in combination with an increasingly dysfunctional government, has spawned a far right extremist party that is now holding our country hostage in the debt levels debate, and threatening to drag our entire country, and likely the world, into chaos and ruin all for the sake of broken ideologies and misguided policies.
Now this is not to bash the rank and file of the Tea Party. Most of rank and file members of the Tea Party are relatively average Middle Class Americans who are simply looking for a chance to live the “American Dream.” They are concerned about the nature and direction that the United States is going in, but few will claim to be experts in politics or economics.
And herein lies the problem, the world has changed and America’s rank and role has changed as well, but the Tea Party Mantra is built on a corrupt and dated ideology (neoliberalism) that does not recognize nor cope with this change. Most of the followers of the Tea Party have never conducted more than a cursory study of economics, and yet their leaders are now vehemently pushing an economic ideology, and an economic ideology of ruin, at that.
Neoliberalism is built on numerous faulty and idealistic notions. It is a system predicated by greed as the driving force of society, and competition as the only regulation. Yet it relies on the concept that all people are perfectly rational, adhere to basic moral standards (that people will not cheat, lie, or commit fraud), and that we all have access to all information at all times.
It is also predicated on a system in which no single company is “too big to fail.” As our last economic crisis proved, years of lax anti-monopoly law enforcement have created massive companies whose collapse could drag down the entire world economy.
In other words, the whole system relies on perfectly rational people making perfectly rational and moral decisions and acting in a system in which the fall of no single actor could threaten the entire system. A complete and utter impossibility in the real world.
Nor does Neoliberalism address the concrete fact that businesses and individuals will not always be able to muster the resources to advance technology and research. America was built by entrepreneurs, but for the last 70 years and at nearly every step of the way these entrepreneurs have relied upon government funding and support. FedEx and UPS exist because of government investments in infrastructure and aircraft technology. All tech firms owe homage to U.S. investments in computing and internet technology. And so the list goes on.
Perhaps the greatest crime is the fact that the immense energy of the Tea Party is being misspent chasing ideals that will only quicken the fall of America. If the energy of the Tea Party could be utilized to gallivant the Middle and Working classes then perhaps real change could be brought about in America.
The Tea Party is not a failure for wanting change, the Tea Party is a failure for fighting for the wrong type of change. Most of their policies are simply continuations and reiterations of the failed policies that have gotten us into this mess. For example, the movement to gut our national research and development base, along with our sterling University system will only cause the United States to fall further behind.
America does need to shift its tendencies away from spending money, and return towards investing money. In the last several decades politicians have become obsessed with pet projects and private interests. Competitive and fruitful research and investments have become increasingly disregarded in the name of campaign contributions and constituent votes, but if America is to succeed we need to elect politicians that are more concerned with the long term well-being of the United States than lining their own pockets.
The Tea Party is right to challenge these politicians, but their alternative is only a refinement of the corrupt and broken ideologies that have already laid waste to the Middle Class in the United States. American needs a New Way built upon pragmatism and aimed at increasing the well-being of our nation as a whole, not the repeat of failed and corrupt politics.
There are two simple solutions. Change the congressional term limit to ONE SINGLE TERM and elect politians who want are not in the pocket of these multinational corparations and banking cartels. Every vote in congress boils down to the next election, so take that away so people will make decisions based logic and reason instead of who’s filling their coffer.
I agree a lot with your second point, that we need to elect politicians who are not in the pockets of private interests.
On your single term concept, it has potential but it also increases the risk of private interests, as a politicians will have every incentive to help out companies while in office, so they can receive employment once they are out of office. This is already a huge problem. So I think first step is to free our government from private interests. Just as there is a separation of church and state, there should be a seperaton of private interests and state
At the end of the day, what the USA needs is a merictocracy, where the best and most morally salient end up in office, and in the bureacracy.
Good luck seperating private interests and government. The ethics commitee would have to be made up of saints, no goverment official would be allowed to have a private bank account, and no government official could ever work after they leave office because of the chance that it was quid pro quo.