Tea Party Movement Is Not a Fad

October 15, 2010 | By Bethany Murphy

By most accounts, the tea party movement started with a rant by Rick Santelli on CNBCabout government bailouts. This sparked a movement of concerned Americans motivated to change the system of government spending and waste.

Today, the tea party is a critical force in American politics, “that inner voice that speaks to us when things go wrong — the conscience of the nation at a crucial point in our history.” That’s how Heritage President Ed Feulner and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) put it in their much-discussed Politico article.

We are at a turning point. Government spending has skyrocketed to unmanageably high levels. Concerned Americans are organizing in homes, at town hall meetings, at rallies. They meet and wonder, “Is the American Dream dead for me?”

In primary elections this year, tea party candidates upset establishment favorites in a dozen or more races. Importantly, they argue that American principles—conservative principles—should guide policy decisions.
“The tea party seeks answers to such questions not in the dictates of Washington today but in our country’s founding principles,” DeMint and Feulner write. “There, it finds a prescription for constitutional, limited government based on God-given rights — not a Utopian blueprint for bureaucratic-managed change. “The
 Heritage Foundation has put its support behind the tea party movement. We support their effort to reform Washington and limit the ability of the bloated federal government to interfere in the everyday lives of Americans.

The tea party movement recognizes that the future of liberty depends on America reclaiming the true nature of the Constitution and the rule of law.

Fortuitously, Heritage scholar Matt Spalding has written a new book, We Still Hold These Truths, to help educate Americans on what the Constitution says – and, importantly, what it doesn’t say. The Weekly Standard described this book as “the single best introduction to the political thought of the American Founding.”

To supplement his book, Spalding has created a companion study guide and video series, available at WeStillHoldTheseTruths.org. These materials are intended for Americans — liberals, conservatives, tea partiers — so they can come together to study our great nation’s Founding in order to create a blueprint to restore America to her core ideals.

Heritage