Your editorial on the Tea Party sympathizes with their concerns, but says there is a danger in unstructured movements with “rage” in that they could turn against scapegoats such as Jews (“Tea Party Invites Concerns,” Oct. 8).
The main point of the Tea Party is that government has gotten too large. A government that gets us into trillions of dollars of debt is doing something very wrong, even if a noble-sounding excuse can be found for each spending item. A government that often takes steps to destroy jobs is also (usually) doing something very wrong, even if it’s in the name of “sustainability” or “the environment” or “social justice.”
Sometimes targeted rage is required, though I didn’t see “rage” at the Tea Party event I attended, which incidentally was addressed by a Jewish conservative, a black conservative and others.
There are anti-Israel conservatives, there are anti-Jewish conservatives, but the left has a substantial number of anti-Israel individuals.
We do need a safety net, but perhaps a more stringent safety net might discourage phenomena such as 40 percent of babies in this country being born to single mothers. America has huge problems. Perhaps the Tea Party is the last gasp of an aroused and patriotic and sensible citizenry to address those problems before we become a debt-ridden country of factions dependent on big government for our jobs, if we can get them, and dependent on handouts if we can’t get jobs.
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