The Tea Party movement in the United States saw its most high-profile electoral success last Tuesday with the primary election of Rand Paul, son of the notorious Texas Libertarian Ron Paul, to be the Republican candidate for Senator in Kentucky. The pundits told us it was a “victory over the Washington establishment” delivered by voters seething with anger. Paul’s mainstream Republican challenger had received the endorsement of long-serving Republican senators, while Paul had been endorsed by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. “This is a message to Washington from the Tea Party!” shouted an elated Paul at his victory speech.
But it wasn’t long before the reality began to sink in about exactly who the teabaggers were pushing into power. Like his father, Paul is an adherent to a uniquely American brand of ultra-orthodox Libertarianism. This strain of thought opposes almost all government interference in people’s lives. It is opposed to income tax, the environmental protection agency, the FBI, the Americans with Disabilities Act, government pensions, medicare, you name it. If the government does it, they want it killed.
Lately this kind of non-government ideology has been gaining popularity amongst an increasingly radicalized American public. The Tea Party movement, born out of citizen anger over Barack Obama’s efforts to give all Americans health insurance, has morphed into a snowballing anti-government crusade that seems like it won’t be content until Washington has been burned to the ground. Spurred on by Fox News, the most watched news network in the US, the Teabaggers believe that the US government is “out of control”, developing into an authoritarian super-state that seeks to regulate every area of their lives.