Visualizing things this way, we can see that not all people on the left want big government, centralized control, and top-down direction of our economy. I myself tend towards the decentralized view from the left, which can roughly be labeled "anarchic," although I prefer decentralist as a general term, due to the pejorative connotations associated with anarchy. As a decentralist liberal, I believe in limited government, localized control, and individual freedom, much as "libertarians" do. So I really can identify with much of the Tea Party agenda, in principle. I understand where they're coming from, because I also feel that huge, top-down bureaucracies are inherently inefficient, bloated, and liberty-sapping. Centralized control usually reduces the freedom and power of small-scale actors, and should thus be avoided whenever possible.

Unfortunately, liberals of my persuasion are now in the position of Lt. Moe Tilden (Robert DeNiro) talking to the local sheriff (Sylvester Stallone), who has finally come around to help out, but too late. "You had your chance, and you blew it." There have been radical lefties warning of the dangers of bloated government and runaway spending for years now. We have been detailing the corruption of federal politicians, the dangers of pay-for-play policy-making, the capture of the electoral system by "special interests" -- the whole shebang. From this perspective, the current Tea Party enthusiasm is a couple decades late to the game. As such, their groping around for a platform to address our current difficulties is ill thought-out and inconsistent. So while I admire their finally coming to grips with the big picture, their incomplete understanding of what's happening will probably end up doing more harm than good, and will certainly not do anything to change the entrenched status quo.

What do I mean? Let's look at the Tea Party platform more closely. These are "Non-Negotiable Core Beliefs," as listed on www.teaparty.org.

• Illegal Aliens Are illegal.   
• Pro-Domestic Employment Is Indispensable.   
• Stronger Military Is Essential.
• Special Interests Eliminated.  
• Gun Ownership Is Sacred.  
• Government Must Be Downsized.
• National Budget Must Be Balanced.  
• Deficit Spending Will End.  
• Bail-out And Stimulus Plans Are Illegal.  
• Reduce Personal Income Taxes A Must.  
• Reduce Business Income Taxes Is Mandatory. 
• Political Offices Available To Average Citizens. 
• Intrusive Government Stopped.  
• English Only Is Required. 
• Traditional Family Values Are Encouraged.
• Common Sense Constitutional Conservative Self-Governance is our mode of operation. 

We'll leave aside the illegal alien thing for now. I have never been too involved in the immigration debate, so I can't speak too well on that that. Suffice it to say that it seems to be a staple of many conservative platforms, and I'm fine with enforcing the laws as strongly as possible. 

So we're on to "Pro-Domestic" employment, which is a fairly unusual formulation. I assume that this means that we should prevent global outsourcing of jobs and enact policies that reinvigorate domestic production. This is of course a worthy goal, and would likely be accepted all across the political spectrum, in that limited wording. But how do we do that? Clearly, this would involve the repeal of free trade agreements and the enactment of protective tariffs, to allow higher labor-cost American businesses to compete. While not an expert on international trade, I have a feeling that we would get pummeled by China were we to try and enact such a protective agenda. But then again, maybe there are other ways of getting Pro-Domestic employment going, especially in the taxation realm, which we'll deal with below. I just wanted to point out that encouraging domestic production is not as simple as it sounds.

So lets move on to the next one: "A Stronger Military is Essential." The word 'stronger' is an interesting one. Certainly, no one would object to a 'strong' military. But a 'stronger' one? That implies that the one we have now is too weak, which is simply not the case. The base Pentagon budget in 2009 was $653 billion, but when we add in the supplemental costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, and other aspects of veteran care and loan servicing, the actual military budget is around $1 trillion -- PER YEAR. This represents 54% of the annual federal budget and, staggeringly, 47% of global military spending. 

{NOTE: The government and many commentators try to cook the numbers by lumping in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid with regular outlays. This is a misrepresentation, because these are trust fund programs, sourced separately from discrete taxation regimes. And while they may have their own funding problems (which are also generally exaggerated by pundits), they should not be included with the ongoing expenditures of non-trust fund budget items, like the military. This tactic of conflating trust fund and regular spending started during the Vietnam War, to make military spending seem smaller. Source: www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm}

And just a reminder: we still have over 900 official military installations around the globe. Our military spending is roughly as much as the rest of the world combined. We spend more that all of Europe, China, Central/South/East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Russia, and Latin America put together. It thus seems a little strange that the Tea Party crowd would want a stronger military, considering their other goals for small government. But we'll get to that too.

We can cover the economic points together, since they are all really one complex of problems. But first, let's dispense with the other one-offs. 

• Gun Ownership is sacred: I'm fine with that, as a general decentralist. Until the Constitution is changed (I assume that's what they mean by sacred, and not something Biblical), the right to bear arms is guaranteed. I have no problem with that. 
• English Only is Required: I'm fine with this too, even though it's really more of a curmudgeonly complaint than anything substantive. I get as frustrated as anyone else when I can't understand what my waiter is saying to me, but I generally don't want to then force him to take English classes. And I'm not exactly sure what forums they're talking about for application. Do they just mean schools, that there should be no bilingual or multi-lingual programs offered? Well, schools are locally controlled; so in the decentralizing spirit, communities should be able to offer curricula in whatever language they want, if it serves their needs. If they're talking about other institutions besides schools, I'm still not sure how the Tea Partiers justify top-down enforcement of English with their desire for limited government. This speaks to a general inconsistency in the whole platform, which we'll cover in our summary below. 
• Traditional Family Values Are Encouraged: Again, we're into the uncomfortable contradiction of the Tea Partiers wanting the government to keep their hands off our money but on our genitals. If the government shouldn't interfere in our places of businesses, why should they have their mitts on our bedrooms? Why is the federal bureaucracy so inept when it comes to financial matters, but suddenly sacrosanct when it comes to how we should organize our families? Again, maybe I'm misreading the application point of this plank. Maybe it's not the government itself that should encourage family values, but just a kind of free-floating American wholesomeness that will emerge when all of the other parts of the Tea Party agenda are put in place. Even if that's the case, this still just feels like a culture war throw-in, designed to fire up anti-gay sentiment and harness that bigotry for fund-raising or electoral mobilization. After all, last time I checked, there are plenty of men who like women, and vice versa, since we are actually biological entities. Family values don't really need government encouragement to thrive, but that's another issue for another day (you can see more on the whole gay rights issue here).