• Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, New York: Harper Collins, 2010, 266 pages, $19.99
Like millions of average Americans, I have attended a Tea Party. Have you ever wondered how, in the 21st century, so many Americans have associated with groups named after the original Boston Tea Party of 1773? Have you wondered where this movement originated? Who leads it? What are the values and concerns of the Tea Party attendees? When did the name “Tea Party” become synonymous with these protesters?
Dick Armey, chairman of FreedomWorks’ board of directors, and FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe answer these questions in Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto.
The Tea Party idea originated with a Feb. 19, 2009 on-air rant by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli. Infuriated by media coverage suggesting that the housing bailout would force people who could pay their mortgages to subsidize their neighbors who couldn’t, Santelli said, “it is time for another Tea Party and I’m organizing it.” The authors provide unique parallels between today’s Tea Party members and those original Tea Party protesters.
From a small town in North Dakota, Armey eventually became the chairman of the economics department at North Texas State University, a U.S. congressman, and finally House majority leader. He’s an American success story.
Armey’s values also fuel the Tea Party movement: low taxes, less government, and anger at government spending. These values drove Armey to run for Congress in 1984 and led him to leave Congress in 2003. He expressed his disgust with the Republican leadership in a note he wrote during a meeting in 2002: “Every week we come to town and do things we ought not do in order to keep the majority so we can do the things we ought to do but never get around to doing.”
But where did the Tea Party movement start and who is its leader? The book introduces average citizens who were fed up with some aspect of government and took to the streets. Their stories are inspiring. From Mary Rakovick, a Florida resident who was disillusioned with the ballooning deficits under President Bush and felt the bank bailout was wrong, to Keli Carendar in Seattle, Wash., who organized a “Porkulus Protest” in downtown Seattle, the book shows how small protests, with help from FreedomWorks advisors, spread across the country and led to more than 1 million people flocking to a rally in Washington, D.C., Sept. 12, 2009.
Critics also want to designate a leader, so they can follow Saul Alinsky’s admonition — “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” It’s impossible because you cannot demonize more a million average Americans.
Ironically, the authors strongly urge everyone to read Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals and understand how the left is working to control the political scene.
Armey and Kibbe — outspoken critics of Bush’s bailout of Wall Street — criticize conservative think tanks and politicians that supported it. Although many backers of the bailout now believe they were mistaken, Armey is baffled and annoyed that they did not realize the consequences of their actions at the time.
The book promotes how FreedomWorks and its local training workshops are expanding grass-roots activism, but none of this would be happening if large numbers of Americans were not disgusted with government.
“The Contract with America was a top-down movement, which started in Washington, but the Tea Party movement is a bottom-up movement,” Armey says. The book presents a 10-point manifesto called the “Contract From America,” laying out the values Americans expect elected officials to hold.
Armey sees the movement as a political watchdog rather than a third political party. Unlike political party activists, who “take up their yard signs and go home after the election,” he says, Tea Partiers will continue to monitor elected officials.
Finally, the appendix — a “FreedomWorks Grassroots Activism Toolkit,” — is an excellent resource for individuals who want to stage a protest or just be involved in changing the climate of Washington.