Beyond Tea Parties

IT’S great to see the growth of the Tea Party movement, and especially to see that women are involved. The recent Orlando Tea Party with 4,000 attendees, was organized by two Orlando moms, Lisa Feroli and her friend Shelly Ferguson.

But the speeches were about the usual stuff, according to Orlando Sentinel reporter Helen Eckinger.

Several speakers addressed the crowd, estimated by Orlando police and event organizers at 4,200, on a variety of topics, including gun rights, freedom of speech, the dangers of communism and, most prevalently, the economy, especially the Obama administration’s bailout plan.

OK, that’s fine. But it seems to me that these are all guy issues, and they are issues that do not really resonate with the average moderate woman.

In my view we cannot really reverse the political direction of the nation until we change the conversation on women’s issues. I mean, of course, not the liberal feminist agenda, but the real issues that concern women: their children, their health, their safety.

In my view we have to take a completely new look at all this. Over the past century women have been convinced that a strong state is the answer to their concerns: strong state health care, strong state education, strong state intervention for women in poverty.

But I argue that we are sticking our heads in the sand if we think that the strong state does anything for women. Women would be much happier and much more secure if we revived the informal safety net of family and community to replace the iron cage of government programs that currently reign supreme. Here is a conservative manifesto to challenge the liberal strong-state status quo.

Women and Sex: The sexual revolution has been a very mixed blessing for women. The control of fertility is a wonderful liberation, but the unintended consequence is that unattached women are under constant pressure to have sex with partners who have not—yet—committed to them. The availability of abortion has the same effect. Uncommitted sex partners feel free to have sex and then suggest an abortion. For most women this is a nightmare. Women must be freed from the tyranny of sexual license; they must be free to say No.
Children and Education: Compulsory government education is a monster. It incarcerates children in government custodial facilities for 12 years, and it doesn’t seem to achieve much in the way of education. If you look back at the childhoods of famous people in the nineteenth century (those are the only people for whom we have information) you find that they had a perfunctory school education. What they did was: they worked, starting in their early teens. Children must be freed from the tyranny of compulsory education and the tyranny of child-labor laws.
Health care: Women instinctively want all the health care available in the world and then some. But it is clear that government is not the way to do this. Let us stipulate that people have a right to basic health care, and we mean by that the right to a sanitary environment of clean water, clean air, and clean food, access to vaccination, neo-natal care, and emergency trauma care. But if you want more, then you ought to work for it.
Broken Families: The cruelest feature of the welfare state is the destruction of the low-income family. This is the consequence of government interference into the lives of low-income people through welfare, easy divorce, stranger adoption, and the various government child protective services. There is certainly an argument to be made for government emergency assistance during natural or economic disaster. But in normal times people must look for protection from their families and their community, not from the agencies of force and compulsion.

Women instinctively expect support from the community as they go about their lives of caring for people. The question is: what is the best way to provide support to women? Is it through families and associations, or is it through government? In the last century, as women came into the public square of modern society, politicians offered the bounty of government programs to women and women were grateful for the support.

But was that the right thing for women to do? Do politicians have the interest of women at heart, or are they just using women as a means of ascent to political power? That is the question for us all this spring as we organize our Tea Parties and as we think seriously about what the welfare state has done to women, to children, to families, to freedom, to community, and above all, to the poor.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.