Think ‘Tea Party’ will change D.C.? Do you remember the ‘New Right’

By David McElroy · March 5, 2014

You might remember a few of the names associated with the “New Right,” even if you don’t know much about them. Jerry Falwell. Ralph Reed. Richard Viguerie. Phyllis Schlafly. Pat Robertson.

These were names who were a big deal in the late ’70s and early ’80s as a new political movement rose up to challenge the Establishment in Washington and in the Republican Party across the country. They were socially conservative Christians and they were determined to change politics forever.

I still have a copy of Richard Viguerie’s 1981 book, “The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead.” (He was a brilliant pioneer of conservative direct mail fundraising.) I was a conservative Republican at the time and I was also a theologically conservative Christian, so it seemed natural to me that the two would come together in a powerful way and change politics.

I guess you could say that I was young and idealistic enough to be a True Believer.

I was only on the periphery of this movement, but I remember others who were convinced we were going to change the country in a positive way. We were passionately organizing and we were driven from the grass roots. We were disgusted with the cynical “politics as usual” that we got from government and even from our own Republican Party. There were so many of us involved that we were sure we were going to end the ability of the Establishment to continue running things as its members always had.

So what happened?

Candidates of the Republican Party learned to speak the language of the Religious Right. Anyone who wanted the GOP nomination for president had to go through the gatekeepers of the New Right. Those who wanted to be elected to Congress or to local offices in conservative states had to say the right things and be approved by the standards of this bloc.

But as these candidates got elected and joined government, a funny thing happened. Nothing really changed.

I changed over the years. By the late ’80s, I had come to realize why it was wrong for me to try to force my personal views on others through the political process. I’ve described my personal change before.

Today, there’s a new group of conservative political revolutionaries who are trying to change the Establishment. They’re a loosely affiliated bunch of groups and individuals who call themselves the Tea Party. Some of them have minarchist libertarian roots. Some of them might have been comfortable with the New Right in the ’80s. Some of them don’t have much in the way of philosophical roots, but just want lower taxes and a smaller government. A few of them are the racist bigots who some people like to pretend they all are, but there are much fewer of them than progressives and some in the media like to believe.

The Tea Party folks are certain they’re going to change the world. Anyone who wants the GOP nomination for president has to go through the gatekeepers of the Tea Party. Those who want to be elected to Congress or to local offices in conservative states have to say the right things and be approved by the standards of Tea Party supporters.

I have to laugh. Haven’t we seen this movie before?

I saw a post on Facebook Tuesday night talking about how “the Establishment” is afraid of the Tea Party, because the Tea Party is going to stop them from continuing business as usual. The True Believers are convinced that the Tea Party is going to change everything.

I generally sympathize with the goals of the Tea Party groups. I’d like to shrink government. I’d like to start with reducing taxes and stopping new ones. The problem is that they’re trying to reform something that’s fundamentally flawed and immoral. To get rid of the evil, you have to strike at the root — which is coercive government. These folks want to make friends with coercive government. They think they can tame it and make it serve their purposes.

They’re essentially trying the same strategy that failed so badly for the New Right and for every group that has wanted to tame the beast.

The Tea Party people consider themselves pragmatists. They see that government exists and it seems to make sense that “someone has to be in charge,” so they’re trying to reform things. They just want the results they want, without paying attention to the core moral principles that underlie coercive government.

Consequentialists of every stripe are more similar than they realize. Consequentialists who call themselves progressives have a vision of what society should look like, so they want to use immoral coercive force to create that — despite the people who are hurt or enslaved by the process. Consequentialists who call themselves conservative have a different vision of what society should look like, but they’re also willing to use immoral coercive force to create what they want. Both groups are willing to sacrifice principles and ignore individual freedom — in the name of achieving the end results they want.

You can seek to force the consequences you want by dictating to people how they must live or you can acknowledge the principle that people are free and are morally responsible for their own decisions. You can focus on principles or you can focus on forcing consequences. You can’t have it both ways.

The Tea Party’s True Believers are absolutely convinced that they’re somehow different. They believe that they’re going to change government and politics. They believe that they’re going to take power away from the Establishment that controls the machinery of the coercive state. They’re absolutely sure that they can use politics to get what they want.

The New Right conservatives thought the same things. Their movement looked impressive, but it was absorbed into the Republican Party and became part of the Establishment.

Do you honestly think things are going to be different for the Tea Party?

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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