Is the rising Libertarianism of the US Tea Party Movement's rage going to be self defeating?

Americans are becoming increasingly angry at and distrustful of the political class. There is no question that the USA is sick, perhaps terminally ill. From the early 1800s to the later 1990s, generation after generation of Americans were optimistic about the future. They believed their children would inherit a better country than they grew up in—that opportunities were boundless and growing, and that the problems we faced would be solved. The last decade has seen an end to that. Today for the first time, surveys are finding more Americans pessimistic than optimistic about the world their children will inherit. This angst has stirred the populist outrage we see in angry fist shaking and ugly signs at Tea Party rallies.

We face public contempt for our leadership and Tea Baggers seem convinced that in the face of 21st century complexity, the ship of state can only avoid the rocks by throwing its captain and crew overboard and letting it pilot itself. Ronald Reagan slashed taxes for the rich from 70% to 28% and debt has been piling up like a mountain ever since, but the Tea Partiers are sure another massive tax cut for the rich will benefit them and cure the debt. The fact is that the top 10% have benefited a little in the past 30 years and the top 1% have gotten vastly more wealthy. The bottom 90% have lost ground, but Tea Partiers are convinced everything wrong with society is due to a transfer of wealth to welfare queens who keep cranking out more brown-skinned babies so they can lounge in government supplied riches instead of working.

Since Reagan said, “Government isn’t the solution to the problem, Government IS the problem.” we have cut 95% of the food inspecting staff from the FDA and food borne illness is back with a vengeance, THe nation’s food safety is now similar to what it was before 1906 when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, his landmark exposé of the horrors and filth of the meat packing industry. We gutted financial regulations put in place when FDR took office in 1933 and began to undo the Great Depression that decades of free-market corporate rapaciousness brought about under Republican rule in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The results included the Savings and loan meltdown, the Hedge Fund meltdown and now the complete financial industry meltdown that sucked 17 trillion dollars out of the economy. It cost us trillions to keep that fiasco from bringing about a second Great Depression. And Tea Partiers want to get rid of any remaining regulations as the solution to that.

Deregulation, smaller government, free market economics and tax reduction are the rallying cries of the populist Tea Party movement. But are the populist proposing a fix for the problems, or are they more like an alcoholic, dying of liver failure and clamoring for more of the medicine that got him so sick in the first place?

There is an interesting Op Ed in today’s New York Times looking at how the working-class town of Liverpool England went through a similar period of malaise and has emerged better for it. But will angry, populist Americans grab the pitchforks and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, or will they stop and think about what really worked in the past?