America’s latest populist movement, which reaches back to revolutionary history by calling itself the ‘Tea Party,’ helped shape the remarkable results of last November’s midterm election. Some dare to hope that candidates elected in that political uprising might help arrest America’s alarming decline. Others see the uprising as no more than a cover for the corporate power that lay behind many so-called insurgent campaigns of that extraordinary political season.
One thing about Tea Party ideology is clear: it is almost entirely a reaction to the Obama administration’s domestic policies. The decline of American greatness, however, is due at least as much to profoundly misguided foreign policies. Unless those policies are reevaluated and changed in some fundamental way, there will be little chance of reclaiming America’s immense promise.
[Content continues with analysis of Tea Party’s foreign policy stance, military spending, and global presence…]
The United States is a warlike nation and is likely to remain so even as its insistence on global hegemony weakens it economically and politically. This is the looming danger that threatens America’s future. If any of the Tea Party insurgents who won election last year turns into a true insurgent on those issues, many will cheer. America is waiting for brave voices to challenge the militarist consensus.