Exactly when did the Tea Party movement start - and who started it?

[flintauqua]

Many of the ideas propounded in the 1980 campaign presaged the Tea Party movement. Ed Clark told The Nation that libertarians were getting ready to stage "a very big tea party," because people were "sick to death" of taxes. The Libertarian Party platform called for the abolition of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as of federal regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy. The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes; it proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide. Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights. William F. Buckley, Jr., a more traditional conservative, called the movement "Anarcho-Totalitarianism."



Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1K7qB9ZJs

[redcliffsw]

Buckley, a traditional conservative?  The Koch's are very much more like Lincolnites too.
They don't think like Ron Paul and I'd have say they're more in your line of thinking.

[thatsMRSc2u]

Read this earlier this morning...... good post.

[flintauqua]

The Koch's are very much more like Lincolnites too.
They don't think like Ron Paul and I'd have say they're more in your line of thinking.

Did you even bother to read more than the excerpted paragraph and the headline?

"The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers' corporate interests."

"The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to "educate," fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1KAyNCcnC"

[flintauqua]

Some more excerpts for those who don't want to or aren't allowed to read anything that might shed light on the motives of those behind the Tea Party movement:

"In 1958, Fred Koch became one of the original members of the John Birch Society, the arch-conservative group known, in part, for a highly skeptical view of governance and for spreading fears of a Communist takeover. Members considered President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be a Communist agent. In a self-published broadside, Koch claimed that "the Communists have infiltrated both the Democrat and Republican Parties." He wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini's suppression of Communists in Italy . . .

Members of the John Birch Society developed an interest in a school of Austrian economists who promoted free-market ideals. Charles and David Koch were particularly influenced by the work of Friedrich von Hayek, the author of "The Road to Serfdom" (1944), which argued that centralized government planning led, inexorably, to totalitarianism. Hayek's belief in unfettered capitalism has proved inspirational to many conservatives, and to anti-Soviet dissidents; lately, Tea Party supporters have championed his work . . .

Charles and David also became devotees of a more radical thinker, Robert LeFevre, who favored the abolition of the state but didn't like the label "anarchist"; he called himself an "autarchist." LeFevre liked to say that "government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." In 1956, he opened an institution called the Freedom School, in Colorado Springs. Brian Doherty, of Reason, told me that "LeFevre was an anarchist figure who won Charles's heart," and that the school was "a tiny world of people who thought the New Deal was a horrible mistake." According to diZerega, Charles supported the school financially, and even gave him money to take classes there.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1KAzcWuVB

[Warph]

Ron Paul... founded the modern Tea Party, Dec. 16th, 2007

Paul's Disciples: Dec. 16th, 2007