Book Review: Give Us Liberty by Dick Armey & Matt Kibbe

After reading Dick Morris' Catastrophe, I was wary of another mainstream politician's take on the Tea Party and Obama. (Morris, despite his popularity on the Right, is a progressive. In Catastrophe he bashes "ideology", "insatiable greed", the rich, business, deregulation, equates union tactics with employers' and praises FDR among others.)

Armey's Give us Liberty surprised me. He makes a principled, consistent case for limited (secular) government. His impressions of the origins of the Tea Party and its meaning make sense. And his Austrian economics understanding of the housing and financial crises is right on.

He starts out by describing the grass roots opposition to the Bush-Obama bailouts and the Santelli rant, then describes the original Tea Party and some of its parallels/lessons. He then enumerates what he believes are the Tea Party principles (section headings):

1. The Constitution is the Blueprint of Good Government
2. In a Free Society, Actions Should Have Consequences
3. The Federal Government is Addicted to Spending
4. Our Bloated Bureaucracy is Too Big to Succeed

He spells out each of these in the book. He then goes on to describe the backlash against the Tea Party by the mainstream media, liberals and some conservatives and closes with descriptions of a few of the Tea Party's principle successes.

My two favorite aspects of the book are first that he takes the big government conservatives (e.g. G.W. Bush) and the neoconservatives (David Brooks and David Frum) to task. He points out for example the conservative organizations (Americans For Prosperity, The Heritage Foundation) and politicians (McCain, Bush) that supported the bailouts. And he quotes the neoconservative opposition to the Tea Party. E.g. David Brooks:

There is an argument floating around Republican circles that in order to win again, the GOP has to reconnect with the truths of its Goldwater-Reagan glory days. It has to once again be the minimal-government party, the maximal-freedom party, the party of rugged individualism and states' rights. This is folly.

This opposition to the Tea Party within conservatism deserves more attention, because it is the key to why Republicans have been supporting government growth since Hoover.

The second aspect I greatly appreciate is the lack of religiosity. The "Creator" is mentioned once in a paraphrase of the Declaration of Independence and never again. Armey does not address the role of religion in government or the Tea Party, but by leaving it out he effectively sanctions a secular movement, a separation of religion and politics. Though there is more religiosity in the Tea Party and Tea Party discussions than this stance lets on, I think that Armey's leaving it out is truer to the grass-roots revolt against Bush's 'compassionate conservatism' and big government policies.

Give Us Liberty is filled with good stories, reminiscences and has an excellent narrative covering most of the Tea Party's origins, opposition and initial successes. It perhaps exaggerates the role of FreedomWorks, but it is from within FreedomWorks that Armey was connected to the movement. I only raised my eyebrows once, when he called Schumpeter an Austrian economist. Otherwise I enjoyed the entire read and recommend it for anyone interested in the Tea Party, politics or history.