The Tea Party people keep talking about getting their country back. They don’t make much sense to me so I won’t pretend I understand the nuances of their complaints, if there are any. But I do understand that they somehow think Obama is out to take their freedoms away. They are angry and they think that the president represents a scary sort of big government that is going to take their guns, their hard earned money, and their constitutional rights.

From what I can get, they have a very negative view of freedom—freedom from as opposed to freedom to. They seem to believe that more government equals less freedom. The overwhelming impression I get is that they don’t want government to tell them what to do. The idea seems to be that the government is bad. It’s bad when it does stuff—like collect taxes, keep the economy from collapsing or regulate business. And it’s bad when it fails to do stuff—like protect the Gulf Shore from oil.

There doesn’t seem to be any consideration given to the positive freedoms that government can provide, such as programs to help lift people from poverty so they have the freedom to pursue their dreams. The role of government as I see it is to give citizens the freedom to pursue happiness. How is one free if there are no job opportunities and no affordable healthcare? How is one free if a big company can pollute one’s neighborhood with impunity?

Now I’m not saying that government can’t impinge on individual freedoms. But by focusing entirely on the notion that freedom means freedom from government the Tea Party people are only looking at negative freedom. Their whole movement is negative. It throws off nothing but the negative emotions of fear, hate and anger.

Fear and hate are not ever going to move the country in a positive direction, but anger might. For I too am angry at what has happened to this country. But this anger must be directed at getting government to do more, not less. Positive action is needed to put the brakes on our corporatocracy. But it doesn’t look like that’s in the cards. Most progressives aren’t angry enough and the Tea Party people are frightened of the wrong things and angry at the wrong people.

Under it all however, we all want the same thing—freedom to live a life of our own choosing, without fear.