Beware of phony 'economic conservatives'

There is a struggle under way for the hearts and minds of the tea-party movement, conservatism and the Republican Party.

So-called "economic conservatives" are doing everything in their power to limit the scope of the movement to take back America to fiscal issues in the narrowest definition of that term.

For instance, you will find that illegal immigration is not considered an economic issue by these phonies. Check the records of these so-called "economic conservatives" and you will usually find they support amnesty and/or open borders policies – both of which spell further cataclysmic economic, legal and cultural breakdown for America.

In addition, the history of the last 50 years of the modern conservative movement shows with crystal clarity that these so-called "economic conservatives" are the first to abandon real economic conservatism every time they have the opportunity.

It would be a colossal mistake of epic proportions to fall prey to this temptation to build what these folks call "a big tent."

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Why?

Isn't building a big coalition the way to political victory?

No, as I explain in my book, "The Tea Party Manifesto." The problems plaguing America go well beyond economics. In fact, even most of the economic problems we face are a direct or indirect result of a fundamental breakdown in our ability to discern right from wrong, to adhere to tried-and-true standards of morality, to follow the path set out for us by our founders, to recognize that we are "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

You simply can't have a self-governing society without an operational consensus on right and wrong. All issues are moral – whether its economics, border control, health care, marriage or abortion.

What am I suggesting? Am I proposing that all tea partiers and conservatives and Republicans who waiver on key moral issues be shunned?

No, just the opposite. In fact, it is the so-called "economic conservatives" who are actively engaged in shunning, in constraining debate, in bullying those with convictions they don't share from expressing those concerns in tea-party gatherings, within the conservative movement and within the Republican Party.

They are attempting to set the new agenda for reclaiming the America we once knew using a vision that is fundamentally flawed and wimpy compared to the vision of our founders, who understood we do not live in a world defined exclusively by materialism.

Human beings are both physical and spiritual. Not to recognize that fact, as our founders did, will be to ensure we never achieve the kind of true liberty God would have for us.

There has never been a successful liberty movement in the history of the world built on materialism or an exclusively economic agenda. It's like building the foundation of a house on sand.

Our founders knew better. They provided the foundation. It's still solid today. We don't have to build a new one. We can find it in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Explicitly they acknowledge a moral order. They tell us from where our rights and liberties descend. In no way do they suggest a morally healthy and prosperous society can be built merely on low tax rates and limited government. Unless God smiles upon us, we have nothing.

That's why it's simply foolish to think that we can confront successfully and victoriously all of the crises we face as a nation today with a purely economic agenda.

We should not be trying to build a flimsy "big tent."

Instead we should be laying the permanent foundation for a shining city on a hill.