OPINION

Tea Party Movement Has Given Public a Microphone

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The hostility and jaded news coverage that the Tea Party movement evokes suggests that it must be onto something really big — beyond anti-incumbent attitudes or current-issue debates of Democrats or Republicans.

The Tea Party is animated by powerful enduring ideas expressed in the nation's founding through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: freedom, the natural law of inalienable rights and the sovereignty of the people that requires limited government.

Remarkably, the Tea Party movement has gained national prominence with unpaid volunteers in just a year and a half. Its people come from every walk of life from all over the country.