I've been confused by the rallying cry of "Freedom!" that we hear at Tea Party events. I wondered: In what way has Obama taken away their freedom? But now I think I get it. I listened to Rand Paul and Pat Toomey when they were taking their victory laps on TV. Freedom, for these cats, means the freedom for business people to exploit natural resources, pollute the environment, endanger the public, and exploit their employees without government interference. They want the crooks on Wall Street to be free to cook up their next big scheme unrestrained by government regulations. And, of course, they don't want to pay taxes that support the departments of education, energy, labor etc.

They're calling for a return to 19th Century capitalism and 19th Century government. They want to erase a century of corporate, social and environmental progress.

This is why Glenn Beck is hung up on the word "progressives." The Progressive Movement emerged in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in response to the excesses of the Guilded Age--the era of unrestrained, rapacious capitalism. Among the Progressives were Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie--that bunch of radicals. Beck wants to turn back the clock to the good old days before the Progressives mucked things up with their campaigns to improve public education, protect the markets from manipulation, and restrain the trusts.

Ask me, I don't think endless strip mines and strip malls are what the United States will need to complete globally in the 21st Century. It will need people who are healthy, well-educated, well-treated by their employers, and empowered to invent a new world. Government should play an important role in helping improve the country's ability to compete. But the Tea Partiers don't want a new world. They want the "freedom" that people like them enjoyed in the old one.