Time magazine: Getting along in Southwest Michigan

Time magazine's Joe Klein is making his way across the United States during this national election year. That trip recently brought him to Kalamazoo where he met with the Tea Party.

Excerpt:
The Tea Party folks were well educated, most of them former executives in engineering and technical fields. They wanted to talk about the success they'd had in organizing–from local rallies attended by thousands, to finding successful candidates for local town and county boards, to Republican Party precinct captains. I wanted to move the conversation to policy and asked, "What are you most upset about?" "I'd like to reframe the question," said Bill Beck, a former Pfizer executive. "Being upset isn't our motivating factor. Our goal is to reorient the country toward a restoration [of the values enshrined in our founding documents]." Beck talked about the "dissolution of individual responsibility." He wanted people to "take control of their own lives…When you give people things, you're in control of what they get."

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Source: Time magazine
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