Alexis de Toqueville, in his seminal “Democracy in America,” worried that democracy might lead to a tyranny of the majority—a tyranny of “all over all,” which might result when the people seek to use government to protect them in their mediocrity by restricting the freedom of any who might challenge or endanger them. This could lead to a kind of sterile suffocation of talents or ambitions, he feared, and the utter surrender of freedom in exchange for equality. “The nations of our day cannot prevent conditions of equality from spreading in their midst,” wrote de Toqueville, “But it depends upon themselves whether equality is to lead to freedom or servitude, knowledge or barbarism, prosperity or wretchedness.”

One senses de Toqueville would sympathize with the tea parties.

2. Medicare/Medicaid: I cannot find a clear charter in the U.S. Constitution authorizing the federal government to provide health insurance. Medicare and Medicaid should be phased out and eliminated. Yep, that’d probably mean costlier and rougher times for me as I age. In my case, I’d prefer that to stealing from everyone else to get treatment for me.

3. Defense: Defense is easy when we stop assuming America has to control and tailor world events via military might. The federal government is broke (11 trillion in debit, in fact). Our time as a “superpower” is over. As a broke consumer-heavy debtor nation, we should scale our military down to a fraction of its current size and orient it towards actual defense, rather than world-building. Eliminate nearly all of our 700+ overseas bases and retool for a mobile, intelligence-driven, twenty-first century reality. America should focus on trade and diplomacy, and save our expensive muscle for conflicts we cannot avoid.

4. Veterans’ Benefits: I’d honor all existing veterans’ benefits. Drastically reducing the mission and size of our military would ameliorate this expense going forward.

5. Interest on the Debt: This will be crippling. It’ll be more crippling if we continue to add trillions to it now.

As well as attacking that 80% of the spending budget, I’m fully in favor of unchaining the productive energy of 300 million Americans. While cutting expenses, government should be eliminating every conceivable barrier to increasing the wealth of the nation, not stifling it further. Wealth comes from people trading goods and services in a free market. Wealth comes from production, not simply demand. Money and credit are not the same as wealth, and cannot be substituted for it.

But to answer the gist of the question: You’re right.

The cuts are not likely to garner support. A large majority of the population is too addicted to “free stuff” from the federal government to be weaned of the addiction without arguably fatal withdrawals.

Eliminating barriers is now seen as the terrifying freedom of deregulation (even though no such deregulation was in play for the current crisis and central regulation will never be as effective or as ethical as simply allowing bad practices to fail).

Those who find out about the federal budget commitments (the 80%, etc) have choices to make. They see the iceberg in the path of our ship of state. They can try to muster other citizens’ will to grasp the helm and begin to steer clear of the iceberg. They can dismiss the futile efforts of those that are trying to steer clear and throw their hands up in surrender or jeer at them. They can build a large new swimming pool on deck, turn off the hot engines because some people get burned on them, and steer directly into the iceberg. Or they can start getting in good water-treading shape.

I support and join those who pick the first route (Tea Party protestors), but think it’s probably too late to turn a ship this big moving this fast. As a backup, I’m working on my water-treading.

In all honesty, here’s what I think:

We’re fucked.

I think we’re more likely to hit a crash or devolve into a euro-style democratic socialist state than actually recover.

But I at least hope to encourage those who are fighting on the right side (even if they’ve only recently arrived).

Do you honestly think that a sizeable number of the people that turned out yesterday are willing to endure the pain that will come from the dismantling of the middle-class welfare state ?

All I see when people start talking about details (and I don’t mean you or most libertarians for that matter) is discussion about cutting “pork” and protests against “earmarks.” All of that is well and good, but it does absolutely nothing to actually curb the size, scope, and power of the state.

Some might even say that all this talk about pork and earmarks is a diversion:

http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2009/03/11/is-ron-paul-right-about-earmarks/

Dismantling the welfare state is not going to be easy, and I’ve yet to see any signs that the people have the stomach for it.

I have looked but have not found a copy of that declaration online.

I can’t speak for other events, but I believe that some tangible results from the Birmingham event will be seen at the state and local level over the next two years. There was probably enough activism to impact the gubernatorial race and perhaps one or two congressional seats. The impact will be seen in state legislative races, as well.

At least one new organization was springboarded to prominence and even the Campaign for Liberty folks will benefit a lot from it.

I also think our state legislators will think twice about any tax increase (and possibly even cut state spending) for the next few years.

The impact at the federal level will take longer than at the local level — but even getting rid of one or two big-government congressmen will make an eventual difference.