What Tea Partiers and Calvinists Have in Common

I’ve heard Tea Partiers called anarchists because of their antagonism to government, but I disagree. Tea Partiers simply don’t believe that a strong federal government is the best way to organize society. They believe the free market should be left alone to distribute the necessities of life to those who deserve them. And to those who don’t deserve them? Tough luck.
    
The Tea Party’s faith in the market -- and it is a faith -- is deeper than a simple belief that it should be the vehicle for distributing economic benefits. Tea Partiers believe the marketplace is a moral arbiter that punishes the weak and the indolent, while rewarding the strong and the industrious. In the libertarian mind of the Tea Party, a person’s financial worth is equal to his worth as a human being. It’s a secular form of the Calvinist belief that material wealth are proof of membership in God’s elect.