Our generation will be taxed heavily because of the current deficits resulting from massive spending.

The conservative, anti-tax Tea Party movement, which is quickly becoming the fastest growing grassroots movement in the country, raised some excellent points about spending during its most recent national convention.

I admire the Tea Partiers for their patriotic spirit, as the government’s spending and overwhelming deficits will hurt college students the most. We will be the ones paying for it. The Constitution mandates a strictly limited government intended to protect individual rights instead of “spreading the wealth.”

But the movement’s message needs to be more consistent if it wants to be taken seriously by voters besides card-carrying Republicans.

The Bush Administration spent billions on controversial programs such as No Child Left Behind and implicitly raised taxes through printing money and increasing inflation. Despite this, there was no Tea Party movement when Bush was president.

Worst of all, Bush’s War on Terror saddled our generation with deficits for decades to come. The cost – measured in corpses and cash – of this big government venture is unimaginable.

If the Tea Partiers consistently upheld their pinciple of individualism, they would oppose all wasteful government programs, past and present, instead of just Obama’s.

The Tea Partiers’ past support for big government can’t be undone. But with Lent on the horizon, now would be a glorious moment for their redemption.

Admitting you were wrong is never fun. But the good news for the Tea Partiers is that consistently upholding their hearfelt principles will solve their problems.

Whether Republican or Democrat, everyone must condemn unconstitutional government.

This means they must no longer regard the bloated military budget as sacred, and they should advocate small government overseas.

The Constitution, which states that all wars must be formally declared – as well as the non-interventionist foreign policy advocated by the Founding Fathers – must be revived and respected.

In addition to offering an alternative to President Obama’s expansion of war and the military, a pro-peace position would make the Tea Partiers’ defense of individual rights more credible.

Tea Partiers argue that the redistribution of wealth is an immoral violation of individual rights. Though I agree, it’s bizarre to defend a person’s “inalienable” right to their money while saying the collateral damage of U.S. Drones is justified.

In the words of one libertarian columnist, “There is a line of moral demarcation between making someone pay to build a public washroom and blasting an innocent person’s head off.”

The Tea Party movement has great energy and offers necessary dissent from President Obama’s big government.

But unless it consistently upholds individualism and Constitutionalism as well as a pro-peace, pro-market platform, the Tea Party movement’s political