Personally I prefer a division between "loaf-women," (hlaefdis -> lady) "loaf-guards," (hlaefwaerd -> lord) and "loaf-eaters" (no surviving descendant word).

Personally I prefer a division between "loaf-women," (hlaefdis -> lady) "loaf-guards," (hlaefwaerd -> lord) and "loaf-eaters" (no surviving descendant word). But then I always liked Anglo-Saxon literature. This being said, the problem with the tea party is not that they don't recognize some of the legitimate problems in this country, such as the very incestuous relationship the government has with big business (a relationship which lead Adam Smith in his day to advocate invisible hand policies), but rather the fact that they advocate those same invisible hand policies which resulted in such great concentration of wealth the last time around. BTW, concentration of wealth is a major issue, impacting everything from the living conditions of the lower class to national security, and the fact that the Western Roman Empire had so much more disparity of wealth than the Eastern Empire may have a lot to do with the fall of the Western Empire so much earlier. Because someone is going to rush to argue with me here, let me lay out Prof. Wolfram's argument on that. Basically he says that concentrated wealth necessarily leads to a narrow tax base because you can only raise sufficient money by taxing the super rich in a society with the concentration that existed say in the Western Empire. This means lower tax revenues, which erodes military spending. He points out that the Eastern Empire spent more on the military than the Western Empire raised in taxes. So when the Tea Party says we need to broaden the tax base, I fully agree. My only difference is that I'd note the only way to effectively do this is to address the issue of concentration of wealth.