The Tea Party is a sign that all is well in America. Sort of.

The recent rise of Glenn Beck's renegade Tea Party (Taxed Enough Already) is a sign of a healthy and evolving government. Despite Tea Party rhetoric, and despite counterarguments from both parties, the apocalypse is not on the horizon, nor is the downfall of America. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's better than ever.

The Tea Party largely rose to prominence at the outset of what is now being called the "Great Recession", primarily when both President's Bush and Obama signed separate bailout bills loaning over a trillion dollars to help curtail the plummeting economy and unfreeze the credit markets. The decentralized movement's one common theme is that the deficit is growing too large, and that the government is growing too big. It's right there in the title: Tea Party followers are just plain Taxed Enough.

While it is easy to be distracted by outspoken affiliates of the Tea Party--the ill-spoken Sarah Palin or the End-is-Near diatribes of Glenn Beck--the party, at it's base, does have a point. America has racked up the largest deficit since World War II. The Bush tax cuts worth over 1.3 trillion dollars are about to lapse.

The Tea party's rise is a natural reaction to such large spending and such high taxes. It's rising prominence in the political field is a healthy and fascinating one, one that can largely be tied to policy as well as the internet: this is the first instance in which conservatives have been able to effectively harness the power of social media because it's the first time they have been out of office. Barack Obama used these tools in 2008, and now conservatives appear to be joining in as well.

Similarly, the downfall of the republican party--or more accurately it's transformation--can be traced in history. In the 1850s the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act frustrated so many Americans that it was the death nell of the Whig Party, which reemerged as the modern Republican party. Now, perhaps, the G-O-P will trade in for T-E-A.

While party evolution is necessary and healthy for American politics--Thomas Jefferson wished America to be in a state of "constant revolution"--what is disturbing is the partisan knee-jerk reaction in its tone. Jefferson may have wished for a constant revolution, but it is necessary for that revolution to occur in the halls of Congress than on the battlefields of Gettysburg or on the walls of Fort Sumter.

If the Tea Party is sincere in its desire to both reduce the deficit and cut taxes, it must decide which is the higher priority. We are in two costly wars and in the middle of what truly is a Great Recession. Spending on a large scale will not stop until any of those are resolved. To prevent the deficit from growing, taxes will have to rise to cover those costs. The same is true with Social Security (which Bush tried to reform) and health care (which Obama tried to reform). Together, spending on both these programs costs the American taxpayer over half of our entire budget each year, about 1.5 trillion dollars. If the Tea Party is sincere in its desire to lower the deficit and cut taxes, these two programs should be looked at with a discerning eye, and offer a solution to repairing both of their bloated budgets.

These problems are national problems that transcend party lines, and, as such, should transcend party politics. If the Tea Party wants to usurp the republican party as a counterbalance to the nation's liberals, then it should consider honing its rhetoric to offer smart solutions to the problems it has so clearly pointed out. Shouting matches at townhall meetings and rally's outside the Capitol show dissatisfaction at the status quo, but do not qualify as rational debates. Obama has constantly called on the republican party to offer plans on reform, this would be a great opportunity for the Tea Party to provide a logical counteroffer to his proposals and should not be missed.

When George Washington warned against the two-party system, it was not their opposing views that he warned against, but the tone use to express their mutual opposition: "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism."

The Tea Party's greatest chance for success is not poisonous rhetoric, but a measured and balanced tone advocating policies--be they liberal or conservative--that will achieve the tax and deficit reduction the Tea Party seeks. If the Tea Party can offer such a plan, it's ranks will grow, and with it, so will the health of the nation.