I received this question in my email and had to share it and my answer.

I'm glad you asked. It is a bizarre time we live in that a simple movement like the Tea Party movement is so vehemently maligned by organizations that once just reported the news.  It seems that reporters of the news is such a small club these days. Almost as small a club as politicians that believe the authors of our constitution had it right when the put together all of the world's best knowledge and philosophy to produce the single greatest accomplishment of man kind. Still today it represents the best understanding of our human nature and how we are to treat our fellow man.  This is one of our greatest callings.

Our liberty is a vital part of our being.  It is in liberty that our creativity thrives.  It is that liberty with the protection or our basic rights that allows us as individuals to solve insurmountable problems and achieve impossible success and is the reason this has been the greatest country the world has ever known.
I've said that it's a small club of politicians who believe this. You ask what motivates people to join the Tea Party movement and I say it is that it not a small club of Americans who believe.  Whether it is that some are old enough to remember when history lessons were not distorted by progressive teachers, or it's just that we instinctively know our own nature, it's hard to say.  I suspect mostly the later but either way that sense of what is right for ourselves and for our government has been amplified in contrast to what is happening now.

What concerns me may well be what concerns most of us.  It is not only every little new expense and expansion of government makes more difficult our restoration of a constitutional republic as our founders had envisioned, but the entire direction of government today is an affront to our very nature.  Our government has been corrupted and it in turn corrupts our fellow man.

How is the Tea Party movement to be effective? In short, as a movement, a new trend, a real change in how every citizen looks at his or her own responsibilities.  The direction of this change is restorative.  We have begun and must continue to educate ourselves on what is going on in government on all levels.  We must remember that the power originates from each of us as individuals and if it is used by our public servants we are responsible for the outcome, therefore we must be in control.

Our impact on the federal level has been small in comparison to the drastic acquisition of power taking place there, but our impact has been felt.  So much so that the backlash on the citizens has been unprecedented in US history.  But we have made great strides on the local and state level especially here in Virginia.  The Tea Party movement is significantly responsible for a rebirth of the recognition of state sovereignty and we have begun to use our state level public servants to defend us against the national government. You may be familiar with the efforts of Bob Marshall and HB10 which is now part of the law suit Ken Cuccinelli is filing against the health insurance take-over.

Well I feel I've taken full advantage of your offer to go into as much detail... so I'll finish by saying that the Tea Party is a movement. The organizations may grow, shrink, or morph into who knows what, but the Tea Party movement is here to stay, at least as long as the United States of America is around.