(CNN) -- The Tea Party movement is trying to define politics in 2010, but its founding arguments can be traced to at least 1964 -- in a famous campaign speech given on Barry Goldwater's behalf by a Hollywood actor named Ronald Reagan. • "This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves." • "No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. ... We've raised our debt limit three times in the last 12 months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have $15 billion in gold in our treasury; we don't own an ounce."
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John Avlon: Tea Party's roots in 1964 speech given by Reagan for Goldwater campaign
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In speech more civil than today's, Reagan envisioned lost freedoms, he writes
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Avlon says that time not as idyllic as some think and U.S. is more conservative today
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Avlon: Conservatives today would call Reagan, Goldwater, liberal on social views, taxes
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