No one could argue that the Tea Party has been anything less than entertaining leading up to the 2010 midterm elections.

But entertaining and meaningful are two different concepts, and one could challenge the meaningfulness of the Tea Party movement in our current political realities.

They are upset. So are all Americans.

They want better, more effective, government. Everyone does.

But their assumptions look backward at a time when America needs to look forward, and that makes their contributions to our political dialogue limited in value.

America has embraced free trade and the results have not favored the nation. The results have shifted jobs and middle class incomes to the lowest common denominators, taking away the very foundation of the middle class and driving incomes and potentials downward.

The nation needs to move away from the agreements that have so greatly damaged our middle class, moving to fair trade and abandoning free trade. We must look ahead, not backward.

The Tea Party folks want to dismantle the new health care laws, but do so only by looking backward. American employers have been moving away from providing health care for a decade, and they will continue to do so in a world where they are the only global competitors carrying the costs of health care. All other nations have some form of health care not paid for by employers exclusively.

Many smaller companies have simply ended their health care programs. Larger companies have increased the premiums paid by employees to the extent that any potential income raises are consumed by benefits share cost increases.

This trend will continue, and without national health care available to everyone the numbers of the uninsured, now peaking at nearly 50 million Americans, will continue to grow.

Tea Party supporters argue for smaller government, and that would be fine if it included regulatory protection for Americans from predator food suppliers, toy makers, banks and so many others.

But we are already deficient in the kinds of oversight the nation needs to protect consumers from health and safety issues created by rampant entrepreneurs determined to seek profit without responsibility.

We must look forward and understand that the only barrier against the abuse of big profit is our nations will expressed through government.

And smaller government might be good too if we were not now competing with just cheap worldwide labor, but currency manipulation and countries with national focus upon successful, coordinated competition in world markets.

China is nationally focused upon dominating alternative energy resources, as are other nations, while the U.S. falls behind from lacking a national focus that only government can provide.

Much like the space race, government can focus research and investment when international competitive demands appear to threaten U.S. dominance of the marketplace.

We must look forward, not backward. The America of the 1950’s that seems to reflect the descriptions of what the Tea Party supporters seek, is not a viable option for our future.

We cannot, we should not, dismantle our social safety net, privatize Social Security, end Medicare, or turn away from protecting American consumers and presenting a national effort to succeed in the competitive world simply to attempt to look backward to a past that is gone forever.

America needs to re-capture its Vision for greatness, and cast aside its obsession with ever lower taxes. The path to greatness has never been for the timid or for those who would glorify the past. Government is not our enemy; greed and selfishness are our enemies.

Let us invest in each other and in our common expectations for greatness and end the slide to a recent past of smaller Vision and selfish perspectives.

Jim Crawford is a contributing columnist for The Tribune and a former educator at Ohio University Southern.