I can’t wait for the explanation from the Left once the American people become fully aware that Liberalism/Progressivism is a cancer on American society.

overwhelming presence of grey hair in the Tea Party ‘mob’. I think he mischaracterizes this disparite group. The younger ones may be of the ‘just leave me alone’ type, but the older ones are of the ‘I paid for it and I expect to get it’ type. Both object to government misuse of tax dollars. Both are united against the Democrats, not for who they are, but for what they are doing to this country.

That makes him unintelligent.

Par for the left.

>> until the barbarians were not only defeated but publicly acknowledged their subjugation.<<

The coming subjugation must include a goodly number of the most crooked statists taking a long perp walks before the un-mastered.

I have started sending him stuff on the Tea Party. Hope you do the same. Why do all these kooks have email addresses that end in .edu. Whatever you do, don’t criticize global warning czar Michael Mann at mann@psu.edu.

some here (a very few, one I can think of) that call themselves conservative agree with the left on this. some just don’t think people should be trusted with something as important as their own lives.

It behooves us all to make sure people who know and trust us, let them know that we support the tea party movement. They may know you are Republican or conservative, but by all means let them know where you stand vis a vis the tea party. It is to easy and cheap for the uninformed to assume that the lies about TP are correct. As long as the TP is some mythical bugaboo, the lies live on.

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Activists Taking Action: Unified Patriots

and as a member of the left you refer to, old friend, there are a number of things Lilla gets right here.

First and foremost, the references you make to the 1994 elections are quite telling. Many things went into the making of the Republican revolution, but one of the key factors was where the Perot voters went with their frustrations. They booted HW out in 1992 but didn’t exactly cotton to this Clinton guy either. In ’94, they allied with the Republicans, who learned to sing their songs a little better post-Bush I, and put the Dems out. And no, I’m not making light of the corruption issues and other associated end-of-power malignancies the 40 year House presented, but in the end, these were dissatisfied people in 1992 who were still dissatisfied in 1994.

But what happened afterward? The Contract went forward on some points, Clinton got smart and began to harness some of the centrist/retrenching wind, and then the Republicans went all in with the government shutdown and lost the PR fight. Perot showed up in 1996, but the energy from the storm was already fading. The deficit got better, as much from an improving economy as from anything else, and the rest of the Perot platform, the dissatisfied independents, faded away. By the time of the second Bush administration, the country had been nudged right a bit, the Republicans were in charge of Congress but mutating away from the spirit of 1994, and the party of Perot was down to Jesse Ventura and a few other independents who hitched their wagon to the remnant. Sort of like watching a hurricane transform into a tropical depression once it makes landfall.

Same thing with today’s Tea Party. I cannot see how it is sustainable – individual members are at odds as to what it even means, and there is no leadership to keep the edge sharp, so to speak. Hurricane Tea will smash into the Dem majority this year, Republicans will benefit, but either way the movement is going to make landfall. The Tea Party is not global enough in scope philosophically to take on many fellow travelers, so either the Republican party adopts it and it loses energy, or it turns on the Republican party once it can’t deliver for one reason or another either, and loses energy. The Dems will tack as time goes on, other issues will push to the forefront, and then, after altering the table a bit, yet another populist movement will have vented its power and disperse. Once to some degree a political movement has seized the reigns, you can’t campaign from the outside anymore, and it becomes your problem and your responsibility.

The other thing I wanted to mention (and I am going on too long) is that he is dead right about media. I would extend it to both sides of the aisle. So many people want to hear what they already believe. Many of my liberal friends don’t go outside NPR, John Stewart, and MSNBC. Many of my conservative ones swear by the Holy Trinity of FOX, Limbaugh, and Beck. The thing I love about being a regular reader of Redstate is that it forces me to reconsider my positions all the time, and sometimes even change them. Plus it’s like sitting in on a planning session of the loyal opposition .

Anyway, I’m not completely in the tank for Lilla, but he definitely identified some aspects of this movement I have thought myself and taken into the bigger picture.

Sometimes those things are hard to remove. And he’ll obviously never, ever need it again without appearing like a complete hypocrite.

“Essayist and historian of ideas” at Columbia U. according to Wiki.

It’s great how lib academics can make up jobs for each other and get paid for them.

I imagine Mr. Lilla does in fact know that most of America has rejected his worldview. He just is too intellectually dishonest to admit it; in other words, he’s a typical left-wing liar.

I imagine we may be able to excise these people from academia and the media and other institutions they have corrupted once this all shakes out. That will be the real battle that will follow this fall’s revolution.

…like Lefties always. do. It’s Hard to see the obvious when you think you have all the answers.

http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
[For a light hearted take on our present peril]

That’s where we keep our ammunition.

If the Tea Parties rallied around Ron Paul as their Leader, then the movement would be a mob.

The generation that gave the country the fundamental distrust of government depends on the government for their jobs.

That’s all there is to it. In order to justify the expansion of government they have to try to repudiate all of the distrust of government they themselves sowed and created.

I used to know a law professor who didn’t know me well at all and asked me once: “What are you, a libertarian?”

My answer, incredibly at the time was: “No! I’m a leftist! What are you talking about?”

Her judgment was all based on appearances, but in fact I was much more of a radical leftist than she was. I not only wanted State control, I thought it was the best thing that could happen to everyone in the country. That’s why I signed up for the job! Then I found out who the people who really provide the intellectual firmament are: a lot of them are just drunk totalitarians. They’re colossal screwups who want everyone to behave according to their rules.

Anybody who is authentically Liberterian should be offended by them, which was the intent of the epithet I received, even though it didn’t apply to me at the time. The real “metastasis” is State power, in every aspect of our lives.

By the way, one of the “minor memes” that’s going around in Intellectual Circles is:

“How do we undo the perception we created among so many people that you shouldn’t trust the government?”

The fundamental reality they’re facing is that the Obama Administration is encountering some resistance (“pushback” is what it’s called in Official Circles) from people who basically don’t trust the government — but in their view for the *wrong reasons* now.

It’s a kind of “blowback” problem in their view: they created distrust of the government, but now that they have a Statist in power, what they really need is for everyone to start trusting it.

In their minds, the people in this country who vote and decide are just little tiny things that get pushed around by their big ideas. So they’re scrambling massively to reverse the “distrust of government” they themselves created.

It’s the antithesis of what Streiff writes in the first paragraph:

He approaches an American farmer or rancher or backwoodsman and says, “My good man, where is your master.” The American solemnly stares and replies, “I reckon that sumbitch ain’t been born.”

This is precisely the kind of person that professional politicians who have rooms full of consultants and pollsters and professional publicists cannot stand: they’re the real Americans. They’re really the people who cannot be coerced by the “noise” and the arm-twisting into voting for one candidate or another.

In my estimation they comprise about 1/3rd of the population right now, and that number is dropping.

It’s also mostly about Statist coercion. The more dependent on the State people become, the more readily coerced they will be, and that political insight isn’t lost on the Democrats: they’d much rather have 40 or 50% of the people in the United States dependent for their jobs and livelihood and futures on the decisions made at the Federal level, it makes things so much simpler.

Sunstein knows that he can’t force you at the point of his boot to become a Statist, and as a result he’s written a book about how to gradually “nudge” you in the direction of being one — until you are, to more or less his satisfaction.

It’s a gradual process and one that the real Statists intend to continue honing and perfecting for as long as it takes. They’re not going to do it at knifepoint or gunpoint, they’re simply going to make it impossible for you to think otherwise and be taken seriously.

Great diary, great comments. Well worth the read. But I can’t give it a recco, ‘cuz there’s no button.

he made some good observations. I took away two main points. Politics, whether left or right, is becoming libertarian and self-serving. And people are moving to communities, counties, and states, where their views can be reflected back to them.. They are seperating into corners to hear what they want to hear. I read an article about Northern California, and how it is being made into a haven for the wealthy. They take over town councils, and write rules to exclude others from doing business. The property taxes sky-rocket, longtime natives are being driven out of their homes and businesses.
Lilla peppered his article with shots at every voice on the right, and tea-parties, but it seemed pro-forma, and he didn’t try very hard to make it sting. More like a courtesy to lefty readers.
Good review Streiff, thanks

The thing that seems to perhaps annoy the MSM lefties the most is that the Tea Party cuts across all ethnic boundaries and crosses party lines to include some very pissed of democrats… The left is scared, for a very good reason and the reason is that the Tea Party is the beginning of backlash against decades of the left and their stifling abuse of PC to try and take over everything.

Another thing that the left is groping with is trying to pin a definitive identity to that movement so they can properly demonize it and they’re suffering an epic fail in that vein as well…

Pass the popcorn and beer come November… hopefully it will be our own velvet revolution in the making…