Flying Pigs Alert: The NYT Notices That Sarah Palin Said Something Important

Well, I guess I can die happy now. I've seen it all. Nothing could possibly surprise me now: not George W. Bush moving to Boston, not Martians landing and demanding to be taken to our leader - in Beijing, not the UN voting to condemn racism somewhere other than in Israel, not the Toronto Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup. Nothing. The New York Times actually noticed that Sarah Palin said something profound and important.

Get up off the floor and keep reading; naturally, I intend to offer proof for such a far-out, incredible assertion. Here it is, from the Sept. 9 edition, "Some of Sarah Palin's Ideas Cross the Political Divide":

Let us begin by confessing that, if Sarah Palin surfaced to say something intelligent and wise and fresh about the present American condition, many of us would fail to hear it.

That is not how we’re primed to see Ms. Palin. A pugnacious Tea Partyer? Sure. A woman of the people? Yup. A Mama Grizzly? You betcha.

But something curious happened when Ms. Palin strode onto the stage last weekend at a Tea Party event in Indianola, Iowa. Along with her familiar and predictable swipes at President Barack Obama and the “far left,” she delivered a devastating indictment of the entire U.S. political establishment — left, right and center — and pointed toward a way of transcending the presently unbridgeable political divide.

The next day, the “lamestream” media, as she calls it, played into her fantasy of it by ignoring the ideas she unfurled and dwelling almost entirely on the will-she-won’t-she question of her presidential ambitions.

So here is something I never thought I would write: a column about Sarah Palin’s ideas.

There was plenty of the usual Palin schtick — words that make clear that she is not speaking to everyone but to a particular strain of American: “The working men and women of this country, you got up off your couch, you came down from the deer stand, you came out of the duck blind, you got off the John Deere, and we took to the streets, and we took to the town halls, and we ended up at the ballot box.”

But when her throat was cleared at last, Ms. Palin had something considerably more substantive to say.

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

In supporting her first point, about the permanent political class, she attacked both parties’ tendency to talk of spending cuts while spending more and more; to stoke public anxiety about a credit downgrade, but take a vacation anyway; to arrive in Washington of modest means and then somehow ride the gravy train to fabulous wealth. She observed that 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States happen to be suburbs of the nation’s capital.

Her second point, about money in politics, helped to explain the first. The permanent class stays in power because it positions itself between two deep troughs: the money spent by the government and the money spent by big companies to secure decisions from government that help them make more money.

“Do you want to know why nothing ever really gets done?” she said, referring to politicians. “It’s because there’s nothing in it for them. They’ve got a lot of mouths to feed — a lot of corporate lobbyists and a lot of special interests that are counting on them to keep the good times and the money rolling along.”

Because her party has agitated for the wholesale deregulation of money in politics and the unshackling of lobbyists, these will be heard in some quarters as sacrilegious words.

Ms. Palin’s third point was more striking still: in contrast to the sweeping paeans to capitalism and the free market delivered by the Republican presidential candidates whose ranks she has yet to join, she sought to make a distinction between good capitalists and bad ones. The good ones, in her telling, are those small businesses that take risks and sink and swim in the churning market; the bad ones are well-connected megacorporations that live off bailouts, dodge taxes and profit terrifically while creating no jobs.

Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin’s having said them.

“This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk,” she said of the crony variety. She added: “It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America.”

Is there a hint of a political breakthrough hiding in there?

Of course it is snarky and snide; it is the New York Times after all. But it notes that Palin is saying things that make her something other than a shill for corporate America. Who knows, if this keeps up maybe Times journalists someday will discover that fly-over country actually is inhabited.

The column continues, in the breathless tone of an anthropologist announcing at a live news conference the discovery of a previously unknown civilization under the ice of Antarctica:

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.

On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

It obviously has never occurred to this writer, even by the end of this article, that maybe - just maybe - Palin is expressing ideas that are widespread in the Tea Party Movement and other esoteric sects such as the Founding Fathers, for example. If only journalists who pontificate about American culture and politics had to read de Tocqueville's Democracy in America during their university years in between learning how to be disdainful of the bitter clingers who do so much to impede "progress."

Sarah Palin did not think up these ideas last Wednesday. She is not the only one thinking this way. If you want to consult on-line resources that frequently discuss in depth ideas like these, you can check out these links, which will provide links galore to further writings in these areas.

American Principles Project

Intercollegiate Studies Institute

City Journal

Public Discourse (The Witherspoon Institute)

Peter Hitchens Blog (Daily Mail)

Steyn Online (Mark Steyn)

You could also look at conservative writing in National Review, The Weekly Standard, Human Events and The University Bookman. Of course these journals bash Obama and think Marxism is evil. But if you think that is all there is to them, I pity you.

It is a measure of the isolated, in-grown, smug, poorly educated nature of the American permanent governing class that my argument here - that Sarah Palin is articulating ideas that are widespread in the conservative underground - would be news to them. No wonder political debate can't even get started in America.

Violent Rhetoric: Then and Now

Here is a nice little video of Chuck Schumer speaking in January (violent rhetoric is bad) and then in July (violent rhetoric is OK when I do it). Notice how David Greggory plays along so helpfully in demonizing the right in the first part.

I can't help wondering if the liberal media and politicians really think the American public is that dumb.



Hypocrisy: thy name is Chuck.

PS: Note to Democrats: the terrorist meme isn't working. Best to turn it off now.

A Hobbit Speaks - Mordor Pretends Not to Hear

Here is Congressman Joe Walsh responding to the media lynching of the Tea Party that is going on right now in the media.



Spoken like a true hobbit. Well done, Congressman!

The Tea Party Goes to Washington to Create a New Center

To hear the Democrats tell it, the Tea Party is "extreme." They even agreed in caucus to all use that word over and over again and no doubt their supporters in the mainstream media were instructed to hammer away at the label continuously too. The goal was to try to separate Independents and Moderates from the Tea Party by painting the Tea Party as extreme - which is what Independents and Moderates don't want to be. Many Independents and Moderates are basically confused about politics and illiterate about economics. They just want jobs and stability and not too many wars, although when there is a war they want to win it decisively and quickly.

So the Democratic strategy is clear: paint the Tea Party as extreme and hope to discredit "wild eyed and extreme" ideas such as balancing the budget by cutting spending and slowing the rate of growth of big government. The problem is clear, however, for the Democrats. Most Americans (upwards of 70%) don't think such ideas are "extreme." In fact, they think they are as American as apple pie and motherhood.

Thus, despite Democrats' (and their media and cultural elites allies') best efforts, we get polls like yesterday's CNN poll, in which 50% of Americans said that the Tea Party's influence is positive. (HT John McCormack at The Weekly Standard)

Let's look a little closer at the Tea Party phenomenon. What is it about? It seems to be centered on a belief in limited government and maximal individual freedom. I don't get the sense that the majority in the Tea Party want to completely dismantle the social safety net, but I definitely get the impression that they want to limit the future growth of the welfare state and roll back some entitlement programs, perhaps by means testing them. They don't want to see handicapped, elderly and sick people go without help, but they don't think that helping those truely in need requires or justifies endless multiplication of government bureaucracy, skyrocketing public debt or a government that costs higher and higher percentages of the GDP.

Now, I don't find any of this particularly extreme. It is a different choice than Europe has made. Clearly, it is the repudiation of the European social democratic welfare state and it is a uniquely American vision of government and society. The Democrats view Europe as "normal" and anything that fails to measure up to that vision as somehow inadequate. But anyone who actually dissents from acknowledging Europe as the obvious end goal is not just inadequate or a dissenter - such a person is "extreme." To be skeptical that we can get there immediately is all right, but to disagree on the destination in principle - especially on the basis of principle - is utterly beyond the pale for Democrats.

Within the Democratic party there is a spectrum that runs from the left - which is ideologically socialist and views European social democracy as too mild - to the center - which views European social democracy as immediately achievable - to the right - which supports moving incrementally and cautiously as far toward European style social democracy as is feasible. This third group comes from red states where their task is to get elected by voters, a majority of whom do not like the ideology of the Democratic Party. These are the so-called "Blue Dogs." For them the recent health care reform was too close to socialism for electoral comfort and many of them paid the electoral price for voting for it.

For the entire 20th century there has been a socialist party in America. It has, like the NDP in Canada, exercised influence far beyond its numbers. At certain points in the century the socialists have been separate from the Democratic Party and at other points they have worked within the Democratic Party. Right now, the socialists form the left wing of the Democratic Party. This is the New Left, which emerged in the 60s after the public acknowledgment of the crimes of Stalin did so much to discredit the Old Left. Having lost at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the New Left decided to get involved in the party at local and state levels and has wielded huge influence ever since.

Today, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is co-chaired by Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (AR) and Keith Ellison (MN) and includes one senator (Bernie Sanders of VT) and 74 members of the House of Representatives (out of 193 Democrats - 38%). Although the November election resulted in a net gain of 63 for the Republicans, most of the Progressive Caucus members were returned because they come from the deepest blue states on either coast and in university towns. Thus, the House (and Congress as a whole) is much more conservative, but the Democratic congressional caucus is more tilted toward socialism than before.

The Tea Party is evolving into a party within a party much like the socialist leaning wing of the Democratic Party. The Tea Party Caucus, which began on July 6, 2010 with Rep. Michelle Bachman as chair now has 59 House members and 4 Senate members. A number of high-profile Tea Party favorites, such as Senators Marco Rubio (FL), Pat Toomey (PA) and Ron Johnson (WI), have declined to join the caucus, apparently because they still entertain hopes of taking over the Republican Party as a whole instead of functioning as an interest group within it. Whether they are justified in their goal or not remains to be seen.

I think that the Tea Party movement, unlike the Democratic Socialists of America, is a genuinely grass roots movement that represents the majority of Americans. The main role of the Tea Party caucus will be to balance out the extremes of the New Left in the Democratic Party and force the centrists of both parties to work together to avoid gridlock.

But this will not be easy because of the vast influence the New Left has within the Democratic Party. Like conservative Republicans, who hope to gain control of the entire Republican Party, they are working to make democratic socialism the center of the Democratic Party and to brand all limited government, libertarian, traditional conservative and social conservative ideas as "extreme."

In this environment, the Tea Party is a necessary bulwark against extremism and an authentically American populist movement that stands for continuity and tradition. Contrary to what the spin doctors would have you believe, the long term effect of the Tea Party on American politics will likely be to prevent the moving of the center of American politics to the left and even to nudge it back a bit toward the right. This would place the Socialists, not the Tea Party, outside the mainstream and make the status quo the center, conservatism the right and European-style social democracy the left.

This may not sound dramatic, but it will have huge, global effects if it happens.

1. It will save America from a sovereign debt crisis like the EU is currently experiencing.
2. It will likely prevent the implementation of homosexual marriage.
3. It will likely end the current abortion extremism by ensuring that a conservative Supreme Court throws it back to the States to regulate.
4. It will ensure that American military power does not decline and this will mean peace and stability instead of war and revolution for great swaths of the globe.
5. It will likely mean that Israel will survive instead of being annihilated in war.
6. And, finally, it will likely mean that as Islam overruns Europe, America will stand firmly as a place where Christians experience freedom and the ability to maintain institutions of higher learning and missionary outreach.

The Tea Party drives progressives crazy, not because it is extreme, but because it exposes their own extremism and their fundamental disconnect with mainstream American voters.

The Rise of the Tea Party as a Revolt Against Progressivism

In his terrific article "Obama and the Rhetoric of Progressivism," Peter Berkowitz discusses the way in which John Rawls' concept of justice as fairness has been utilized by the progressives.

To be sure, Rawls asserts that "justice as fairness is but one" of the many political conceptions of justice that deserve consideration in a liberal democracy. But he makes no such concession about fairness, which he takes to have a unitary meaning, and which most people equate with justice. Not only by equating his favored conception of justice with fairness itself, but also by demonstrating throughout his half-century career in academic philosophy a decided lack of interest in other opinions about justice, Rawls powerfully signaled that the progressive understanding of fairness was tantamount to justice itself.

A legion of second- and third-generation Rawlsians - today representing a major, if not the leading, school within academic political theory - developed a popular offshoot of the theory of justice as fairness they often called "deliberative democracy." Its purpose is to apply Rawls's theory of justice to practice. Many variants have been advanced, and the approach has been extended to international law and international relations. Elements of it can be seen in the academic writings of State Department Legal Counsel Harold Koh, who is former Dean of Yale Law School, and Director of the office of Policy Planning at the State Department Anne Marie Slaughter, former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. All versions respond to a common problem, develop a common solution, and embody a common conceit.

The professors' problem was that, as good progressives, they took pride in their democratic bona fides. But the policies - on abortion, affirmative action, welfare, taxes, human rights, America's responsibilities abroad, and others - that they regarded as dictates of justice frequently failed to command majority support. And unlike Croly, today's progressives are reluctant to proclaim, at least in public, that "the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat."

The professors' solution to the paradox of progressivism - how to reconcile a professed commitment to greater democracy with a powerful conviction, in conflict with the preferences of the people, that justice requires more centralized government and more elite rule - built on Rawls. Its intellectual roots can be traced to Rousseau's doctrine of the general will.

The identification of the concept of justice with fairness is highly contestable. It is a perversion, in my opinion, of the classical idea of justice as "what one is owed." It presupposes a collectivist rather than an individualist concept of justice and of society. Its Rousseauian roots are common to all modern forms of collectivism and are reason enough to reject this concept of justice. But it is typical of progressivism that no debate is allowed at the crucial point: the nature of the human person and the relationship of man to society.

Several aspects of contemporary politics become understandable when one understands progressivism in this manner.

First, it explains the rise of the Tea Party. The Tea Party has come into existence almost solely for the purpose of opposing progressivism and deposing from power the progressives who are trying to re-make America in their image. If we understand the Tea Party in this way, we will be much more likely to understand in what sense even its libertarian elements can be properly described as conservative. The Tea Party is conservative in that it opposes Progressivism.

Second, it explains the nature of the rhetorical attacks on the Tea Party by the Left. Why, one might ask, is a popular movement devoted to participatory democracy regarded as being so dangerous by the governing elite? The answer is because the progressive elite is fundamentally anti-democratic in believing that the average citizen simply does not know what is in his own best interest. The depiction of Tea Partiers as racist, violent and bigoted is necessary because the progressives cannot simply say what they really think: that average citizens are too stupid to know what is best for themselves.

Third, it explains what the Tea Party really wants. To hear the progressives talk, one would think that the Tea Party is essentially anarchistic and destructive of all forms of societal cooperation. But their hyperbole at this point arises out of their sense of despair over the refusal of the masses to let the elites decide what is best for them.

The Tea Party stands for three things that the Progressives find abhorrent: (1) democracy as the least bad of all possible systems of governance, (2) limits on the power of the federal government and (3) the conviction that not all problems can be solved because of limitations inherent in human nature. The Tea Party, in short, rejects Utopianism and this is what really drives progressives crazy.

If one gets out of the echo chamber that is the mainstream (progressive-dominated) media long enough to evaluate the Tea Party as opposition to progressive politics, it looks much less wild and woolly. In fact, if you look at it this way it actually begins to look far more sober, grown-up and realistic than progressivism.

I Told You the Tea Party was Good for Social Conservative Causes

Jim Wallis can try to portray the entire Tea Party movement as a bunch of extreme, hardhearted, libertarian individualists who don't give a fig for their neighbors, but he does not know what he is talking about. He has a fringe group confused with the broad center.

The truth is that the Tea Party movement has galvanized the conservative movement in general and there is a lot of overlap in the issues that most concern Christians and the ones that concern small-government, low-tax Tea Partiers. The outstanding results of yesterday's election with regard to abortion is a good case in point.

The Susan B. Anthony List was very active in this election cycle off-setting the highly funded pro-abortion groups like Emily's List and Planned Parenthood. On the Susan B. Anthony List website, which you can access here, they summarize their successes in the 90 races they targeted for this election. They spent over $11 million dollars on these races.

First, they supported the election of the first woman pro-life to the US Senate, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. They also supported John Boozman, a pro-lifer who replaced the pro-abortion Blanche Lincoln as Senator from Arkansas and Roy Blunt, a Republican pro-lifer who defeated Emily's List favorite Robin Carnahan in Missouri. In addition, they helped pro-life senator Charles Grassley of Iowa beat back a challenge from a pro-abortion challenger.

Second, this election saw the percentage of women in the House of Representatives who are pro-life increased by 60 percent while the percentage of women who are pro-choice decreased by 16 percent.

Third, four pro-life women were elected Governor of their states: Jan Brewer (R-AZ), Susana Martinez (R-NM), Nikki Haley (R-SC) and Mary Fallin (R-OK).

Fourth, of 48 candidates endorsed by SBA List overall, 34 won. In the SBA List-versus-EMILY’s List head-to-head races, SBA List candidates won 91 percent of the time.

Many of these successes would not have happened without the energy and enthusiasm provided by the Tea Party. While social issues like abortion are not central concerns of the Tea Party movement as a movement, it is nonetheless true that the kind of candidates the Tea Partiers vote for also happen to be, in many cases, social conservatives.

Those of us who consider the sanctity of human life to be the most urgent and tragic social issue in the Western world today need all the help we can get in advancing the conservative agenda and we aren't going to get any positive help from the Evangelical Left or from those establishment Republicans who secretly mumble "amen" when elitists dismiss the Tea Party movement as "bitter clingers."

There is good reason why the president of NARAL doesn't look so happy the day after the election. See the smile disappear here.

UPDATE 1:
Here is a story which expands on the facts that I mention in this post. This was a wonderful election for social conservatives. Those darn libertarian Tea Partiers somehow managed to elect a whole slew of pro-life and pro-marriage candidates. Amazing, isn't it?

UPDATE 2:
Jill Stanek has a great column in the Washington Post today outlining the gains made by pro-lifers in congress:

Tuesday's election garnered at least 53 new pro-life votes in the House. Conversely, only 151 winning House candidates were endorsed by Planned Parenthood Action, meaning just 34.7 percent of the 435 representatives in the 212th Congress will be reliable pro-abortion votes.

Read it all here.

Why Christians Should Be Grateful for the Tea Parties

Janet Daley of the Daily Telegraph has a very interesting article on the upcoming US midterm election in which she describes the coming election wave as as not the triumph of the Republican Party as part of the normal working of the normal two-party system, but as a revolt against cultural elites of both parties. In general, she is right on and it is interesting to see how this theme is spreading.

But when she talks about the Tea Parties (she deliberately uses the plural because they do not constitute a single movement), I think what she says is important but potentially a bit misleading. Let's listen to what she says in "Midterm elections 2010: prepare for a new American revolution."

So the Republicans are, if anything, as much in revolt against the establishment within their own party as they are against the Democrats. And this is what the Tea Parties (which should always be referred to in the plural, because they are not a monolithic movement) are all about: they are not just a reaction against a Left-liberal president but a repudiation of the official Opposition as well.

Nor are they simply the embodiment of reactionary social conservatism, which has been the last redoubt of the traditional Republican Right. There were plenty of people in New York who wanted to believe that Tea Partiers were just a new incarnation of the gun-totin', gay-bashing right-to-lifers whom they found it so easy to dismiss as risible throwbacks. This is a huge political miscalculation, which quite misses the point of what makes the Congressional midterm elections this week such an interesting and historic political event. This is so much more than the predictable to-ing and fro-ing of party control midway through a presidential term. What the grassroots rebellion is really about is an attempt to pull the Republican party back to its basic philosophy of low-tax, low-spend, small government: the great Jeffersonian principle that the best government is that which governs least.

One of the more electorally far-reaching effects of this is that Republicanism could become the home once again of a plausible political and economic programme, rather than simply an outpost for those who seem to reject many of the features of modern life. The gun-toters and gay-bashers and pro-lifers may have jumped aboard the bandwagon, and Sarah Palin may be frantically attaching herself to the parade, but this is not their show: the Tea Party protests began (as their name suggests) as a campaign against high taxation and the illegitimate intrusiveness of federal powers. That is what they are still about.

Read it all here. Daley is trying to explain what is new about the Tea Parties and why it is wrong to just write them off as the same old social conservatives, who are perceived by the Ruling Class to have run out of steam, especially on homosexual "marriage" and related issues. This leads some liberals to dismiss the Tea Parties out of hand and Daley wants to emphasize their Jeffersonian small government roots. This is fine as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough.

Like the Left, the Right of American politics has been an exercise in coalition building. This is normal in a two-party, parliamentary democracy. In the 1950s, when the modern conservative movement got going, there were three distinct types of conservatives: traditional conservatives like Russell Kirk, the anti-communists cold-warriors and the libertarians. They did not always get along, as Kirk's essay "Libertarians: the Chirping Sectaries" demonstrates. But they disliked each other less than they disliked statists in the leftist coalition, which included progressives, liberals and socialists. In the 1970s the neo-conservatives were driven out of leadership of the Democratic Party and joined the conservative coalition and in the 1980s they were joined by the social conservatives. The conservative coalition now had five main components.

Daley is right to highlight the small government, Jeffersonian thrust of the Tea Parties, but this does not mean that the Tea Parties are not good news for the conservative coalition as a whole. In fact, the Republican Party needs all the component parts if it wishes to achieve a majority and there is a general compatibility between social conservatives and small government, low taxes types.

Granted, the most stress in the conservative coalition will come between the libertarians and the social conservatives. But it is also true that these fractures are not at the forefront of the debate at the moment, which is Daley's valid point. It is true that, at some point, if the Republican Party achieves power, these stresses will become a flash point of conflict and that will more likely happen on same sex "marriage" than on abortion, which can be addressed in libertarian terms by stressing the personhood of the fetus. At some point, however, libertarians will need to decide if they want individual liberty with limits determined by natural law or by the arbitrary decision of state-empowered bureaucrats. Some will join the Left and others will stay with the conservatives.

But overall, one should not think that the tremendous wave of small government, free enterprise, low-tax sentiment that is sweeping America today is not a good thing for Christians who wish to promote traditional morality in the public square. It is a great thing and Christians should be thankful that the principles of the American Founding are not dead because the American Founding constitutes the best possible environment for the possibility of Christian influence in the public square: a free church in a free state. And, hopefully, those Jeffersonian democrats will realize that Christianity is a key element in a country that hopes to avoid the statism and tyranny that they so heartily detest.

Obama's Ruling Class Condescension Toward the People of America

Further to the last post in which I criticized someone named Alan Brinkley for distorting and misunderstanding the Tea Party movement in a condescending manner, here is Brinkley's role model at work. The condescension comes from the top down. You can see how Brinkley's talking points reflect accurately those of the man conservative blogger Erick Erickson calls "The Condescender-in-Chief."

Two years into the Obama presidency, and this kind of thing really shouldn’t be a surprise.

Obama told the several dozen donors that he was offering them his “view from the Oval Office.” He faulted the economic downturn for Americans’ inability to “think clearly” and said the burden is on Democrats “to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling.”

The President believes that we are not “thinking clearly,” and that our attitudes and behavior stem from “fear and frustration”. It is one thing for Obama to think that, but it is yet another for the President of the United States to say it out loud - about his own nation’s citizens.

But this is no surprise, is it? This is the same man who accused those who disagreed with him of being hyper-religious, violent xenophobes:

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Yes, we remember that one well, don’t we?

A quick Google search reveals the extent of Obama’s condescension problem. Article after article document his snooty, patronizing attitudes about those around him.

Read the rest here.

Distorting the Tea Party Movement

In today's Toronto Star there is a review of three books on the Tea Party movement by Alan Brinkley. It is an incredibly dishonest and misleading hatchet job, which simply repeats the talking points developed by frightened Ruling Class politicians and their media allies over the past year. I wish it were online so I could give it a good fisking. But I'll have to make do by quoting Binkley extensively and pointing out the errors and lies (though sometimes it is difficult to tell which are which).

1. "Trying to describe the ideas of the Tea Party movement is a bit like the blind man trying to describe the elephant. The movement, like the elephant, exists. But no one, not even the Tea Partiers themselves, can seem to get hands around the whole of it."

Here, in his opening paragraph, Binkley sets the stage for his Marxist conclusion by denying that the Tea Part movement is based on a century old set of coherent principles with an intellectually respectable pedigree. Instead, he claims, the Tea Party is confused and unsure of what it believes.

2. "What lies behind the Tea Party? Some of it is purely partisan. It has close ties to the Republican Party. it is opportunistically promoted by Fox News."

What is the point of this rehashing of the blindingly obvious? Well, it is a way of saying "Watch out, this is not liberal or good for the Democratic Party." It is like saying of the Black Congressional Caucus: "It is purely partisan. It has close ties to the Democratic Party. It is opportunistically promoted by MSNBC." One get the sense already that this writer has little insight to contribute to building a greater understanding of this political movement.

3. "The people Zernike interviewed rarely expressed bigotry, prejudice or racism, but there are many self-identified Tea Partiers who detest immigration and fear the prospect of an America in which white people will be a minority."

Whoa, hold it right there. Note how slippery Brinkley is, speaking of those: "who detest immigration." Actually, they are concerned about "illegal immigration" which is very different from being concerned about "immigration." Many Tea Partiers are themselves immigrants or children or grandchildren of immigrants. Immigration is not their beef; it is illegal immigration and the lack of government enforcement of existing law. Also, note the way he slides from "immigration" to a fear of non-whites. This just plays on old stereotypes and conjures up fears of a return to the bad old days of Southern racism. But the crisis of illegal immigration in the US today centers on the Mexican border and it is actually Hispanic people who are coming across that border, not blacks. To assert that the Tea Party is just about whites who want a white only country is irresponsible. But let's not let facts get in the way of a cheap smear and an appeal to emotion.

4. "Jill Lepore, a historian of the American Revolution and a staff writer at The New Yorker, has written a brief but valuable book The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History, which combines her own interviews with Tea Partiers mostly from her home state, Massachusetts) and her deep knowledge of the founders and of their view of the American constitution. The architects of the Constitution, she makes clear, did not agree about what it meant. Nor did they believe that the Constitution would or should be the final word on the character of the nation and the government. It was the product of much compromise, and few were satisfied with all its parts."

This relativistic reading of the American Founding is popular today in universities dominated by the cultural relativism of decadent late Modernity. It portrays the Founders as being much like contemporary people: without deep principles or ethical absolutes just out to do enough horse trading to get the bill through - rather like the unseemly deportment of Democratic Party hacks openly buying enough senatorial votes to get Obamacare through. This reading of history lacks imagination or empathy with the thinkers it attempts - spectacularly unsuccessfully - to interpret.

Nobody in the Tea Party - and I mean nobody - thinks that the Constitution was meant to be the final word forever on the shape of the nation and its government. Nobody. This is a straw man dredged up out of the fevered imagination of the writer and tossed out for ritual dismemberment by the liberal mobs. You see, everybody knows about a little thing call "amendments" to the Constitution. There are a couple dozen of them. The Constitution itself provides for amendments to to constitution and there is a prescribed, constitutional way of doing them.

The problem is that progressives - social engineers and elitists at heart - don't like the fuss and bother of going through the amendment process. That and, of course, the little matter of the fact that they keep losing the votes. So they prefer judicial activism and the imposition of elite opinion on the unwashed masses by fiat. This is what the Tea Party movement opposes. If the Ruling Class wanted abortion on demand all they had to do is get an amendment to the constitution exempting unborn babies from the class of humans whose right to life is protected. But they didn't do that because they couldn't do it. The majority stood in their way. And that is why abortion must one day end in America - because it is a deeply un-American practice that is at odds with the American Founding just like slavery.

5. "Listening to the many and diverse demands and ideas that the Tea Partiers express in their rallies, pamphlets, and oratory does relatively little to explain why so many Americans are so angry."

Translation: they are uneducated and stupid rubes so you can't take what they say they are mad about as literally what they are really mad about. So relax, we don't have take them seriously.

6. "After all, most of those railing against government deficits (mostly created by Reagan and Bush tax cuts), protesting against taxes (the rates on the top income bracket are lower than at any time since before WW II, with the exception of a brief period two decades ago), and complaining about violations of the Constitution were, only a few years ago, much less concerned about these and many other issues that now loom so large in their vision of the future."

Where to start with this mess of untruths. First, to blame tax cuts by Reagan for deficits that began only 10 years after Reagan left office is a bit of a joke. How on earth did Bill Clinton balance the budget in the years of prosperity created by the Reagan tax cuts? Oh yes, because of the booming economy created by Reagan's policies following the disastrous Carter policies. Second, the Bush tax cuts account for $700 million dollars and probably created far more revenue than that by contributing to economic growth. But Obama's deficit is 1.2 trillion this year. Incredibly, Brinkley does not even consider the possibility that a totally useless and wasteful stimulus bill that cost a trillion dollars might have something to do with the deficit. No, couldn't be that - better blame Bush.

7. "Without the economic crisis, these same issues would remain unaddressed."

In other words, what is really causing all the ruckus is that the people are scared and mad because of the economic crisis. All the ideas and principles that the Tea Party talks about - limited government, a conservative judiciary, free enterprise, individual liberty etc. - all get boiled down to something a big government, welfare state liberal can get his mind around, namely, unemployment. This is his great, novel explanation of the whole Tea Party movement. They are just upset because of the bad economy. Ideas are just epiphenomenal; economics drives history. Marx was right.

This is lazy thinking and brutally conformist in its reluctance to confront the real words, actions and concerns of the most important political movement in the world today. It is dishonest of necessity because really to confront the issues raised by the Tea Party would be to expose the shallowness, incoherence and anti-Americanism of the leftover Left.

Constitutionalism versus Progressivism: Berkowitz on the Tea Party

Peter Berkowitz has written a terrific article in today's Wall Street Journal on "Why Liberals Don't Get the Tea Party." His article has a folksy tone but is rooted in solid history and political philosophy. He writes:

Highly educated people say the darndest things, these days particularly about the tea party movement. Vast numbers of other highly educated people read and hear these dubious pronouncements, smile knowingly, and nod their heads in agreement. University educations and advanced degrees notwithstanding, they lack a basic understanding of the contours of American constitutional government.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman got the ball rolling in April 2009, just ahead of the first major tea party rallies on April 15, by falsely asserting that "the tea parties don't represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They're AstroTurf (fake grass-roots) events."

Having learned next to nothing in the intervening 16 months about one of the most spectacular grass-roots political movements in American history, fellow Times columnist Frank Rich denied in August of this year that the tea party movement is "spontaneous and leaderless," insisting instead that it is the instrument of billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne criticized the tea party as unrepresentative in two ways. It "constitutes a sliver of opinion on the extreme end of politics receiving attention out of all proportion with its numbers," he asserted last month. This was a step back from his rash prediction five months before that since it "represents a relatively small minority of Americans on the right end of politics," the tea party movement "will not determine the outcome of the 2010 elections."

In February, Mr. Dionne argued that the tea party was also unrepresentative because it reflected a political principle that lost out at America's founding and deserves to be permanently retired: "Anti-statism, a profound mistrust of power in Washington goes all the way back to the Anti-Federalists who opposed the Constitution itself because they saw it concentrating too much authority in the central government."

Mr. Dionne follows in the footsteps of progressive historian Richard Hofstadter, whose influential 1964 book "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" argued that Barry Goldwater and his supporters displayed a "style of mind" characterized by "heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy." Similarly, the "suspicion of government" that the tea party movement shares with the Anti-Federalists, Mr. Dionne maintained, "is not amenable to 'facts'" because "opposing government is a matter of principle."

To be sure, the tea party sports its share of clowns, kooks and creeps. And some of its favored candidates and loudest voices have made embarrassing statements and embraced reckless policies. This, however, does not distinguish the tea party movement from the competition.

Born in response to President Obama's self-declared desire to fundamentally change America, the tea party movement has made its central goals abundantly clear. Activists and the sizeable swath of voters who sympathize with them want to reduce the massively ballooning national debt, cut runaway federal spending, keep taxes in check, reinvigorate the economy, and block the expansion of the state into citizens' lives.

In other words, the tea party movement is inspired above all by a commitment to limited government. And that does distinguish it from the competition.

Read it all here.

Berkowitz blames university departments of political science and history for not teaching the principles of the American Founding and distinguishing them from the ideas of the Progressive Movement:

For the better part of two generations, the best political science departments have concentrated on equipping students with skills for performing empirical research and teaching mathematical models that purport to describe political affairs. Meanwhile, leading history departments have emphasized social history and issues of race, class and gender at the expense of constitutional history, diplomatic history and military history.

Neither professors of political science nor of history have made a priority of instructing students in the founding principles of American constitutional government. Nor have they taught about the contest between the progressive vision and the conservative vision that has characterized American politics since Woodrow Wilson (then a political scientist at Princeton) helped launch the progressive movement in the late 19th century by arguing that the Constitution had become obsolete and hindered democratic reform.

So Berkowitz' argument is that instead of teaching the plain fact that 20th century American history was a debate between the Constitutionalists with their commitment to limited government and the Progressives with their commitment to statist solutions to modern social problems, most contemporary universities teach from the progressive perspective. This means that they produce students (eg. Krugman, Dionne, Rich) who are unable to understand the true nature of the Tea Party movement. They see it though the highly biased, jaundiced lens of the enemies of the Founders: the Progressives. So they treat the Tea Party as a joke or a danger to democracy instead of coming to grips with the principles and ideas for which it stands.

The problem is acute for democracy because if the Progressives are incapable of grasping how much of the culture they themselves love and appreciate is the outgrowth of the principles being advanced by the contemporary Tea Party people, they are gullible targets for soft totalitarians who exploit their sentimental liberalism in the service of a hard-edged statism which will destroy what even the Progressives themselves love about America.

We see this, for example, in the odd phenomenon of Left-wingers fighting for the rights of radical Islam to have its way in the West even though the first thing Islamists will do when they come to power is to trample all over the causes the Left supposedly stands for.

One suspects that many leftists will be very unhappy when they finally succeed in creating a leftist society. That is very sad for them because it means that their lives are fundamentally incoherent.

Stop the Presses! NYT is Fair to Tea Parties in an Article

The New York Times has a sober, fair, reasonable, objective article on how the Tea Party candidates are doing in the midterm elections. There is no hyperventilating about racism, no wild charges of extremism and no talking down to the unwashed masses. Now that is news.

Enough Tea Party-supported candidates are running strongly in competitive and Republican-leaning Congressional races that the movement stands a good chance of establishing a sizable caucus to push its agenda in the House and the Senate, according to a New York Times analysis.

With a little more than two weeks till Election Day, 33 Tea Party-backed candidates are in tossup races or running in House districts that are solidly or leaning Republican, and 8 stand a good or better chance of winning Senate seats.

Read the rest here.

If you do read the whole article you get the distinct impression that the Tea Party movement has, on balance, helped rather than hurt the Republican Party and that the movement is made up of people who are buying into political activism for the long haul, getting involved in the nitty gritty of the political process, rather than standing outside the system criticizing and hurling invective. Sounds rather American of them, doesn't it?

The Tea Parties: the New Mainstream

Further to my last post on the Tea Party phenomenon, this editorial from the Washington Examiner entitled: "Tea Partiers are getting the last laugh" has some interesting facts in it:

And the movement is anything but racially segregated. Thirty-five percent of black likely voters identify with the Tea Party, including 17 percent who strongly identify with it, according to Vic Rubenfeld, director of polling for Pajamas Media TV. As for the liberal Democrats who have attacked it, the latest CNN/Opinion Research poll finds "likely voters say they are considerably more likely to vote for a candidate the president opposes than one he supports. On the other hand, 50 percent of voters said they would be more likely to vote for a Tea Party-backed candidate while a third of Americans said Tea Party support would dissuade their vote for a candidate." [my bolding]

Read it all here.

At some point, probably right after the November elections, we are going to see a sea change in the way the Tea Party is perceived. It is going to become the new mainstream of conservative political philosophy in the US and the true opposition to a Democratic Party, which is now firmly in the hands of Leftists. For better or worse, American politics is in the process of polarizing as socialism becomes stronger and provokes a more determined opposition.

The Tea Party is Moving the Center of American Poltics Rightward

For my Canadian readers, this story may seem like "inside baseball" but my American friends will know exactly what I am talking about. Where the center of America politics is is very important to Canadians because it has a great deal to do with how our political spectrum is constructed.

For months now the Democratic Party and its allies in the mainstream media have done their best to mock, berate and run down the Tea Party movement. First they said it was "astroturf": i.e. just actors hired by the GOP to protest. But the polls soon showed that it was too widespread to be explained that way. Then they said it would burn itself out and splinter into quarreling factions. Then, when that failed to happen, they said it would split the Republican Party and to this day they cling bitterly to that hope. As election day draws near and the polls make Democrats increasingly worried, they continue to slander the Tea Party as racist - although one senses that this talking point is wearing thin. After all, do you risk alienating up to two thirds of Independents in order to rally your base? At what point does that become a losing strategy?

This article, by Mary Kate Cary in US News and World Report entitled: "The Tea Part Movement is More Mainstream Than Obama" is very interesting. She writes:

The political center has shifted. Polls show that independents have moved right and are staying there. A recent one, conducted by Democratic pollster Doug Schoen in late August for the conservative Independent Women's Voice, calls it a "fundamental realignment" as independents now lean to the right by 2 to 1. The survey asked independents what they would like candidates to do. The list of answers is clear: "Decrease the size and scope of government, cut spending and taxes

, balance the budget, reduce the federal debt, reduce the power of special interests and unions, repeal and replace the healthcare legislation, and decrease partisanship." Most Tea Partyers would agree with just about everything on that list. So would most Republicans. And they'd all agree with independents who said that they're not getting those things from Washington.

So if the majority of Independent are added to the core Republican vote, you clearly have a majority of Americans. Which party is most receptive to this new, emerging majority?

Notice what's not on that list: climate change, financial regulation, bank bailouts, auto bailouts, troop surges, lawsuits on immigration reform, and repealing "don't ask, don't tell." (The only reason healthcare reform made the list is because independents want it scaled back.) Notice too that these are precisely what we have been getting from Washington.

It's no accident that the issues important to independents are strikingly similar to the ones important to Tea Partyers. Despite what the White House says, the Tea Party agenda is more mainstream than the Obama agenda. That's why, by a 52-to-40 margin, a majority of likely voters say their views are closer to Sarah Palin's than to President Obama's, according to Rasmussen Reports. [bolding is mine]

Now this is very interesting. The list of policies the Democrats care most about are non-issues or opposed by the Tea Party movement. And the issues the Tea Party movement cares about are non-issues or opposed by the Democratic Party. We may be witnessing the first act in a decade long realignment of American politics. It could represent the consolidation of the Reagan Revolution, which after all was more like the prelude to the revolution than the revolution itself.

The biggest issue facing the Republicans is whether they can adjust to the Tea Party agenda in time to become the vehicle for the emerging right-of-center American political consensus. That remains to be seen. The Rasmussen Poll showing that likely voters are closer to those of Sarah Palin than Barack Obama by a 52-40 margin means that the Republican Party must nominate a candidate for president in 2012 who either is Sarah Palin or is endorsed enthusiastically by Sarah Palin. If the GOP fails to do this, it risks the formation of a Third Party and/or an unnecessary loss to the Democrats.

True, if the GOP does this, it risks having "moderate" or "liberal" elements split off from the Republican Party. Would they join the Democrats or form a Third Party? My suspicion is that such elements (i.e. the Castles, Murkowskis, Christs, Spectors, etc.) simply do not represent any significant percentage of the Republican vote and therefore could not get a third party off the ground. They would disperse and their loss might just gain the GOP more votes than it loses for it. The GOP would be wise to say to big-government, tax and spend, liberal Republicans "Don't let the door hit you on the way out" and hop on the Tea Party Express.

Peggy Noonan's Yardstick and Fundamental Political Change

Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter in the Reagan White House and she is now a respected columnist for the Wall Street Journal. She got caught up in the religious hysteria surrounding Barack Obama a couple of years ago and so she is now regarded by conservatives with the same suspicion attached to wobbly ex-conservatives like David Brooks and David Frum, who appeared to have joined the Ruling Class.

But Noonan's writing is occasionally brilliant and one can easily see why she was a very effective speechwriter. In her latest WSJ column she uses the metaphor of the yardstick to explain in simple terms how the Left has been successful in shifting the political spectrum left-ward during the past half century or so. With the collapse of the liberal center, the choices have increasingly come down to conservative or socialist. Noonan explains:

I see two central reasons for the tea party's rise. The first is the yardstick, and the second is the clock. First, the yardstick. Imagine that over at the 36-inch end you've got pure liberal thinking—more and larger government programs, a bigger government that costs more in the many ways that cost can be calculated. Over at the other end you've got conservative thinking—a government that is growing smaller and less demanding and is less expensive. You assume that when the two major parties are negotiating bills in Washington, they sort of lay down the yardstick and begin negotiations at the 18-inch line. Each party pulls in the direction it wants, and the dominant party moves the government a few inches in their direction.

But if you look at the past half century or so you have to think: How come even when Republicans are in charge, even when they're dominant, government has always gotten larger and more expensive? It's always grown! It's as if something inexorable in our political reality—with those who think in liberal terms dominating the establishment, the media, the academy—has always tilted the starting point in negotiations away from 18 inches, and always toward liberalism, toward the 36-inch point.

Democrats on the Hill or in the White House try to pull it up to 30, Republicans try to pull it back to 25. A deal is struck at 28. Washington Republicans call it victory: "Hey, it coulda been 29!" But regular conservative-minded or Republican voters see yet another loss. They could live with 18. They'd like eight. Instead it's 28.

This is brilliant exposition. Noonan is right that the Tea Party is challenging and changing both parties. The historical significance of the Tea Party movement is that it may very well pull the Republican Party back toward the right, the Democratic Party back toward the right and thus create a new center. If it does so, it will go some way to restoring the liberal democratic center that used to form the center of American politics with both parties overlapping much of it.

This means that the re-alignment now occurring in American politics may be as significant as that which occurred during the late 60s and early 70s when the Left took over the Democratic Party and shifted the center to a big government, high tax, welfare state position uneasily poised between socialism and liberalism. Or to put it another way, American politics was moving toward a European model where the voting public was usually presented only with two choices: socialism and socialism implemented more slowly.

It is not always remembered that there were two radical movements that trace their origins to the 1960s. In addition to the well-known New Left, the 60s also witnessed the birth of Goldwater conservatism, which eventually led to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. If the Tea Party movement succeeds in restructuring American politics in the way Noonan describes, we could be witnessing the fourth phase of the revival of American Conservatism that arose after World War II.

The first was the rise of the coalition brokered by William F. Buckley and National Review in the 50s between national security hawks, libertarians and traditional conservatives. The second was the Goldwater campaign in the mid-60s and the move of the liberal refugees from the Democratic Party into the Republican camp as Neo-conservatives. The third was the rise of the Religious Right and Reagan years and the fourth is the Tea Party era featuring the actual shrinking of the federal government for the first time in a century.

Will we look back a decade from now and view the Obama phenomenon as the last gasp of the New Deal? Will the Tea Party movement be credited with a fundamental re-alignment of the American political spectrum? Are we living in a time of change as deep and far-reaching as the 1960s? Only time will tell.

Timothy Dalrymple on the Tea Parties and Social Justice

Timothy Dalrymple has a wonderful article on the Tea Party as a social justice movement. I want to quote a couple of passages but I urge you to read the whole thing here: "Is the Tea Party a 'Social Justice' Movement?"

First, he identifies correctly (in my opinion) the source of the passion directed against the Tea Party and conservatives by liberals: [my bolding]

What I witnessed in the Tea Partiers, however, were a moral, sensible, and patriotic people who had a justified concern that their representatives have grown disconnected from those they represent, and are perpetuating a dysfunctional political culture that will thrust our country back to the precipice of economic collapse. Washington cannot pour rivers of money we do not possess into thousands of programs we do not need, in exchange for the mountains of votes that will keep them in power, and complain when the taxpayers get upset. The Tea Partiers are not objecting because they would rather leave the poor to rot than surrender a little more of their money; polls show (as I will discuss in the next part of this series) that Tea Partiers are perfectly willing to accept the need for moderate taxation and social services. Rather, Tea Partiers are objecting because they fear that Washington is caught in a vicious circle of reckless spending and political payback that will cripple our economy and harm all Americans, rich and poor.

This led to the question on my mind that morning. Since it is intent on the formation of a more accountable and more restrained government that will better serve the interest of all Americans: Is the Tea Party movement a social justice movement?

When I asked this question of my beloved liberal friends, they were mortified. There may be no quicker way to help a food-poisoned progressive empty the contents of her stomach than to suggest that the Tea Party movement is just as much a "social justice" movement as are living wage or immigrants' rights movements.

The reason for their response is simple. For many religious progressives, "social justice" has eclipsed the old God in whom they no longer quite believe. The hope of a socially just world has not complemented and enriched (as it should) but impoverished and occluded their hope of eternity with God. Thus, for them, social justice is the final refuge of the transcendent, the one pure act that remains in a tarnished world, the last vision with the power to stir the graying embers of their religious devotion.

Even religious progressives who still believe in an eternal relationship with God tend to see social justice as holy in the Hebrew sense, as that which sets them apart -- apart from the fat cats and the country clubbers, to be sure, but also apart from those Christians, the Christians who live in "Jesusland," attend megachurches, and wear flags on their lapels: the very same conservative Christians who might be found at a Tea Party rally. Thus, to suggest that the Tea Partiers are engaged in a social justice movement is not only to soil their sacred ideal with the grubby fingers of the bigoted Tea Partiers, but to suggest that progressive Christians and conservative Christians are not separated so much by the presence or absence of love for the poor but by their sense of the policies that best serve the poor and the rest of society.

Darlymple goes on to discuss the meaning of the term "social justice" and while I cannot reproduce his whole discussion, here are some salient bits the whet your appetite:

Whether the Tea Party movement actually is a social justice movement obviously depends on how the term is defined. The irony is that one cannot exclude the Tea Party from the social justice category without betraying that "social justice" is a partisan political theory. . . .

When Glenn Beck condemned social justice as a "code word" for liberal political activism, the question that was presented to progressive activists like Jim Wallis was whether social justice is the sole province of left-wing political agitators. With apologies to Albert Einstein, we distinguish between general and special theories of social justice. The general theory is that "social justice is in fact a personal commitment to serve the poor and to attack the conditions that lead to poverty." That is how Jim Wallis defined the term in a Washington Post column. The special theory, by contrast, asserts that social justice is when one attacks "the conditions that lead to poverty" by advocating specifically the policies that liberals prefer. In other words, on the special theory, it is not enough to fight for the conditions that would allow the poor to prosper; one must do so through redistributionist policies, or living wage movements, or stronger unions, or etc. . . .

. . . when Wallis is pressed on whether he is merely anointing his own political preferences in religious rhetoric, he retreats to the general theory of social justice. People all over the spectrum, he says, are social justice Christians; what is important is simply "to stand up for the poor, even against wealth and power when necessary."

The Catholic theologian Michael Novak also offers a universal definition of social justice. After noting all the ambiguities in its history and meaning, Novak suggests that social justice is a joint, cooperative action (thus "social" in its form) for the good of the whole of society (and thus "social" in its end). By this definition, social justice is not an "ideological marker," but is "ideologically neutral." Social justice "is practiced both by those on the left and those on the right" because there is "more than one way to imagine the future good of society." If we adopt Novak's definition, or Wallis' universal definition, then the Tea Party movement is in fact a social justice movement. The great majority of those attending the rallies would tell you that the policies they advocate are for the common good of all, including the poor.

Yet Wallis does not actually hold to the universal theory of social justice. When Wallis actually uses social justice language amongst his supporters, it clearly means pressing for the systemic changes that Wallis and other leaders of "the faith community" prefer. I have never seen Wallis refer to a movement pressing for conservative policies, even when those policies are overtly intended to serve the poor and needy, as a social justice action.

One might respond that movements must press for a biblical vision of justice in order to qualify for the social justice category, and that conservative policies are simply not oriented toward the biblical ideal. To which the answer must be: According to whom? Countless thousands of conservative Christians vote the way they do, and press for the policies they do, precisely because they believe that they fulfill the biblical ideal of justice. . . .

Thus one must adopt the general, ideologically neutral theory of social justice, and then accept that all sorts of activities from soup kitchens to living wage demonstrations to, yes, Tea Party rallies, can count as social justice movements -- or else one must adopt the special, partisan theory of social justice and accept that Glenn Beck had a point. I leave it to my liberal friends to determine which is the more painful.

The dilemma for leftists articulated in that last paragraph is brilliant and true. Jim Wallis calls continually for a new conversation but what he really means is for letting left-wing rhetoric become dominant in places it has not previously been heard. Darlymple is asking for an actual debate between those advocating conservative and socialist methods for serving justice and fighting poverty.

This would require the Left to be willing to allow its left-wing theories to be placed in questioned without resorting to attacks on the character and motivations of conservatives. Are they willing to do that? In my experience most are not and therein lies the problem with having a new conversation.

Jim Wallis Attacks the Tea Party: What are His Arguments?

Jim Wallis thinks Left-wing socialism is Christian but Tea Party libertarianism is not. He wants a debate. Fine, let's have it. I'm ready to debate Jim Wallis anytime. In what follows, I respond to his article. My emphases in bold and my comments are in [square brackets and red.]

"The insurgent Tea Party and its Libertarian philosophy is a political phenomenon, not a religious one. [OK, why is this relevant? Jim doesn't start off most of his articles by saying "Socialism (or Big Government Liberalism or the Welfare State) is a political phenomenon not a religious one. Maybe he should, unless he is trying to transform the Gospel into a political ideology. I think most Christians who support the Tea Party would agree that libertarian political philosophy is not the content of the Christian gospel but they would quite reasonably see Wallis's teachings as implying that Big Government liberalism, if not outright socialism, is the Christian gospel.] Like the Democratic and Republican parties it seeks to challenge, it is a secular movement, not a Christian one. As with both major political parties, people who regard themselves as Christians may be involved in, or sympathetic to, the new Tea Party; but that doesn’t make it “Christian.” [Just as Christian democratic socialist don't make democratic socialism "Christian."] But like the philosophies and policies of the major political parties, the Tea Party can legitimately be examined on the basis of Christian principles -- and it should be. [Agreed.]

Since the Tea Party is getting such national attention, our God’s Politics blog is going to begin a dialogue on this question: Just how Christian is the Tea Party Movement -- and the Libertarian political philosophy that lies behind it? Let me start the dialogue here. And please join in.

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds individual rights as its supreme value and considers government the major obstacle. It tends to be liberal on cultural and moral issues and conservative on fiscal, economic, and foreign policy. [This is true of some libertarians but not all by any means. Many economic libertarians are actually social conservatives on cultural and moral issues. Libertarianism is an older political philosophy than welfare state liberalism - not a recent "phenomenon" - and it has historically been just one co-belligerent in the conservative coalition in America along with traditional conservatives and social conservatives like me plus neoconservatives and foreign policy hawks. I would see libertarians as allies even though I am not one personally. I do think they are much less dangerous than the socialists in the Democratic coalition Wallis is part of. I'm happy to support smaller government in alliance with libertarians who support moral standards as on the pro-life issue for example.] This “just leave me alone and don’t spend my money” option is growing quickly in American life, as we have seen in the Tea Party movement. [It may be growing but the opposite philosophy currently controls the Presidency, both houses of Congress and at least half of the Supreme Court. So the "take-over" is not exactly imminent.] Libertarianism has been an undercurrent in the Republican Party for some time, [this is an attempt to paint it as less than mainstream despite it majority status among America voters] and has been in the news lately due to the primary election win of Rand Paul as the Republican candidate for a Senate seat in Kentucky. [Typical Democratic talking points - attack Rand Paul - but, will this work any better than the attacks on the Arizona immigration bill which are now backfiring with independent voters?]

. . . snip . . .

Is such a philosophy Christian? In several major aspects of biblical ethics, I would suggest that Libertarianism falls short.

1. The Libertarian enshrinement of individual choice is not the pre-eminent Christian virtue. Emphasizing individual rights at the expense of others violates the common good, a central Christian teaching and tradition. [It is somewhat hypocritical to attack libertarians for emphasizing individual rights when you support a liberal philosophy that exalts individual choice on abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce and other issues concerning sexual ethics, family matters and the sanctity of human life. Why isn't Wallis attacking the "libertarianism" and "individualism" of the Left on these issues? When he sides with the social conservatives, THEN he will have the right to criticize the libertarians on individualism.] The Christian answer to the question “Are we our brother’s keeper?” is decidedly “Yes.” [Yes, but it is a huge leap to define that "we" as the State rather than us Christians or the Church.] Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God and love our neighbor. Loving your neighbor is a better Christian response than telling your neighbor to leave you alone. Both compassion and social justice are fundamental Christian commitments, [depends on what you mean by "social justice" here - if you are trying to smuggle in a commitment to socialism, that is not acceptable] and while the Christian community is responsible for living out both, government is also held accountable to the requirements of justice and mercy. Both Christians on the Right and the Left have raised questions about Libertarian abandonment of the most vulnerable — whether that means unborn lives or the poor. [As a pro-lifer, I'd rather take my chances with the Tea Partiers rather than with the supposedly compassionate Democratic Party!]

Just look at the biblical prophets in their condemnation of injustice to the poor, and how they frequently follow those statements by requiring the king (the government) to act justly (a requirement that applied both to the kings of Israel and to foreign potentates). Jeremiah, speaking of King Josiah, said, “He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well” (Jeremiah 22:16). Amos instructs the courts (the government) to “Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts” (Amos 5:15). The prophets hold kings, rulers, judges, and employers accountable to the demands of justice and mercy. [Notice that there is nothing in these verses about socialism or the welfare state or redistribution of wealth. The prophets were talking about justice and the rule of law - major conservative principles. And they were critics of the advent of "big government" under the Kings.]

2. An anti-government ideology just isn’t biblical. In Romans 13, the apostle Paul (not the Kentucky Senate candidate) describes the role and vocation of government; in addition to the church, government also plays a role in God’s plan and purposes. Preserving the social order, punishing evil and rewarding good, and protecting the common good are all prescribed; we are even instructed to pay taxes for those purposes! Sorry, Tea Party. Of course, debating the size and role of government is always a fair and good discussion, and most of us would prefer smart and effective to “big” or “small” government. [It is not anti-government for libertarians to want government to stick to core functions of enforcing justice and national defense rather than intruding into every area of life and replacing the family as the main provider of income to most citizens. Libertarians are not anti-government; they just have a different view of its proper function than Wallis does.]

Revelation 13 depicts the state as a totalitarian beast — a metaphor for Rome, which was persecuting the Christians. This passage serves as a clear warning about the abuse of governmental power. But a power-hungry government is clearly an aberration [one wonders how much history Wallis reads when he throws out an over-generalization like that] and violation of the proper role of government in protecting its citizens and upholding the demands of fairness and justice. To disparage government per se — to see government as the central problem in society — is simply not a biblical position. [As Rom. 13 and Rev. 13 demonstrate, government can be either a servant of the people or an out-of-control monster and the bigger the government is the more of a danger it is. Libertarians don't disagree with that.]

3. The Libertarians’ supreme confidence in the market is not consistent with a biblical view of human nature and sin. [I'm glad Wallis has rediscovered the doctrine of sin all of a sudden! But . . . the Big Government Liberal's supreme confidence in the State is not consistent with a biblical view of human nature and sin.] The exclusive focus on government as the central problem ignores the problems of other social sectors, and in particular, the market. [The typical Big Government liberal exclusive focus on the market as the problem ignores the problems of other sectors, and in particular, the State.] When government regulation is the enemy, the market is set free to pursue its own self-interest [the market does not have an "interest" because it is not a person - any more than a government office has an interest without someone filling that office who does have "interests." A market is a democratic mechanism for setting prices as opposed to prices being set arbitrarily by bureaucrats on the basis of central planning] without regard for public safety, the common good, and the protection of the environment — which Christians regard as God’s creation. Libertarians seem to believe in the myth of the sinless market [again, it is not the market that is sinful and to demonize the only economic system in the world to have lifted the majority of the population out of poverty like this is just irresponsible Marxist propaganda] and that the self-interest of business owners or corporations will serve the interests of society; and if they don’t, it’s not government’s role to correct it. [This places all power in the hands of the State. Apparently the Christian view of human nature and sin don't apply to anyone who gets elected or hired as a government bureaucrat. There is a difference between the proper role of government: to ensure the rule of law and uphold justice and the falsely expanded role of government to replace the market and ensure equality of outcomes.]

But such theorizing ignores the practical issues that the public sector has to solve. Should big oil companies like BP simply be allowed to spew oil into the ocean? [No libertarian I've ever met has ever said yes to that -a straw man argument coupled with an appeal to emotion.] And is regulating them really un-American? Do we really want nobody to inspect our meat, make sure our kids’ toys are safe, or police the polluters to keep our air clean? Do we really want owners of restaurants and hotels to be able to decide whom they will or won’t serve, or should liquor store owners also be able to sell alcohol to our kids? Given the reality of sin in all human institutions, doesn’t a political process that provides both accountability and checks and balances make both theological and practical sense? [Once all power is in the hands of the State, there is no check and balance. The key is balance. Some regulation is good but not all. Wallis is just as extreme as the straw man on the other side. ] C.S. Lewis once said that we need democracy not because people are essentially good, but because they often are not. Democratic accountability is essential to preventing the market from becoming a beast of corporate totalitarianism – just as it is essential for the government. [Here we are confusing two very different things: the rule of law and socialist redistribution of wealth by the administrative state. The State should enforce law with regard to corporations and ensure fairness. But it should not appropriate profits arbitrarily for its own purposes. This is a mixed up jumble.] And God’s priorities should determine ours, not the priorities of the Chamber of Commerce. [Wallis can't imagine God and the CoC ever being on the same page on anything! He has really drunk the Kool-Aid.]

4. The Libertarian preference for the strong over the weak is decidedly un-Christian. “Leave me alone to make my own choices and spend my own money” is a political philosophy that puts those who need help at a real disadvantage. And those who need help are central to any Christian evaluation of political philosophy. “As you have done to the least of these,” says Jesus, “You have done to me.” And “Blessed are those who are just left alone” has still not made the list of Beatitudes. [Most of those in the Tea Party movement have been more influenced by Christianity than by Nietzsche and Darwinand would agree with the need to help the poor and weak. There has never been a Nietzschean libertarian government anywhere in the Western world precisely because of the influence of Christianity, so this is another straw man.] To anticipate the Libertarian response, let me just say that private charity is simply not enough to satisfy the demands of either fairness or justice, let alone compassion. [Private charity is the foundation of the Western world and far more effective, far less corrupt and much more compassionate than government welfare checks. Government to government aid to Third World countries is generally a disaster. World Vision etc. is a much better option.] When the system is designed to protect the privileges of the already strong and make the weak even more defenseless and vulnerable, something is wrong with the system. [But Wallis's real problem with private charity is not that it won't be able to deal with absolute poverty (because it clearly can do so), but rather that it can't erase relative poverty by making the rich poorer and the poor richer until everyone is about the same. Only socialism can do that.]

5. Finally, I am just going to say it. There is something wrong with a political movement like the Tea Party which is almost all white. [First, the Tea Party is not all white. Second, does this mean that Wallis' lily white Episcopal Church must also be racist? Third, this is a dirty and low blow that is an insult to the tens of millions of ordinary middle class Americans who support the Tea Party.] Does that mean every member of the Tea Party is racist? Likely not. [Every member - only likely not?!] But is an undercurrent of white resentment part of the Tea Party ethos, and would there even be a Tea Party if the president of the United States weren’t the first black man to occupy that office? [How does Wallis know that? It is nothing but sheer projection onto the people he hypocritically claims to want to dialogue with. He is saying: "You are a bunch of racist bigots; I have no evidence but I just know it. Now, how about having a nice polite dialogue?" Now who is being prejudiced here?] It’s time we had some honest answers to that question. [Oh, and by the way you are all liars too. Now for the polite dialogue?] And as far as I can tell, Libertarianism has never been much of a multi-cultural movement. Need I say that racism — overt, implied, or even subtle — is not a Christian virtue.

Wallis sure has funny ideas about how to go about having a dialogue. But if you ask me, he would be better off hurling his rocks from a safe distance because he hasn't got much of an argument for his position.

The Tea Party, the New York Times and Fascism

The New York Times has a story here on the Tea Party. Of course it is focused on the demographic make-up of the movement rather than what it stands for or is saying. If you want to see a story on the ten main planks or policies of the Tea Party, you can go here, as if anybody cared.

The liberal media has constructed a narrative going all the way back to the Town Hall meetings last summer in which the only people who could possibly be against Obama's "expand the welfare state" agenda must be white racists and extremists.

Now that the Tea Party gains the support of 24% of the American people, will the liberal media continue to label 24% of the population white, racist and extremist? Really, if there are that many neo-Nazis and white supremacist militia members, you would think the American Government would have been overthrown by now.

Anyway, the NYT story contains some interesting facts. For example, the average Tea Party member is better educated than the average American and wealthier, perhaps because they are on average older. They sound pretty much like conservative Republicans from all parts of the country and their views are held by many Independent voters as well. For all its trying, the NYT was not able to dig up anything really extremist about their views.

They do tend to take the Constitution as authoritative until changed, instead of being a mere symbol that can be interpreted in any way that the current majority wishes. Does that make them Fascists? It actually makes them a bulwark against fascism and communism.

Hmmm. . . you don't suppose? Nah. . . it couldn't be. That wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the liberal media hates them so much. No, it couldn't be that. You think?

Journo-politico Violence: Iowahawk Has Warned You!

The Democratic Party has been attempting to portray the Tea Party Movement as a group of racist, right-wing fanatics. Obviously, they have been spending more time with Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals than with Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

A Gallup poll shows the Tea Party Movement to be made up of 49% Republicans, 43% Independents and 8% Democrats. Who knew there were that many racist, right-wing fanatics within the Democratic Party? Maybe after the demonizing and dismissing tactic blows up in their faces, the Democrats will shift gears and treat the Tea Partiers like normal voters with concerns. To do so they will have to give up their juvenile habit of referring to them using a sexual slang term best left in the gutter where they found it.

Anyway, the attempt to link all those who oppose the health care government takeover with violence and rabble rousing continues to shape the narrative the Democrats and their tame media fellow travelers are putting out there. Enter Iowahawk with his usual ironic satire.

"Journo-politico Violence: Deadly Threat or Menacing Trend?

A Public Safety Alert from David Burge
Executive Director and Chief Research Officer
The Media Violence Project / Center for the Study of Politician Sociopathy

At the Media Violence Project, our charter is to protect public safety by researching, documenting and raising awareness about the ever-increasing wave of violent, disgusting crimes perpetrated by members of the American news media. It is a largely thankless task -- often requiring a cast iron stomach -- but if our work has prevented one more American child from falling victim to a criminally insane anchorman or newspaper reporter, it will all have been worth it.

Every day at the MVP we receive emails from concerned citizens, such as this:

Dear Mr. Burge:

I have read with increasing alarm new reports of violence erupting around our country. For example, the recent rampaging campus murderer in Huntsville, Alabama; the Austin, Texas man who flew his plane into an office building; and the unhinged shooter at the Pentagon. Do you suspect these people may have been journalists? Also, what can I do to prevent my family from falling victim to these violent journalists?

Please do not print my name, as I live near a journalist and am concerned about my safety.

Name Withheld By Request

Dear "Name Withheld By Request," let me first say these are excellent questions. Second, let me also say that I do not withhold names by request. Your name is Michael R. Bartolo, and you live at 2311 Briarcliff Court, Brown Deer, WI.

But let's get to the crux of your questions: yes, in the cases you cited there is some circumstantial evidence that the alleged perpetrators harbored pre-journalistic tendencies (for instance, violent hatred of George Bush and capitalism, and messianic obsession with President Obama), but it doesn't appear they were actual professional members of the news media. For one thing, unlike the vast majority of journalists, all of the suspects involved in these crimes reportedly had actual marketable skills -- biochemistry, computer programming, growing weed, and so on. Until further evidence of journalism emerges, I believe we can attribute these incidents to a handful of those rare random psychopaths who do not possess press credentials.

Unfortunately, it now appears that these are the exceptions that prove the rule. In the two years since the MVP issued our first report, another tidal wave of media-related bizarre or violent crimes has come to light, each more shocking than the last. Like CNN reporter Richard Quest, arrested in New York's Central Park in 2008 brandishing a noose or ABC Miami reporter Jeffrey Weinsier, charged with entering a school with a firearm. Or New Hampshire Union Leader sports writer Kevin Provencher, charged with operating a prostitution ring. It is unknown whether Provencher's alleged activities were related to WABC New York sports anchor Marvell Scott, who was arrested earlier this year for allegedly raping a 14-year old prostitute. It is also unclear whether this Granite State "mack daddy" used a "strong pimp hand" with his "bitches," but he might have shared tips and techniques with fellow journalists like Jason Scott Kidd, charged in 2009 with hitting a woman in the face at a Mexican restaurant, Gawker editor Richard "Date Rape Tips" Blakely, arrested for domestic violence, or Boise anchorman and alleged wife beater David Tester.

Yet, dangerous as journalists, are there is an even greater menace to ordinary citizens:

"And yet, Americans may be facing an even worse wave of domestic attacks from the only organized group arguably even more violent, stupid and useless than the news media: elected public officials.

"In response to growing public outcry, the board of the Media Violence Project earlier this morning established a new affiliate organization, the Center for the Study of Politician Sociopathy. What our comprehensive 15 minute Google search revealed was an explosive outbreak of violence that, if trends continue, may actually eclipse the media public safety crisis by November. Most Americans were relieved to hear of the resignation of Congress's disgraced predator Eric Massa, but we must realize his ticklefight dungeon was only one cell in a complex nationwide network of politicians with a thirst for violence or perversion. Like Illinois Lt. Governor candidate Scott Cohen, arrested for assaulting and holding a knife to throat of his prostitute ex-girlfriend. Or former U.S. congressman Craig Washington, indicted for aggravated assault in a shooting incident. Or Tennessee State rep and judiciary committee chairman Rob Briley, who allegedly tried to kick the window of a state patrol car after leading police on a drunken 100 mph car chase. Or California U.S. congressman Bob Filner, arrested for security tresspass and assaulting airport workers. Or Racine, WI mayor Gary Becker, facing five counts of felony child sex crimes.

"There's an deep undercurrent of anger, alienation and frustration in Congress, as well as America's statehouses and city halls," explains CSPS study director Vadid Grube. "They feel that voters are no longer listening to them. Then come the drugs, followed by the extensive, journalist-like paranoid fantasies. And then... snap.""

Read it all here. In case you haven't noticed, the funniest thing about this whole spoof is that if you click on the links you will find that every one is legitimate. Not a single one goes to The Onion! Every link is for real. Think about that.

When they begin to laugh at you . . . it's time to go back to the propaganda drawing board.