Me and the Nation of Tea Party

As you probably have heard, Nashville's Opryland Resort is the site for this weekend's Tea Party Nation Convention (here). For the record, I'm skeptical of the "Tea Party Movement." I have hesitated to write on the subject, for various reasons, but one is because I am glad to see more people taking an interest in public policy, and these people are "taking an interest" in a a good sense: that is, for the purpose of smaller government and increased liberties. I and the fam attended a local rally, and I can't say that I don't sympathize with any of "the movement's" stated ideals, but some of the passion or excitement is going to the head of many participants . . . and clouding their thinking on the potential for any lasting or substantive effect on our political system.

That being said, Charles Krauthammer - The great peasant revolt of 2010 - washingtonpost.com; here's an excerpt:

That brings us to Part 2 of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement and self-interest.

It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good. A 2002 New York Times obituary for philosopher Robert Nozick explained that the strongly libertarian implications of Nozick's masterwork, 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia,' 'proved comforting to the right, which was grateful for what it embraced as philosophical justification.' The right, you see, is grateful when a bright intellectual can graft some philosophical rationalization onto its thoroughly base and self-regarding politics.

This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama's social democratic agenda -- which couldn't get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts -- is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.

By contrast, Democratic opposition to George W. Bush -- from Iraq to Social Security reform -- constituted dissent. And dissent, we were told at the time, including by candidate Obama, is 'one of the truest expressions of patriotism.'

No more. Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. 'They made a decision,' explained David Axelrod, 'they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed' -- a perfect expression of liberals' conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country's, that their idea of the public good is the public's, that their failure is therefore the nation's.