A takedown of Cass Sunstein’s idiotic theory:
We aren’t seeing a right-leaning populist surge today because of Alger Hiss; we are seeing it because many Americans believe that President Obama’s liberal and technocratic agenda represents a threat to a way of life they value. We are seeing it because many Americans blame the establishment of both parties both for the financial crisis and for the vast transfer of resources to the wealthy that came after the crash. We are seeing it because whether you look at foreign or domestic policy, the technocratic suggestions of the Great and the Good have not been helping ordinary Americans much for the last 20 years.
Via Meadia isn’t a Tea Party house organ, and any tea parties at the stately Mead manor are more about Earl Grey than Ayn Rand. But we don’t think Tea Partiers are wrong to see President Obama’s political goals as fundamentally opposed to their own vision of what America should be. They aren’t angry because they are stupid, and deep disagreement with technocratic liberalism is not a mental disease.
But if it is, ObamaCare will cover it. One way or the other.
It seems possible that Cass Sunstein is stupid enough to believe – as one moronic poster here has claimed – that the Tea Parties are the modern incarnation of the John Birch Society. I didn’t think there were two people that dumb but perhaps I was wrong.
Hate to clue ol’ Cass in, but the vast majority of Ta Partiers weren’t even alive (much less politically aware) when Alger Hiss became a household word. To quote a headline at another blog, “Newsflash! Most of the people in America AREN’T full-on political junkies!”
Of course, Cass is a member of the same tribe that spent most of the last decade blaming George Bush’s election on… Richard Nixon’s resignation. So you can’t expect too much from him, can you?
I agree that Sunstein is definitely living in the past . . . but the issue he mentions is significant. Hiss was the first (but by no means the last) case in which the liberal “elites” were blatantly wrong and dishonest, and I think that did help to increase the distrust of most Americans.
So he’s silly to blame it all on the Hiss case, but he may be right that it was an important early moment.
We don’t need to compare the tea party to anything else. They are what they are. What we need to do, every time they open their mouths, is denounce those that would claim tea party members to be extreme for wanting smaller government, less taxes and constitutional equal justice. Oh, and cleaning up after themselves when they rally.
We can’t even whisper that the left is unpatriotic? I’m shouting it from the roof.