David Brooks, the erstwhile conservative ensconced at the New York Times, ponders, whilst holding his nose, the political influence of the current tea party-goers. In the course of his essay he notes the growing disdain of the common people for the dogmas tightly embraced by the educated elites:
Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.
The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.
The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should "go our own way" has risen sharply.
A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.
The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy - with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.
This is all true except for the incredibly obtuse assertion that the tea partiers are defined by what they are against. This is a libel. These simple folk oppose the things that Brooks lists because they are firmly committed to truth, transparency, life, and constitutionally protected freedoms. It's what they are for that defines them and motivates them to turn out by the thousands to protest the erosion of these rights and values at the hands of a supercilious political class that regards these people, much as Brooks does, as a bunch of rubes.
The tea party crowd do indeed oppose the concentration power in the educated elites, tacitly agreeing with William Buckley who once opined that he'd rather be governed by the first one hundred names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. The educated class is no more moral nor competent than anyone else in this country - they only think themselves to be - and most "tea partiers" recognize that conceit for what it is.
RLC
