David Brooks would have us believe that the Tea Partiers are much like the New Leftists of the sixties.
…the core commonality is this: Members of both movements believe in what you might call mass innocence. Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures. “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains,” is how Rousseau put it.
I think he misunderstands the Tea Party movement, and he’s surprisingly uninformed about the New Left, which was anything but a bunch of Rousseauan romantics. In 1962, when I was at the University of Wisconsin in 1962, the Port Huron Statement, the formal origin of SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, was drafted. I knew several of the drafters (the main author was Tom Hayden, at the University of Michigan). They would gather in the Rathskellar of the Student Union, where I spent a lot of time playing bridge, and we’d talk.
The Port Huron guys fancied themselves serious intellectuals, not street theater people. And they didn’t think that “the people are pure and virtuous;” they thought most people were alienated, apathetic, and manipulated. They were Marxists and Marcusians, students of the Frankfurt School, and the like. And they saw the university as the logical headquarters for a movement that could transform society. Just read the first paragraph of their definition of a new left:
Any new left in America must be, in large measure, a left with real intellectual skills, committed to deliberativeness, honesty, reflection as working tools. The university permits the political life to be an adjunct to the academic one, and action to be informed by reason.
Brooks seems to believe that the New Left wanted greater individual freedom — as the Tea Partiers surely do — but in fact the Port Huron Statement calls for more centralized control. Lots more: “not only solutions to our present social needs but our future expansion rests upon our willingness to enlarge the ‘public sector’ greatly.” Some of the language has become very familiar to us (and rejected by the Tea Partiers). For example:
.…medical care must become recognized as a lifetime human right just as vital as food, shelter and clothing — the Federal government should guarantee health insurance as a basic social service turning medical treatment into a social habit, not just an occasion of crisis, fighting sickness among the aged, not just by making medical care financially feasible but by reducing sickness among children and younger people.
Brooks confuses the New Left with the Yippies, which is a pretty serious confusion and it’s confirmed by his comparison of Glenn Beck with Abbie Hoffman. Hoffman couldn’t pass the entrance exam to the New Left.
PJM Home
Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West
The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction
The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We’ll Win.
Tocqueville on American Character: Why Tocqueville’s Brilliant Exploraton of the American Spirit is as Vital and Important Today as it was Nearly Two Hundred Years Ago
Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago
Freedom Betrayed: How America led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War and Walked Away
Brooks isn’t nearly as thoughtful or insightful as he believes himself to be, and your essay is another example of this, Michael. This is someone who, after all, became convinced Obama was presidential material after seeing his pants-crease. He’s a cocktail conservative, someone content to “fight the good fight and then lose gracefully,” as long as he can still be invited to the right dinner parties in DC and New York. I gave up on him as a serious analyst long ago.
WTF? David Brooks must’ve not gotten that “TEA” in Tea Party stands for Taxed Enough Already instead of “teabagging.”
I find Brooks a mere lackey…
I think Mr. Brooks is still fixated on the creases of Obama’s trousers.
What confuses me is why otherwise intelligent people take Davis Brooks seriously at all.
Remove him from his protected climate controlled elitist bubble and he would perish.
When and if David Brooks recovers from his bromance, I’ll start reading him again. Maybe I’m the only one but all these men who have a crush on the President give me the creeps. And yes, the ones who felt that way about Dubya and Reagan were equally creepy. When did many pundits start acting like fan club presidents instead of objective observers? Can’t imagine why newspapers around the country are failing or why MSNBC is unwatchable now.
WE NEED TO BE IN D.C. ON MARCH 16TH TO MARCH AGAINST THIS TOTALITARIAN GOVERNMENT AND THESE CRIMINALS.
I do not understand why intelligent commentators “defend” their positions by arguing on the terms set by “the other side”. IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO DEFEND OR JUSTIFY THE TEAPARTIES in any terms TO ANYONE. It is a “free” country and “liberals” do not OR SHOULD NOT set the terms for discourse.They believe they do or should because since the “election” in Chicago of John F. Kennedy the “field of battle”, i.e the mores and laws of the US have been ceded to them, in accepting their censorship/political correctness to describe and handcuff American society. Except for a few stolid agencies which continued to publish and debate the ground, the base, of the American ethos / LAW and thus “fight their corner”. Surrender of the field of battle THE ADHERENCE TO THE LAW /the CONSTITUTION if ceded is acceptance of defeat. Compel the “soldiers” of the “opponents” to that territory by refusal to meet them on any other. Unless you give into them, they cannot win on the terms of the American foundation when interpreted honourably by its guardians. Anything else is simply battle between rival gangs in expensive clothes with smooth manners. Is such a battle worth the candle?
My interest in Brooks has expired. I did not click the link to his piece.
Remember his Bobos in Paradise, in which he rhapsodized about how pragmatic and nonpartisan was the Clinton constituency in the professional classes? Iirc I’ve previously posted this Note to Brooks: people seem pragmatic and nonpartisan when they’re getting everything they want.
I’ve read that William Buckley decided not to make Brooks his editorial successor at National Review. Thank goodness. It’s understandable that the current staff are no Bill Buckleys (who is?), but Brooks would have wrecked the magazine outright.
Brooks meets the definition of “useful idiot”. The Tea Party tracks closer to the Libertarians than anything else. I am a member and for the most part we are disenfranchised Republicans. We want the Republican party to remember that smaller government includes them!
Brooks is a disappointing pundit. a fence sitting pseudo intellectual.
actually I a finding many so called conservatives have compromised themselves in this “post modern world”. it is like most everyone is infected with a disease that makes them blind to their inconsistancies.
so far I have found that you Michael are one of the exceptions.
Regards
That’s just how we roll @ http://www.Indoctrinate-U.com
It’s difficult to watch Brooks talk policy with Shields when he can’t even swack a softball Shields offers up right back at him – it’s like he’s basically agreeing with whatever seems to ooze out of the jowls of Shields. It’s not new news that Brooks isn’t a conservative; he’s a professional commentator, who seems to lack the historical knowledge of public policy, economics, and finance, that might help him better buttress his arguments. I suspect he does not want to wade into the details too much, because he’ll discover that the facts don’t support what he thinks he should be writing or speaking about. If your arguments are getting easily shot down by Shields, who is a quite capable stand-in for the definition of “frumpiness”, you should probably consider another line of work – or simply jump ship.
Are these people (leftist media) really this stupid or do they just think we are?
This is someone who, after all, became convinced Obama was presidential material after seeing his pants-crease. He’s a cocktail conservative, someone content to “fight the good fight and then lose gracefully,” as long as he can still be invited to the right dinner parties in DC and New York. I gave up on him as a serious analyst long ago.
Did he have another “frisson”?
Brooks has a weird job which is to be the useful ‘conservative’ at the New York Times–as he used to do for the Mcneil-Lehrer newshour. As a designated conservative, he is presumed to be more useful in undermining conservatives.
He is a windbag with lots of words and nothing to say.
Every column I have read from Brooks betrays a ridiculous out-of-touch man with what goes around him. The Tea Party Movement overlaps quite nicely with anything from Kirk or Buckley or other conservatives. It is ordered liberty, limited government, free-market economics.
David never really understands because he does not take the time to actually learn things. He puts himself in a bivouac of urban and DC type envionment and cannot see what is happening.
When I was a young boy, we had pet hamsters and rats and we would make mazes for them so we could test them to learn the way throught he maze to get the treat. It was fun. David reminds me of a rat who just can’t find his way through a maze soon enough before it is changed.
He seems to be perpetually NOT on top of stuff.
Mr. Brooks is just trying to make a buck off of anything critical one can say against the Tea Party. “Back Handed Compliment” or not.
The main problem I have with this fool, and his fellow travellers on the Left, is the desire themselves to destroy this country and Western culture as a whole, all while projecting any blame onto “the other.”
This band of whiners, including Brooks on the Right and far too many on the Left, claim to defend “civilization” against the Tea Partiers. Ahh, projection. It is they who actually are the threat of our culture of freedom.
Let’s clarify one term: “civilization” means an advanced state of cultural, and material development in human society, which is reached through progress in sciences and technology, including intellectual refinement.
A cornerstone in the long process of human civilization is the Enlightment. Western civilization today is still based on this philosophy.
Kant answers the question in his work, “What is Enlightment?” so: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know!] Have courage to use your own understanding! Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature.”
But today’s modern band of whiners refuse the necessary self-reflection to define civilization as anything other than what comes through Government power. And so, because Tea Partiers fight ever-increasing taxes and regulations imposed by governments, they perceive them as attacking civilization.
But, no – the Tea Partiers follow the concept of the Enlightment and dare to use their own understanding. This great nation was built exactly because enlighted people dared to oppose taxes and out-of-touch government. In this sense, these pundits are traitors at least of the Enlightenment, if not also of America.
David Brooks is part of sucker-that-can-be-seen-mile-away class.
Only liberals think liberals are smart. Everyone else thinks they’re jackasses.
Brooks isn’t even a Useful Idiot. The real Useful Idiots will kick him to the curb as soon as they themselves figure out what is going on.
Hint to Mr Brooks: the New Leftists were, shocker!, leftists, and they are running the country now. The Tea Party people HATE the new leftists running the country.
Repeat after me….
It’s fascinating how the left really thinks centralized control will equal more individual freedom. They truly seem to believe this. I can’t imagine why, but they do.
Phineas got it in post #1.
In the SDS preamble:
Lordy. They wanted a new left committed to being deliberative rather than to actually, like, deliberating?
I think I see the problem.
It’s hard to top Phineas on the first post, but I’d like to point out that I have a number of liberal friends who regard Brooks as “my kind of conservative” and who send me his tripe regularly as if to prove their own openness to non-lefty discourse.
Frankly, I think that Brooks is little more than an intellectual opportunist. His ridiculous support for Obama seems to have waned a bit as the preposterosities of the Obamanation become all too evident. So now his tack is to promote an image of himself as the journalistic avatar of Balance and Reason. But the only way he can pull off the charade is to set up straw figures of, for instance, Obama as a “centrist progressive” (rather than the far-left ideologue and ignoramus he obviously is) and of the tea-party types as right-wing versions of 60’s radicals (rather than the ordinary, generally apolitical Americans most of them are).
Brooks’s method of cultivating the image of Mr. Balance is simple distortion of a not particularly subtle variety. I think it all may have something to do with his support for abortion; if you’re wrong on THAT most basic “issue,” your views on quite a number of lesser matters are likely to be skewed as well, with small chance of noticing the shiftiness and slipperiness of the grounds on which you stand.
“The university is a more sensible place than a political party for these two traditions to begin to discuss their differences and look for political synthesis.”
And here is the crux of the matter: we allow the leftists to live off the goosefat of the land while they oh so smartly throttle the goose with their conceited, tyrannous concepts of government.
Education should be a culling process; our economy would thrive with but half the production of higher degrees we endure today. A further plus would be to eject millions of the promoters of tyranny from the public trough; the necessity of earning a living in the private sector would considerably cramp their activism.
Mr. Brooks is the NEW YORK TIMES’ idea of a conservative…just as David Gergen was the house conservative for PBS…before he was hired away to serve in the CLINTON White House.
I am fully convinced that the reason ABC hired George Will as their house Republican was because he usually wore a bow tie on the air. With his round glasses (then, out of style)his tie and short hair (at least for the early 80s)…he represented for ABC a retro-america they thought defined Republicanism.
Big Media does not want to entertain conservative ideas, they only want them brought up to be pulverized by the four other people on their panels or editorial boards who are lefties.
i dont believe – I KNOW – I Know coworkers and relatives who are so pathetic and stupid – they are the teabaggers!
I know Tam hayden from the 19702 and your characterture of him is a LIE
but thats all GOpers do is lie and obfuscate!
Did you read Brooks’ “educated classes” remarks awhile back? He has nothing but contempt for conservatives or Republicans for that matter. Brooks was chosen by liberals to represent the views of conservatism. All he does is apologize for conservatives. Give us a break, David- find a new line of work.
David Brooks: “Nice pants!” Well, when you’re down on your knees, what you see are the creases.
Michael, when there is so much darkness around, in the eyes of those who demonize the Tea Party Brigades, they have a choice: Either use the darkness to describe the darkness, or use what they consider to be in the light, and similar to the darkness, to describe the darkness.
The first option is precluded because it gives credence to what they conclude does not deserve credence. Therefore, just as the Nazis swore that there is life not worthy of life, and this must be stamped out – so too the post-modern crowd has to stamp out the premise that there is more to life than the definable. For, how many post-modernists would dare answer this question: How is it that truth does not need
the acceptance of people.
Why is it that we are talking about David Brooks?
He writes for a paper that no one reads, and he is on a television show that nobody watches.
If we quit acting like he had something to say, he’ll just fade away.
Who in hell ever agreed that David Brooks was or is a Conservative. He obviously neither understands members of the many Tea Party Groups around America nor does he understand the history of Communism, Progressivism, Leftism and Socialism in America.
Brooks is an “intellectual” elitist. His knowledge of America is limited by his own personal experience surrounded by LIBERALS.
I was a daily reader of the NYTimes for twenty years but dropped that “rag” 20 years ago.
David Brooks has shown an incredible ignorance about the history and the principles of conservatism. One continuing tic of his is to define himself as a “Burkean” conservative.
He obviously knows very little about Edmund Burke. Burke was, indeed, a liberal conservative–meaning one who wanted to conserve individual rights, as opposed to “throne and altar” conservatives who emphasized conserving the aristocratic state.
Burke was not, however, a moderate conservative. He was a Whig, which is to say that he was a member of the political party that supported–indeed, celebrated–the Glorious Revolution of 1688, that had overthrown the Stuart king James II for overstepping his power. In fact, the speech that made him famous–in opposition to the French Revolution–was at the annual Whig celebration of that revolution.
More importantly, that very speech–the speech that transformed Edmund Burke from a good writer and a defeated M.P.–was not a laid-back discussion of the differences between the 1688 and 1789 revolutions. Rather, it was a call for war against the French Jacobins, with the purpose of restoring the French monarchy (of which Burke was no admirer, but which he considered better than the totalitarian Jacobin disease).
Edmund Burke–whom Brooks claims as his own inspiration–was no moderate squish, intent to roll with the flow. He was a right-wing rabble rouser, determined in the cause of defeating leftist totalitarians.
Brooks, when he calls himself a Burkean, is either ignorant, lying, or both.
That should read “the speech that transformed Edmund Burke from a good writer and a defeated M.P. to a crucial historical figure.”
Just who was it that got this “Brooks is a conservative” stuff started anyway? I suspect it was the NYT, during the rare moment in its modern history when, as a marketing scheme, it sought conservative readership. But I’ve been reading Brooks for at least three years, and at no time have I ever thought he was any more conservative than, say, John McCain; and often McCain had Brooks beat (oh, the shame!).
Just look at what Brooks’ favorite subjects are:
1) how cool the Obamessiah is; 2) sneering at strict-constructionists, and mocking those tacky conservative Christians, and; 3) flaying conservatism in general for not having liberal goals.
I’m really tired of it. David Brooks is no conservative, and we should stop treating him as if he were. If conservatives dropped Brooks, he would wither and blow away into the coming msm-oblivion soon enough. Let him.
I scanned over the Brooks article and I have to admit that I see a similarity in the fact that a NEW movement has just popped up.
But I could say the same about Guitar players, or trends in Rock and Metal and even Country music too.
When reading Brook’s article I noticed that when you substitute “New Left” with “New Guitarists” and “Tea Partiers” with Older Blues Players” the article makes perfect sense. In fact it makes more sense than the original!!
“…There are many differences between the New Guitarists and the older Blues players.
One was bohemian (Zappa, Steve Vai, Al DiMeola), the other is bourgeois (Stevie
Ray Vaughan, Albert Lee, BB King).
One was motivated by New Technology and change in teaching methods, and the
other is motivated by Tradition. One went to Woodstock, the other is more likely
to go to OZZ-FEST.
But the similarities are more striking than the differences. To start with, the New
Guitarists have adopted the scales and licks of the OLD Blues players……..”
Brooks is auditioning for the token conservative talking head seat left empty by David Gergen who had committed the unpardonable crime of helping to elect a Republican in “Kennedy’s seat”.
Criticizing David Brooks is hardly worth the effort. As a thinker, writer, and pundit, Michael Leeden outshines Brooks as the sun outshines my desk lamp. But, that said, Brooks show how impoverished liberal thinking is by comparing him to Maureen (Still looks good in Burqa) Dowd, Tom (China is better than democracy) Friedman, Frank (bad Theater Critic Deranged Pundit) Rich, and the other no stars on the editorial pages of the NYTimes (All the News Tha6t Fits The DNC Agenda).
More importantly, I too was close to ground zero in the 1960s. I spent the last half of that wretched decade in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. My experience matched that of Prof. Ledeen. The so called new left, differed from the old left, only in lacking an open connection to Comintern, and in being more likely to side with China than the USSR. All most all of the new lefties that I knew back then are still hard core lefties, very few of them ever turned into middle class suburbanites. In all of this Bill Ayers et. ux. is absolutely typical.
David Brooks is the exemplar of the journalistic lackey. He’ll work for whoever pays the most, citing his prior association as evidence of his “depth of experience.” Why the NYT keeps him on the payroll is puzzling: the left does not regard him as one of them; he is held in contempt on the right. What an asset.
Your comments on he ardor of collegiate youth is pertinent to our present crisis. Dizzy with the testerones of post-puberty, minds addled by Marxist professors, secure in their assurance that they are better-educated than any previous generation, they embraced the Messiah of Cool. So we have an intellectually sophomoric and disfunctional, incompetent Administration. The Tea Party Movement is not youth-driven, is unimpressed by academic elitism, fed up with Moral Equivalency and Multi-culturalism. I’s driving force is a gut-feeling. pragmatic. Exceptionalist belief in our Constitutional principles. a revulsion and alarm at where Big Government is taking us.
The balance of Electoral Power has swung against the Sophomoric Socialists; they can’t ignore it, they can only fulminate and, like Brooks, weaken hteir cause.
Beware disinformation campaigns. We need to focus on the fundamentals and avoid being divided. The M$M is right to be afraid of us. We need to do our best to ignore them – don’t take advice from an enemy.
I remember David Brooks, at the 2004 Republican
National Convention, having a grand ole time when the Democratic Senator from Georgia, Zell Miller, was addressing the Republicans at Madison Square Garden.
Shields was ashen, but Brooks was tickled pink during, and just after that speech.
He also had some nice things to say about the exporting of freedom when Dubya was in the White House. They are worth keeping, because they provide an interesting contrast
to what he produces today. Just like the early scholastic material of the Lion of Columbia is very different than his stuff which came later (as was pointed out by Mortimer Adler).
So someone at the Times doesn’t know thehistory of the Left.I’m
surprised. Heh.
Brooks the “conservative” spokesman for the NYT has over stayed his welcome to speak for any conservative I know.
David Brooks is the John McCain of the pundit world, in the sense he has been selected by the MSM to be a “responsible” conservative, meaning one who constantly criticizes his supposed own kind.
In reality, Brooks is a shallow thinker. “Bobobos in Paradise” was a collection of banal musings worthy of a Time Magazine cover story. His knowledge of history is as weak as his analytical powers. And his view of Obama is transparently naive. He never had the capacity for incisive analysis that the pre-meltdown Andrew Sullivan had (nor has he shooting into the realm of the near psychotic, as Sullivan has. But he should be ignored, as Sullivan should be. Neither is a serious mind.
Brooks and the NYT are what communists call “useful idiots”. They will be disposed of once their usefulness is used up. Matthews, Olbermann, Maddow and that crew also qualify.
They have always existed and they will always exist. The sorry thing about it is they have the ability to be foolish because we provide them with a free world with our sacrifices and our children’s sacrifices. Something they expect but will never say thanks for.
Man, I truly dislike elitists.
Michael Lind must have had a sharp crease in his pants. Tht seems to be the Brooks standard for intelligence.
Mr. Ledeen, I would never dream of contradicting you, but I must say in order for Brooks to be reeducated, he must have been educated in the first place.
Thomas Friedman used to be a sane, respected, interesting, intellectual heavy-weight. But he has slowly lost his mind while writing editorials for the New York Times. His writing deosn’t even make sense any more – he is practically talking to fairies and unicorns evey day now.
Similarly, Brooks used to be a thoughtful, reasonable, common sense conservative. But he is gradually losing touch with reality since he has been writing for the New York Times, just like Friedman did. Nowadays, when I read them or hear these two, I hardly even recognize them.
What the heck is it in New York City? Is there something in the water or in the air, that destroys brain cells and turns people into blind, confused, babbling idiots?
#24. It’s fascinating how the left really thinks centralized control will equal more individual freedom. They truly seem to believe this. I can’t imagine why, but they do.
Just note what Nancy Pelosi said the other night on Maddow, “Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.”
The freedom they have in mind is the freedom to not be a productive member of society. The end game of this path of course is that there will never be enough productive members of society to support these “artists” who do not wish to be burdened with participating in our slavish economy when there is no penalty for this choice. At that point, the whole system collapses.
The Soviet Union fell under the weight of a socialist (though also totalitarian) system, and Europe is nearly there. The US system is on an unsustainable path as well. This, prodded by Obama’s policies that seemed to provoke in many an genuine uprising against what they deemed to be a loss of fairness, is what caused the Tea Party movement.
The only similarity in their positions would be that they both felt they were acting out of a sense of fairness. The New Left though it was not fair that some had while others didn’t and have devised a system to remedy this. The Tea Party thinks it is unfair to take from those who choose to be responsible members of productive society and give to those who do not and they wish to move society closer to what the founders envisioned.
Brooks is correct!
I said as much on this website many times. The resident neocons keep trying to hijack the Tea Party movement as its own – repackaging Sarah Palin – and ignoring the similarities between the Tea Party and the Left.
I know because I am a recovering Republican who voted Obama – yet agree with much of the Tea Party movement. My family is pretty much the same.
Tea Party regulars and Progressives are
1. Anti War.
2. Anti Wall St.
3. Anti multi national CORPORATIONS.
4. Anti immigration [ but for different reasons]
5. Pro Main St.
6. Pro nationalist foreign policy [again for differing reasons]
7. Skeptical of CORPORATE takeover of elections, air waves and culture.
The party regulars keep thumping about Gays and abortion to remind the left and right that they are natural enemies on these cultural differences – but the similarities are scary to the beltway regulars of both parties.
Don’t tell me I’m a democrat – because I’m not.
But I want us out of the Middle East. I say – let the locals deal with the murderous Israelis. America is way too involved in this genocide- and I’m sick of Israel’s advocates controlling both parties.
Ditto for Big Pharma, big insurance, big medicine, and the war machine.
I’ve never been more aligned with my Progressive friends than today!
Gay marriage makes me cringe – but I’m willing to coalesce with the left on cultural differences if we can just oust the regulars from Politics as Usual.
I want my country back from foreign governments and Godless Corporations.
Both left and right agree on this.
OMG! You don’t even allow me to list the similarities between Tea Party regulars and Progressives????
The censorship at this site has NOTHING to do with ‘reasonable standards’ – and everything to do with pretending all is well in the GOP.
all is NOT well – and if you had any decency you would allow dissenting opinions.
the GOP will not prevail if they censor the language of their most alienated membership…. the TEA PARTY regulars!
nobody’s censoring you, unless there is a shiny helicopter over your house and you don’t have your beanie on.
#44 RKV: “we need to focus on the fundamentals and avoid being divided…..” Sadly for Tea Party advocates, the movement already is divided. Yesterday (March 13), the Denver Post carried a well researched article on the Tea Party movement as the Dem and Repub precinct caucuses approach on Tuesday. There are at least 6 different factions identified by the Post and probably more: Tea Party Patriots, 9-12 Patriots, Tea Party Express, Americans for Prosperity, Hear Us Now, ROAR America.
There are similarities among the 6, but also some differences. As an example, 9-12 Patriots’ principles include a belief in God & sacredness of marriage and family. One doesn’t have to be a religious believer to be a conservative. Then you add in fringe groups like the Minutemen, Pro Second Amendment Committee, Freedom Works, various militia groups, etc.
For me as a life long conservative Republican (fiscal conservative and social libertarian), the Tea Party movement is at best inconsistent and at worst, hypocritical. The inconsistency comes from the decrying of the Obama spending binge; good validity there; but completely ignoring waste and corruption in other parts of government such as the Pentagon. There is also the inconsistency of demanding spending cuts, but keep those Social Security and Medicare benefits flowing.
The hypocrisy comes from demanding limited government, as long as it doesn’t include human reproduction issues and personal relationship issues. There, for many Tea Partiers, big government must be used to impose their personal religious beliefs. For an example, check out the Personhood movement.
How the anointed metrosexual faux conservatives hate ordinary people! There is no end to the hatred coming from these paragons of enlightened tolerance.
Both Ledeen and Brooks want to herd a bunch of cats and then call them a pack of dogs.
“Tea Party” is a label thrown onto a loose coalition of people who are most certainly opposed to most of the Democratic platform and some portions of the Republican platform.
For instance, Brooks says “They don’t seek to form a counter-establishment because they don’t believe in establishments or in authority structures.” And Ledeen says Brooks is wrong. But clearly both are wrong. Some fraction of Tea Partiers do not want establishments or authority structures. This would be an accurate description of the Paulites, various strains of Libertarians, and some of the neo-Constitutional originalists. But that doesn’t describe all of the people under the Tea Party tent. Many people, including a good fraction of PJMers, are really into using central government planning to force certain social relationships and institutions on people. These would be your various flavors of social cons. There is, among social cons, an overlap with another group of statists, e.g. your various flavors of neo-cons. Again, a non-trivial fraction of people in the Tea Party tent are really into picking fights with the backwards Islamic nations and think that taking money from people to pay for idiotic foreign forays is a really swell idea. Then there are people who think that when you are attacked by a bunch of Saudis, well, it is generally a good idea to attack Saudi Arabia. And then give all their oil to Exxon. But I digress…then, of course, under the Tea Party tent you have various mainstream Republicans trying to rebrand themselves as small government types (despite the fact that the Republican party has never been for small government, ever).
If anything unites Tea Partiers we could say they are united against the latest government health care plan. But even then you have a large fraction of Tea Partiers who are more than happy to take income from others and spend it on their health care entitlement (yeah, I’m looking at all you seniors on Medicare). So some Tea Partiers are merely against their entitlement being redistributed to other groups of people, whereas some are not terribly keen on supporting the generations that gave us the entitlement state in the first place.
So we have Ledeen (and Brooks again): “Some of the language has become very familiar to us (and rejected by the Tea Partiers). For example:
.…medical care must become recognized as a lifetime human right just as vital as food, shelter and clothing — the Federal government should guarantee health insurance as a basic social service turning medical treatment into a social habit..” Again, the New Left was asking for government health care at the same time the government was….making a government health care plan (you know, the one that now spends 60%+ of every health care dollar). And again, I don’t see a lot of Tea Partiers asking to dismantle Medicare. They just don’t want Medicare rationing. That is, many Tea Partiers want their grand kids to have a much lower standard of living to support their unlimited consumption of free government health care. Or did I just dream up Tea Party folks being upset at rationing of Medicare? You can’t really pick and choose the big government you want without it eventually being the big government of a larger demographic.
G Marks, you are a delusional person. That is ok, most Americans are.
But I will answer your idiocy.
1) Progressive Presidents like FDR and LBJ were really into waging war. Lots of Progressive politicians supported both the Iraqi and Afghani wars–e.g. attacking countries that didn’t attack us for no logical reasons.
2) Most funding for Progressives comes from and has always come from Wall Street. The Morgans and Rockefellers were among the early supporters of the Progressive movement idiocy.
3) I suppose Progressives are against multi-national corporations, even though such companies (like, oh, GE) fund their coffers. But I’m not exactly sure that Tea Partiers are against multi-national corporations. Being against corporations, period, is a form of mental illness.
4) Progressives and Tea Partiers are anti-immigration? Umm, yeah. Progressives are pro-immigration. Tea Partiers are split. The Libertarian faction is pro-immigration (or at least largely so). The Social Con faction, not so much.
5) I don’t even know what the hell “Main Street” is supposed to mean. If it means, oh, small businesses, then Progressives are against it since they like laws that make it impossible to create a new business.
6) Progressives are pro-nationalist foreign policy? Umm, no. But you’re partially right. The Libertarian faction is certainly not pro-nationalist foreign policy. The Social Con/Neocons are really into pro-nationalism.
7) Progressives are for union take over of elections and the airwaves. Tea Partiers seem generally to be for corporate free speech. No common ground there.
Now, onto your really insane ramblings: Israeli genocide? Really? You are aware, of course, that Jordan has killed way, way more Palestinians than Israel has, right? And for pretty much the same reason–the pedophile psychopath Arafat was trying to overthrow the government in Jordan. So Jordan just killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in cold blood. Arab on Arab violence (the leading cause of death of Arabs) doesn’t really get much mention. But you’re right–we should totally get out of the Middle East. Unless, of course, we’re going to actually take the oil. I’m all for actually taking the oil. But increasing Exxon’s oil reserves is really the only good reason to get into it with Arabs.
As for your anti-big pharma, insurance, medicine, etc.–you are aware that these are industries that employee regular Americans such as yourself? Well, ok, obviously you’re not a regular American, but, you know, if you were they’d employee you and lots of people like you. I’m not quite clear what foreign governments have to do with any of this, nor why a corporation shouldn’t be “Godless?” Corporations aren’t churches, so how does it follow that God has any place in them?
People are totally the worst.
I used to watch Brooks outsmarted by the plodding Shields, of all people. But the time came when I couldn’t stand his earnest please-understand-me looks. The man is a weenie emasculated by the NYT and the Georgetown salons. Only on the upper West Side would he be considered a conservative instead of a lap dog.
55. G Marks:
Brooks is correct!
I said as much on this website many times. The resident neocons keep trying to hijack the Tea Party movement as its own – repackaging Sarah Palin – and ignoring the similarities between the Tea Party and the Left.
I know because I am a recovering Republican who voted Obama – yet agree with much of the Tea Party movement. My family is pretty much the same.
Tea Party regulars and Progressives are
1. Anti War.
2. Anti Wall St.
3. Anti multi national CORPORATIONS.
4. Anti immigration [ but for different reasons]
5. Pro Main St.
6. Pro nationalist foreign policy [again for differing reasons]
7. Skeptical of CORPORATE takeover of elections, air waves and culture.
The party regulars keep thumping about Gays and abortion to remind the left and right that they are natural enemies on these cultural differences – but the similarities are scary to the beltway regulars of both parties.
Don’t tell me I’m a democrat – because I’m not.
But I want us out of the Middle East. I say – let the locals deal with the murderous Israelis. America is way too involved in this genocide- and I’m sick of Israel’s advocates controlling both parties.
Ditto for Big Pharma, big insurance, big medicine, and the war machine.
I’ve never been more aligned with my Progressive friends than today!
Gay marriage makes me cringe – but I’m willing to coalesce with the left on cultural differences if we can just oust the regulars from Politics as Usual.
I want my country back from foreign governments and Godless Corporations.
Both left and right agree on this.
——————————————-
You are delusional and really understand what the TEA party is about. No one is censoring you either.
Brooks: “… .…medical care must become recognized as a lifetime human right just as vital as food, shelter and clothing — the Federal government should guarantee health insurance as a basic social service…”
It logically follows, then, that food, shelter and clothing are three other “basic social services” that the government should provide.
After which, nobody will ever need to work for a living. It will be a worker’s paradise.
the quote is from SDS in 1962, not Brooks 48 years later.
Brooks is a light weight and ignorant on many things he writes about. but that’s true of most liberals.
Poor little Brookie.Having worked so hard to become the domesticated lap-dog token conservative at the NY SLIMES,he’s desperately trying to justify his job at a time when other SLIMES liars are losing theirs,by scribbling what libtards want to reads.Don’t bother Brookie: The Times is moribund and you are a lickspittling irrelevance!
I am a member of my local tea party and having someone like Brooks who has sold his soul ten times over for anyone who’ll give him air or print time is laughable. Having him define us is like having someone describe what it’s like to climb Mt. Everest without ever having even seen a mountain.
Phranc and Tq
I’m Delusional???
The Tea Party voted Ron Paul as their favorite candidate!!
anti war – anti corporate – anti illegal immigration – anti Wall st
who is delusional???
I understand the Tea Party regulars better than you do!
The neocon regulars at this site have a huge dilemma
How to claim the Tea Party as its own…. ala Bill Kristol and Sarah Palin -
when we don’t like much of what the neocons stand for!
I thought ad hominem attacks were verboten???
oh… it’s okay to launch them on dissenters – not insiders.
And I am not a drone or worker bee…
I have been self employed since I was 26…. I’m 63.
the corporate drones are victims of multi national evil…. not Main St.
Brooks has abruptly swung from Polyanna smugness to what he thinks is Kierkegaardian despair.
And he still doesn’t get it: But I persist in the belief that government is more fundamentally messed up than ever in my lifetime. Barack Obama campaigned offering a new era of sane government. And I believe he would do it if he had the chance. But he has been so sucked into the system that now he stands by while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks about passing health care via “deem and pass”…
Ah yes, the noble well-intentioned leader is undone by his sinister advisors. Poor Kaiser Wilhelm! Poor Chiang Kai-shek! Poor President Obama!
Where does the buck stop?! Or don’t they talk so simplistically in the intellectual stratosphere that Brooks inhabits?
I have a degree of sympathy for Brooks, but I fear that he has ruined himself and abetted great damage to the country in the process.
Rage and despair each have their attractions under the circumstances, but neither is constructive. IMHO Jennifer Rubin strikes the right note:
I want my country back from foreign governments and Godless Corporations.
Brooks didn’t have to go back to the 60s to find a left equivalent of the Tea Party crazies. Easy to see a left equivalent today in the Code Pink crazies.