Tea Party to Peggy Noonan: It's not rage but disgust!

"Comical: Journolistas Matthews and Joan Walsh hurriedly retape 7 pm broadcast to change Sherrod narrative," twittered new-media mama grizzly Dana Loesch early morning, linking to John Nolte's Big Government post "Who Got to Chris Matthews?: 'Hardball' Defense of Breitbart Memory-Holed." The last throes of a dying Cultural Marxist meme?

"For better or for worse, the profound cultural changes in American life during the past half century are testament to the enormous influence exercised by our cultural guardians," writes the estimable Lee Harris in a trenchant if slightly flawed analysis of "The Tea Party vs the Intellectuals" [via Isegoria, who excerpts Harris's totally excellent summary of Gramsci's notion of cultural hegemony, blogged here early and often]:

Intellectual critics of the Tea Party movement most often attack it for its lack of ideas, especially new ideas — and these critics have a point. But the point they are making reveals as much about them as it does about the Tea Party. Behind the criticism lies the implicit assumption that comes quite naturally to American intellectuals: Namely, that a political movement ought be motivated by ideas and that a new political movement should provide new ideas. But the Tea Party movement is not about ideas. It is all about attitude, like the attitude expressed by the popular poster seen at all Tea Party rallies.

Yes and no. We agree with Harris's point that intellectual elites assume "a new political movement should provide new ideas," but he's dead wrong when he asserts that "the Tea Party movement is not about ideas." He may have been spending too much time in the company of Northeast Corridor fuddy duddies, "polite company conservatives" like Peggy Noonan, whose latest lame WSJ effort, "Chris Christie, not the Tea Party, is the model for the Republicans," gets it half right. Papa grizzly/teddy bear Chris Christie is definitely "da man," but as our fellow Christie groupie, sistah grizzly Jersey girl Cubachi twittered this afternoon:

Actually, Christie went to tea parties across NJ. Peggy is obsessed with belittling tea parties.

The Tea Party is animated by grand old ideas — check out our posts "Tea Party 2.0: "Just be willing to work hard, and don't try to claim the credit" and "Cedra Crenshaw vs. King Samir Shabazz: The hand that rocks the cradle?" for starters, Mr. Harris. Even so, he gets it right in the end:

As the Tea Partiers see it, what is most needed right now are not new ideas — we have already had far too many of those. What is needed is the revitalization of a very old attitude — the attitude shared by all people who have been able to maintain their liberty and independence against those who would take it away from them: “We do not need an elite to govern us. We can govern ourselves.”

Update: Almost forgot to mention why it's almost over for the "increasingly impotent chattering class of credulous Chris Matthewses" of this world:

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

Update II: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds. Lots of great stuff in the comments, like this from BlogDog:

Why is it necessary for the Tea Party to be driven by "new ideas" when those who call themselves "progressives" want to "progress" by recycling the failed ideas of 70 years ago?

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Comments

[goomp]

“We do not need an elite to govern us. We can govern ourselves.” These words say it all. Our founders knew this and drew a constitution based on freedom from government control. A small government is necessary to make sure we practice freedom and to defend us from those who would rule us by force. Hence the Tea Party spirit.

[Yehudit]

Re: that "Starfish/Spider" book. Eric Raymond wrote one called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." You can guess which metaphor is the equivalent of which between the two books. Raymond was talking more about software development, the opposite poles being Microsoft and Linux, but the concept is the same. Or as a friend of mine put it (in another context): They're the dinosaurs and we're the small furry mammals who steal and eat their eggs.

Bottom-up self-organization being more powerful and agile than top-down control is certainly not a new idea; Adam Smith wrote about it too. The flattening of heirarchy in corporations in the 80s and the dotcom boom in the 90s was based on it.

[HOMELAND INSECURITY]

And the INVA$ION continues...

http://www.BorderInvasionPics.com

[Simone]

Peggy is lost ... The idea motivating the tea party is simple and ever new ... Liberty and self government ... It is Peggy and her kind that must step out of the middle ages or their favorite Victorian novel and live life now

[BlogDog]

Why is it necessary for the Tea Party to be driven by "new ideas" when those who call themselves "progressives" want to "progress" by recycling the failed ideas of 70 years ago?
That is, 70 if you want to take it back to FDR. Only half that if you go back to half-wit Dhimmi Carter.

[ATL]

Not about ideas? Geez these people are just friggin' lame. Self-government, liberty, and the ability to make something without the government's guidance are all things alien to the uber-elite intellectual crowd. They disregard what they fear and at the end of the day they fear us ignoring them. Vestigial Americans like Noonan are trying to maintain some semblance of relevance after they slobbered praise over Obama and now look like utter fools. They can trash the tea parties all they want but the record shows we were right all along , have better ideas, and they were wrong and push ideas that flat out don't work. The ruling class has always hated the real achievers. The same way that those that talk a good game hate those that can actually play it. Noonan is just pissed that we threw the REAL party and she didn't get an invite.

[TL]

Excellent points. The Tea Party seeks a return to the ideals that brought us thus far;
The government has pursued a path to illegitimacy

http://teaparty-editor.blogspot.com/2010/07/path-to-illegitimacy.html

[Amos]

BlogDog, you can go even further. Progressivism goes back to Marx and still more: its expression goes back to the Middle Ages.

During the Middle Ages, we saw the collectivism, the Progressivism, of the right: monarchies + theocracies.

Liberty is a higher form of politics than Progressivism, which simply replaces one aristocracy for another.

[peter jackson]

New ideas? Like what, socialized medicine? Unionism? The left has NO ideas. Their economics has already sunk to the bottom of the ash heap of history; none of the crap they believe about economics has been taught in an economics department in fifty years.

[Daedalus Mugged]

The tea party is not about new ideas...it is about old ideas which are being ignored. It is about the Constitution and the proper scope of government. If they want a new idea, I would propose a new Constitutional amendment:

"Go re-read the Xth amendment...we meant it."

[Ritchie The Riveter]

Not "change" ... "change" BACK to what didn't work in the past.

The Re-, er, Progressive movement is about ideas that sound good.

The Tea Party Movement is about ideas that actually work good.

[iGout]

That teeny, weenie, 3-letter word "New". What mischief has it not caused over the past century?

[ben]

@iGout: Not half as much as the four-letter word "free".

[KingShamus]

As many have said, the Tea Party is a Restoration movement.

It is based around classical liberal ideas, so yeah I guess they're pretty old. But the Left's ideas spring from the mind of that spry young whippersnapper Karl Marx.

If we're going to compare the ages of our respective ideologies, it's not like the modern progressives are singing from this year's hymn book.