sisu

Who's afraid of Virginia Postrel?

We can see the salt of the earth from our front porch in Chelsea-by-the-Sea.

Here we thought it was a brilliant, pithy (140-or-fewer characters) philosophical insight into the way of the world, but intellectual icon Virginia Postrel was not amused with our twitter response to her intriguing demise-of-The-New-Republic question:

Now that articles float free of their publications, can magazines still play the role in catalyzing sensibilities that @CoreyRobin suggests?

— Virginia Postrel (@vpostrel) December 8, 2014

Our first response was harmless, bloodless:

@vpostrel @CoreyRobin Online it’s individual great minds, rather than publications as a whole, that develop followings, I think.

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) December 8, 2014

 Then we stepped in it:

@LeroyWhitby @vpostrel @CoreyRobin Increasingly dishonorable means used to justify increasingly discredited ends #leftproject

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) December 8, 2014

"Increasingly dishonorabble means used to justify increasingy discredited ends." That little tweet expresses the world view of a lifetime of observation and analysis in 140 or fewer, but Postrel was not amused:

@sissywillis @leroywhitby @coreyrobin Please spare me these general rants about politics in a discussion about what magazines do.

— Virginia Postrel (@vpostrel) December 8, 2014

A touch of elitism there? Our reply:

@vpostrel @leroywhitby @coreyrobin Consider yourself spared from here on in ~ General Rant pic.twitter.com/s5sRdJvz29

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) December 8, 2014

Update: Our sincere apologies to the divine Miss Postrel, who clarifies:

@sissywillis You & your pal still hijacked the thread. That someone would was entirely predictable. Sorry it was you.

— Virginia Postrel (@vpostrel) December 9, 2014

Stand with Rand: Tea Party Turks and the filibuster heard 'round the world

"My Tea Party cup runneth over," we twittered Mark Tapscott this morning in appreciation of his bracing filibuster post "Is Rand Paul America's William Wallace or Robert the Bruce?" wherein the DC Examiner columnist compares the generational struggle between Young Turk Rand Paul and Old Bull John McCain to the conflict between Robert the Bruce and his don't-rock-the-boat father in the film "Braveheart."

"He has definitely energized the base in a way that it hasn't been energized in a long time," enthused Tea Party Express Chair Amy Kremer following Paul Rand's filibuster heard 'round the world (Wednesday night the hashtag #standwithrand was number one trending topic worldwide on Twitter). The DC Examiner's Susan Ferrechio explains:

Until Paul's appearance, the Tea Party's popularity appeared to be waning. Republican leaders pushed Tea Party lawmakers to the sidelines during budget negotiations with President Obama. After a very successful 2010 election, the Tea Party took a beating in the 2012 [national] contests. And pollsters found that fewer and fewer people were affiliating themselves with the movement.

But Paul's filibuster attracted huge support on social media sites, from conservatives and liberals, and some believe it could mark a comeback for the movement …

By night's end, 40,000 new followers had signed up for Paul's Twitter feed.

We were caught up in the euphoria Wednesday afternoon and into the evening as C-SPAN 2 live broadcast the junior Senator from Kentucky doing it "the old-fashioned way," holding forth on the senate floor— with a little help from his friends, including our own fave, Sen. Ted Cruz! — for just under 13 hours of spirited discourse. We loved Hugh Hewitt's take:

[Rand Paul] engaged the country in a serious discussion of first principles. You may not agree with him, but he did it. The Constitution was actually discussed on the Senate floor for more than a dozen hours. Incredible.

He put the president on the defensive, using the force of argument to penetrate the White House's standard operating procedure of never engaging its critics on a serious level. Eric Holder, the hapless AG, came away scorched.

Paul also took an old, old device and married it to the new communications technology, instantly generating hundreds of thousands of messages about him and his argument which spread across the Twitterverse and associated platforms at an astonishing speed …

Senators Cruz, Lee, and Rubio are the sort of skilled talkers that the other side does not have. 

In this metaphorical battle to retake the Shining City, Sir William Wallace's words on the eve of the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 resonate:

We come here with no peaceful intent, but ready for battle, determined to avenge our wrongs and set our country free."

Update: Why we love Twitter:

Sens. McCain and Graham appeared in the Senate gallery to criticize Rand Paul. #StandWIthRand twitter.com/ExJon/status/3…

— Jon Gabriel (@ExJon) March 7, 2013

Will "Who is John Galt?" be the "Hope and Change" of tomorrow?

"It's us [sic] who move the world" Rex Harrison lookalike businessman of "intelligence, courage and integrity" Henry Rearden (Grant Bowler) tells his distaff counterpart Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling) in "Atlas Shrugged" the movie that opens at a theater near you — if you're lucky — today.

"If Peter Ingemi [master of DaTechguyBlog] had been with us, he'd be shooting videos and interviewing members of the audience as they left the theater," we joshed as we emerged, philosophically and emotionally refreshed, from the premiere screening of "Atlas Shrugged" at the local cinema this afternoon. Taking our cue from the master, we tried a few unfilmed mini-interviews, more about which below, but first, our take:

We loved the movie — riveting, glamorous, great performances by non-celebrity actors (what a relief it is not to be distracted by knowing the performers' political views), shot in a smoky and sensually-charged style reminiscent of our fave futuristic flick, "Bladerunner." Production values to die for. The music was pitch perfect, lots of new, tempered but emotionally charged material with a little Chopin and a few echoes of the classics thrown in, most memorably the doom sounds of Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony at one momentous point in the story. To tempt you, an example of the understated wit and wisdom that energize the script: The hero's hoity-toity, frigid (funny old-fashioned term, but it fits) wife to the sizzling heroine who is in the process of sweeping her husband off his feet:

I LOVE your dress, dear. I was just saying the other day that it was high time that designer came back in style again.

Big Hollywood Editor Jim Nolte puts things in context:

While anti-American junk has flopped at a forever-pleasing 100% rate, well-made films that speak to our values and beliefs have been almost universally embraced … With social media, especially the miracle that is Twitter, a fire can start that completely circumvents the corrupt MSM and has an immediate effect at the box office …

While we have a long way to go, there is momentum on our side and this bodes very well for “Atlas Shrugged” … You can’t say Obama’s declaring war on business, though, because when it comes to picking and choosing who will win and who will lose, Obama’s a corporatist of the first order … and that’s the theme “Atlas Shrugged” speaks to.

Best of all, the production of the movie itself is faithful to its own themes: Risk and independence mixed with a touch of bravado. Yesterday’s L.A. Times tells the incredible story of how, after two decades of trying, someone bucked the Hollywood system and just did it — just made the damn movie.

"I remember reading Ayn Rand's book as a youth [when it was first published in 1957 in the US] and being heavily influenced in my thinking of how the world works," pater familias and constitutional conservative Goomp i-mailed this morning when we told him we were about to head out to be the first on our block to see the movie, opening today at 300 theaters across the country. From the moment we entered Loew's Cinema in Danvers, MA, there was electricity in the air. The ticket taker, a self-described independent, was eager to let us know that earlier viewers had loved the film. Following the show we chatted with an audience member who knew chapter and verse of all things Rand and confided to us that his girlfriend, a liberal, had wisely stayed home. There's nothing like species recognition. Same fellow feeling amongst folks from all walks of life that we'd picked up at town halls, tea party rallies and phone banks past. On the way out of the theater we spotted a likely gentleman waiting in line at the snackbar. "Who is John Galt?" we taunted. His face lit up in the tribal signal of acknowledgement between red staters seeking the light of the Shining City here in the darkness behind enemy lines in collectivist Taxachusetts.

And that was only Part I, a real cliff hanger. "I can hardly wait for Part II," says Tuck. The question is, will "Atlas Shrugged" break out of the cult category of true believers to capture the hearts and minds of the great unwashed? Will "Who is John Galt" become the "Hope and Change" of tomorrow?

Lots more at The Atlasphere, "the social networking and dating site [!] for admirers of Ayn Rand's novels."

Update: "I believe the ideas are more relevant than ever," John Fund tells Pajamas Media's Amy Holmes (h/t Common Cents). "This is one of those books that totally changed my life," adds Stephen Moore.

Update II: Little Miss Atilla gives thumbs up:

Sisu liked it as much as I did, noting the classical architecture porn, and lovely scoring.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

 

 

 

Leadership: Sarah Palin's rousing invocation to a grieving nation

"Public discourse and debate isn't a sign of crisis but of our enduring strength. It is part of why America is exceptional," Sarah Palin tells the nation in "America's Enduring Strength" on Facebook and Vimeo. Read full transcript here and watch/listen here.

"It is time to restore the precept that each of us is responsible for our actions," Sarah Palin cuts through the ersatz outrage of the vitriolic "character assassins, partisans, liars and propagandists," in John Nolte's words, who have been "doing everything in their power to bring down the right" in the wake of the Tucson massacre. Listen to Sarah's rousing invocation here. Once again she disintermediates the moribund powers that be to speak directly to the American people with her vision of the Shining City, based upon what Thomas Sowell calls the "constrained vision" of human nature. Here's Sarah:

Our Founders' genius was to design a system that helps settle the inevitable conflicts caused by our imperfect passions in civil ways. So we must condemn violence if our Republic is to endure …

Public discourse and debate isn't a sign of crisis but of our enduring strength. It is part of why America is exceptional.

No one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent. And we certainly must not be deterred by those who embrace evil and call it good. And we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion. and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults.

Following the life lesson her father taught her — "Don't retreat, reload" — she doesn't let those character assassins get away with metaphorical murder:

Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election. 

"But frustration makes you stupid and the left is frustrated, especially those in the media, because they are losing," John Nolte explains:

And other than embarrassing ratings and cratering circulation numbers, nothing points to their diminishing power more than Sarah Palin’s ascendancy as a bona fide political force in this country. Whether or not the former Alaskan Governor becomes president isn’t an issue. She’s already changed the face of electoral politics and even managed to gain a serious foothold on the beach of popular culture while doing so.

Update: We like twitterfriend Daniel Morgan's take:

She totally nailed what needed to be said and is the shadow president!

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update III: Sarah's address is top story on Memeorandum.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Barney Frank: "It's an air kiss they're blowing to the Tea Party"

"Bill Whittle, you may have put the nation on the road to recovery of the Founders' enlightened vision of freedom singlehandedly," we wrote in the caption to our post "A Declaration of Independence: Art for freedom's sake" last March: "Longhandedly, that is, as in writing out the Declaration of Independence longhand. We've completed the first part (three 8 1/2 x 11 sheets, above) and found the exercise a revelation."

"It's an air kiss they're blowing to the tea party," Barney Frank dismisses the House Republican majority's "new rule requiring members to cite the specific constitutional authority for any bill they introduce." The lower chamber's first order of business on Thursday, one day after Speaker-designate John Boehner is sworn in, will be a reading aloud of the Constitution, a shock to the system of those like Frank who have lost sight of the Shining City through the fog of their willful misreading of the Founders' intent. Jonah Goldberg explains Barney's Complaint in a must-read little masterpiece of the essayist's art that plays with progressives' eleutherophobia:

According to many commentators, Speaker-to-Be John Boehner and his crew of zealots have some very scary ideas. Chief among them: They want to make some obscure, inscrutable tract from an ancient civilization the centerpiece of their legislative philosophy. Indeed, in a move generating consternation and exasperation at MSNBC and other bastions of right-thinking, these cultists will read their perversely sacred text at the opening of the legislative session, breaking with more than 200 years of precedent.

For historical perspective, Jonah in USA Today, Cato's Roger Pilon in the WSJ and Thomas Sowell in the Union Leader are all on the same wavelength. Here's Sowell:

During the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, the denigration of the Constitution began, led by such luminaries as Princeton scholar and future President of the United States Woodrow Wilson, future Harvard Law School Dean Roscoe Pound and future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

As a professor at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson wrote condescendingly of "the simple days of 1787" when the Constitution was written and how, in our presumably more complex times, "each generation of statesmen looks to the Supreme Court to supply the interpretation which will serve the needs of the day …

As Roscoe Pound put it, law should be "in the hands of a progressive and enlightened caste whose conceptions are in advance of the public." That is still the vision of the left a hundred years later. The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution, by voting out those who promote end runs around it.

"The annoying thing is they used to be honest about this," observes Jonah:

Woodrow Wilson openly expressed his contempt for fidelity to the Constitution, preferring a "living" Constitution that social planners can rewrite at a glance to fit the changing times.

But in recent years, liberals have retreated from admitting that the Constitution is inconvenient to arguing that it is either simply irrelevant or infinitely malleable. [Enter Ezra Klein, stage left.]

Beyond the disinguousness of their sales pitch, the problem with the liberal/progressive project has always been their utopian denial of life's dark side in ourselves, the tragic view of human nature that we are forever flogging here. It was Bill Whittle — the fearless freedom fighter whose "Imperishable" inspired us all to write out in longhand and whisper out loud the words of the Declaration last winter (see caption above) — who said it best in "The Iceberg" last summer. A few excerpts:

But Progressivism is not progressive – it’s ancient. Cyclical. It’s circular. It is, in fact, the symptom and the eventual cause of impending collapse.

In fact, in all of human history, there has been only one genuinely progressive, genuinely liberating idea: a lightning bolt across the pages of history – the why in 1776, the how in 1787 – the idea of limited government, god-given rights, personal liberty and rule by the vast collective wisdom and industry of the common man, and not by the bored, pampered and self-hating elites that have run everything before and since. This is a once-in-history idea. This is why we have to conserve it. We have to conserve this fundamentally liberal idea.

As Scott Ott wrote in his defense of Sarah Palin's "death panels" two summers back:

Journalism professionals would also benefit from reading some American history, including our founding documents. Our founders had a deep understanding of human nature, shaped by their lifelong, exhaustive study of history and philosophy and of the book that best encapsulates both — the Bible.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

The Shining City: Limited government, unlimited potential

Caption from our June 2010 post "I do declare: Tweeting the Declaration of Independence for fun and profit": "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do," Slate quotes Thomas Jefferson — a man after our own less-is-more writer's heart — in "All Men Are Tweeted Equal," an invitation to fellow freedom lovers to "condense the Declaration of Independence to one tweet."

"In about two years the entire course of the nation changed," writes our dear friend Scott Ott, setting us up for a cathartic "aha" moment. His headline suggests something along the lines of how Obama & Company's governmental overreach unwittingly led to the Third Great Awakening that is today's Tea Party movement, but no. Ott has something more profound in store for us, a "Founding of the Republic" mini-course delivered in the equivalent of about seven tweets on Twitter:

Consider this…

Feb. 21, 1787: Congress votes for a Convention to consider reforms to the Articles of Confederation

May 25, 1787: Convention starts

Sept. 17, 1787: Convention adopts totally new plan of government, the Constitution

Sept. 28, 1787: Congress sends Constitution to states for ratification, 9 states required for approval

June 21, 1788: New Hampshire, the 9th state, ratifies

March 4, 1789: First Congress convenes under new Constitution

Thomas Jefferson would have approved.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

"The Big Lie that is the commentariat's narrative of the Obama presidency," revisited

Caption from our May 16, 2009 post "The Big Lie that is the commentariat's narrative of the Obama presidency": "Let everyone reject the destructive power of hatred and prejudice, which kills men's souls before it kills their bodies!" Pope Benedict told "tens of thousands of adoring followers in Jesus' childhood hometown" of Nazareth "with a message of reconciliation" Thursday.

Stumbling into live coverage of Pope Benedict  XVI's visit to the UK (Thank God!) early morning — He's at this very moment riding the Popemobile in the St. Ninian's Day Parade in Edinburgh — with the bright shining light of EWTV's Raymond Arroyo's commentary, we googled a couple of our dozens of "Pope blogging" posts and found this one (excerpted below) from May of 2009 that resonates:

May 16, 2009. “We cannot do whatever we please with the world,” Pope Benedict XVI told religious leaders of Galilee the other day (full remarks here) during the final leg of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land:

By moulding the hearts of the young, we mould the future of humanity itself.

And there's the rub, the tragic vs the utopian view of human nature that we're forever flogging here . Generations of young hearts have been stunted through the soul-deadening p.c. propaganda of the decades-long Gramscian march through the institutions.

The 18th-Century Pats believed, as John Adams wrote, that "Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom." But in the wake of the 20th-Century Gramscian march through the institutions, promulgated through the insidious propagandizing of future teachers by "critical pedagogy" proselytizers like President Obama's old pal Bill Ayers, all too many children of the 21st-Century — even some of the best and the brightest who sit on the editorial board of the Harvard Crimson — don't seem to understand the fragility of this thing that is their birthright. In Ben Franklin's words, oft quoted here, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

It’s a tragedy that President Obama’s lockstep legions haven't a clue about Papa Ratzi's "subtle yet nonetheless perceptible laws” of the universe. Rodney King's fatuous "Can't we all just get along?" comes to mind, as does Santayana's prescient "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." As military historian-cum-family-farmer Victor Davis Hanson — one who "remembers the past" better than almost anyone — wrote the other day:

The cracks … in Obama’s Pentelic statuary … will widen, because in about six areas he has taken on human nature itself, age-old logic and common-sense opponents that even a Harvard Law degree and Chicago organizing are no match for …

And a few final words from Benedetto himself in his South Lawn speech at the White House last year:

In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in eastern Europe, [John Paul II] reminded us that history shows, time and again, that "in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation," and a democracy without values can lose its very soul.

Amen.

Update: The Anchoress links in one of her deep, dark, delicious linkfests, all about Papa Ratzi's UK visit:

Sissy Willis is looking at the big picture from a religio-political perspective.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Ground Zero cry from the heart: "It means something to be close to where my mother may be buried, it brings some peace"

"As if anticipating the left's insidious attempts to steal their fire — by turning their sacred precinct into an anti-American bully pulpit — the angry gods of Ground Zero blew up a sandstorm of warning on the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks," we wrote in our June 2005 post "The grave robbers of Ground Zero." A leftist "tolerance" museum was on the table then. Now it's a left-sanctioned "Islamic center" that sticks in the craw of a lot of our fellow Americans, who sense yet another insidious attempt by our "betters" to hijack what we now recognize as "the narrative." (Merlin-Net Photo)

"I have always been moved by the site; it means something to be close to where my mother may be buried, it brings some peace," writes Neda Blourchi, a Muslim who lost her mother to Jihadist terrorism on 9/11 in a WaPo op ed:

I was born in pre-revolutionary Iran. My family led a largely secular existence — I did not attend a religious school, I never wore a headscarf but for us, as for anyone there, Islam was part of our heritage, our culture, our entire lives. Though I have nothing but contempt for the fanaticism that propelled the terrorists to carry out their murderous attacks on Sept. 11, I still have great respect for the faith. Yet, I worry that the construction of the Cordoba House Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site would not promote tolerance or understanding; I fear it would become a symbol of victory for militant Muslims around the world.

 

"Looks like a surgical covering leaving only the part to be operated upon exposed: Eyes the windows to the soul," we twittered Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs this afternoon in response to our Sistah Grizzly's latest post "Cultural Jihad: Burka Couture Coming to a Department Store Near You."

Head cheerleader for the p.c. kumbaya narrative Mayor Michael Bloomberg is having none of it:

We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.

Oh, what a slippery slope we trod when first we practice to defraud. Well, it rhymed, but of course it's not fraud so much as self-delusion, the stock-in-trade of our fellow Americans on the "unconstrained vision" side of the aisle. Evan Sayet got it just right in his Big Hollywood debut back in January of 2009, as we blogged in our post "The look of love":

The “culture war” that we hear so much about is, to borrow Thomas Sowell’s phrase, a “conflict of visions.” Visions, Sowell explains, go deeper than mere policy – in fact they are the font of where we stand on the issues – and they are founded on some of the most basic and fundamental beliefs the individual holds about the nature of man and, in turn, the role and purpose of government, family, religion and all other influential forces that society has evolved. Sowell called the conflicting visions the “Constrained” and the “Unconstrained” and offered Jean Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith as primary examples of the visions in conflict [as we are forever blogging here] …

Sowell recognizes that, at its most basic level, this conflict of visions revolves around what one believes to be man’s innate nature. Is it, as the Neo-Liberal believes, that man is born good and then corrupted by the institutions of society or, do the Conservatives have it right and man is born with a dual and conflicting nature — capable of good and evil and everything in between — requiring cultural forces to help him tamp down the darker side and cultivate the good within?

In case you weren't sure what side of the narrative to come down upon, Time gives you a few linguistic nudges: Mayor Bloomberg "spoke passionately" in support of a proposed mosque near Ground Zero, while his predecessor Rudy Giuliani "claimed" the project would be a "desecration." Time goes on to call dissidence "Islamophobia." Journolisticoid proselytizer Mehdi Hasan at the UK's Guardian picks up the ball and runs with it:

Outraged rightwing protesters have spent several months trying to block the construction of what they call the Ground Zero mosque, claiming it is an "insult" to the victims and a "victory" for the terrorists.

Ignorance and bigotry abounds. Cordoba House is not a mosque but a cultural centre, which will include a prayer area, sports facilities, theatre and restaurant. The aim of the project is to promote "integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion … a place where individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, will find a centre of learning, art and culture". Nor is it being built at Ground Zero. The proposed site is two blocks to the north.

Why can't we all just get along?

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update II: Trending on Memeorandum.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

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.

Darwin and the clueless left: It was all a misunderstanding

"This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection," wrote Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (full text available online here).

It was all a misunderstanding. Charles Darwin called the process of nonrandom elimination of species that he hypothesized from years of field observation "natural selection." It totally works for us with both nature and human nature, but Darwin's flamboyant philosopher friend Herbert Spencer's memorable if misleading "survival of the fittest" survived the winnowing process of cultural evolution to become the meme of choice for generations of elitists who knew little about the scientific method nor the origin of species but all about what was best for us little people out here. Enter stage right Angelo M. Codevilla's American Spectator tour de force "America's Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution":

By 1853, when Sen. John Pettit of Ohio called "all men are created equal" "a self-evident lie," much of America's educated class had already absorbed the "scientific" notion (which Darwin only popularized) that man is the product of chance mutation and natural selection of the fittest. Accordingly, by nature, superior men subdue inferior ones as they subdue lower beings or try to improve them as they please. Hence while it pleased the abolitionists to believe in freeing Negroes and improving them, it also pleased them to believe that Southerners had to be punished and reconstructed by force. As the 19th century ended, the educated class's religious fervor turned to social reform: they were sure that because man is a mere part of evolutionary nature, man could be improved, and that they, the most highly evolved of all, were the improvers.

You must read the whole thing, of course. No mention of the Gramscian march through the institutions, but it touches deeply upon the ur-theme of this blog, the importance of being noticed. In our view it makes the world go 'round. Codevilla nails it:

For our ruling class, identity always trumps.

Just ask Northeast Corridor Fuddy Duddy Peggy Noonan. What's true for Beltway types is true for all mankind, only more so given the stakes, as Codevilla explains:

Like a fraternity, this class requires above all comity — being in with the right people, giving the required signs that one is on the right side, and joining in despising the Outs. Once an official or professional shows that he shares the manners, the tastes, the interests of the class, gives lip service to its ideals and shibboleths, and is willing to accommodate the interests of its senior members, he can move profitably among our establishment's parts.

Yes you, Mitt Romney, for enabling an aide to diss Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin as "not a serious human being." Your days are numbered.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.