I really don’t understand the impulse among many Harvard students (if the Crimson is any guide) to pat the Tea Partiers on the head and say, “I don’t agree with you, but you’re totally what this country is all about.”
No, they’re not. They’re just crazy.
Do they sometimes “ask the right questions”? Yes, absolutely. Reading Monday’s illuminating New York Times article on the movement, I was struck by how the Tea Partiers share with all rational people a sense of being played by forces beyond their control and a deep concern about how the Great Recession began. But their answers to these questions are ridiculous.
These are ignorant people. Oh sure, they could pass any political IQ test with flying colors, because they know who Ben Bernanke is. They know the little things, but they swallow the Big Lies.
And they’re scary. The people who are “cleaning [their] guns” are scary. I don’t know what’s going to pacify them — cutting taxes didn’t do it, stabilizing the economy didn’t do it, escalating the war on terror and forgetting about civil liberties didn’t do it.
Is it condescending to say these things? Am I just another liberal elitist who doesn’t understand the great American tradition of “strength, independence, and cleverness,” of having your “bit of land and a house” and leaving everyone, and being left, alone? Yeah, I guess I am.
But you know what? It’s just as condescending for Harvard students to fake their affinity with the Tea Partiers, and damn them with faint praise about how they’re asking the right questions. That doesn’t take them seriously on their own terms, because they don’t just have questions, they have answers. Crazy, crazy answers. Which are either right answers or wrong ones. If you think they’re wrong, say they’re wrong.
Photo credit: Flickr stream of zenashots.