Peggy Noonan gets it right this time: Revolt of the accountants (behind $ wall). A quote:
There is a real fear that government, with all its layers, its growth, its size, its imperviousness, is changing, or has changed, who we are. And that if we lose who we are, as Americans, we lose everything.
This is part of what’s driving the sense of political urgency this year, especially within precincts of the tea party.
Much of her essay is at Never Yet Melted, who comments:
The liberal elite, when faced with resistance to its agenda, invariably contemptuously labels its opponents as people afraid of change. Peggy Noonan, in one of her better columns... in the Wall Street Journal, explains that the popular revolt which is going to bury the democrat party in the next cycle of elections is fueled by perfectly legitimate fear of, and opposition to, change: change in the nature of the country’s character and culture.
Villainous also has some good commentary in A Nation of Insurors, including this:
Governments do not elect themselves. Politicians make promises and we pick and choose from the menu they present to us. Representative government, unrestricted by some limiting principle, inevitably reflects the human failings of the governed. The problem is not government, nor too many bean counters, but our own desire to insulate ourselves from risk.
Where is this leading us? I think we are in a battle for soul of this nation, with those who understand moral hazard in a pitched battle against those who don't. There is an illusory security to be found in large numbers. Somehow we feel safer in a crowd. Making society more interconnected and interdependent doesn't eliminate risk - it expands it.
From Roff at US News, The Tea Party Movement Is a Middle Class Revolt:
All across America the people derided by the likes of Sinclair Lewis as “Babbitts” are awakening. They are beginning to reassert themselves, pushing back, saying “No” for the first time in a long while. It may not last--the politicians may find a way to mollify them or they may give up and go home. Or they may change the country. Either way they are a more serious, more substantive movement--even in what the smart set patronizingly likes to point out are its inconsistencies and innocence--then what the columnists and commentators who deride them are willing to acknowledge.
The arrogance and condescension of the "smart set" particularly irks me. The "Babbitts" are the people who create the jobs, pay the taxes, raise the families at great sacrifice, build America - and contain in them a picture of what America is about. The smart set consistently underestimates - excuse me - misunderestimates - the common sense, decency, and patriotism of Americans who exist outside the Beltway.
"Babbitts" want to be left alone by the government as much as possible, and to be powerful only within their own lives. That's freedom. Every time government imposes one more law, one more demand, one more impossible-to-meet-or-to-understand regulation, people feel their autonomy slipping away.
See this: Americans' Image of "Federal Government" Mostly Negative
