Civil Society

NPR: “Who Is The Tea Party? There’s No Short Answer”

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Mr. RAUCH: Yes, that was what turned out to me to be most interesting and to be hardest to get my mind around. The most important thing that they will tell you they’re trying to do is a cultural movement, not a political movement. They’re tiring to reeducate the whole country, change the way Americans think about their relationship to government. Move us back to a more self-reliant, independent sort of watch dog against government mentality.

They will tell you if you just try to change an election result, you have to come back every two years and do it again. If you can change the hearts and minds of the people, make them more skeptical of big government, then you do that forever.

I enjoyed listening to this NPR interview with Jonathan Rauch of the National Journal.

The interviewer seemed to have a hard time understanding the Tea Party as a largely leaderless movement which is sort of amusing. Jonathan Rauch says it is like a “hive or a network.” Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz….buzz away, friendly libertarian-ish hive. People are intrigued.

Update: Reihan Salam at NRO’s The Agenda blog:

Rather surprisingly, Jonathan Rauch, one of my favorite writers, has emerged as the most keenly observant chronicler of the Tea Party movement. I say surprisingly because I’ve never thought of Rauch as a political reporter per se, yet it’s clear that he has a knack for it. As much as I admire National Journal, I think his essay on “The Tea Party Paradox” deserved a much wider audience.

John Robb of Global Guerillas is mentioned too. Paging zenpundit….

Update II: Thanks for the link Instapundit! An Army of Davids is a perfect description of the phenomenon, isn’t it?

Others’ Shoes

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[I first posted this at my home blog, Phronesisaical. It’s a response to Lexington Green’s now famous Glenn Beck post. I’m reposting it here at Lex’s request. And forgive me if I seem slow to respond to comments; mine are frequently rejected by this system.]

Perhaps I’m taking on too much at once. I’m listening to Tchaikovsky’s symphonies and reading some Russian history to get a feeling for before the Revolution. I’m re-reading Daniel Martin to get a better feeling for what La Vida Es Sueño is about. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum today sent me an invitation to visualize O’Keeffe’s creative process.

And I’d really, really like to understand what is going on with the admirers of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, the Tea Partiers.

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The Deeper Meaning of the CBz Beck-O-Lanche

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[This was an update to a previous post, but I decided it should stand on its own. There are some inspiring lessons here.]

Great thanks to Glenn Beck for the mighty call-out on his TV show. He quotes this post here starting at 12:10, and continuing here. The transcript of the show is here.

This has been an interesting couple of days.

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I Think I See What Glenn Beck is Doing (Updated)

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The Glenn Beck rally is confusing people.

Why?

He is aiming far beyond what most people consider to be the goalposts.

Using Boyd’s continuum for war: Material, Intellectual, Moral.

Analogously for political change: Elections, Institutions, Culture.

Beck sees correctly that the Conservative movement had only limited success because it was good at level 1, for a while, weak on level 2, and barely touched level 3. Talk Radio and the Tea Party are level 3 phenomena, popular outbreaks, which are blowing back into politics.

Someone who asks what the rally has to do with the 2010 election is missing the point.

Beck is building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom. This is a vision that is despised by the people who have long held the commanding heights of the culture. But is obviously alive and kicking.

Beck is creating positive themes of unity and patriotism and freedom and independence which are above mere political or policy choices, but not irrelevant to them. Political and policy choices rest on a foundation of philosophy, culture, self-image, ideals, religion. Change the foundation, and the rest will flow from that. Defeat the enemy on that plane, and any merely tactical defeat will always be reversible.

Beck is unabashed that God can be invoked in public places by citizens, who vote and assemble and speak and freely exercise their religion. They are supposed to be too browbeaten to do this. Gathering hundreds of thousands of them to peaceably assemble shows they are not. But showing that the people who believe in God and practice their religion are fellow-citizens who share political and economic values with majorities of Americans is a critical step. The idea that these people are an American Taliban is laughable, but showing that fact to the world — and to potential political allies who are not religious — is critical.

Beck is attacking the enemy at the foundations of their power, their claim to race as a permanent trump card, their claim to the Civil Rights movement as a permanent model to constantly be transforming a perpetually unjust society.

He is nuking out the foundations of the opposition’s moral preeminence, the very thing I proposed in this post.

Ronald Reagan said we would not defeat Communism, we would transcend it.

Beck is aiming to have America do the same thing to its decaying class of Overlords, transcend them.

Beck is prepping the battlefield for a generation-long battle.

He is that very American thing: A practical visionary.

See, simple.

Restore pride and confidence to your own side, and win the long game.

As Ronald Reagan also said, there are simple solutions, just no easy solutions.

God bless America.

[bumped]

[UPDATES BELOW THE FOLD]

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