John Feehery and David Brooks sound like a couple of aging Tories circa 1775. Powdered wigs and all. In fact, if they’d been born before the Revolution, they would certainly not have approved of Jefferson or Madison. Today, Feehery and Brooks seem unsettled by the thought that the movement to restore our Founding Principles is being lead by people wearing don’t-tread T-shirts. We cannot abide such “passion and zealotry,” they enjoin.
Feehery cheers Brooks with the following:
Feehery follows on with the assertion that true conservatives should value “societal stability”. Huzzah, old man! cries the ghosts of George III and the House of Lords.
Of course, Mao’s China was not an unstable society. Sure, much of the population starved due to collectivization, but millions suffered in an orderly fashion. Had it not been for the Second World War, Hitler, too, might have carried out the Holocaust more tidily. The dismantling of our Founding Institutions may happen in piecemeal fashion, too. Will that satisfy the hollow criteria of Feehery and Brooks?
You know, there may be certain values that we should place higher than “social stability,” Russell Kirk be damned. Ask Patrick Henry.
But wait a minute: what exactly is the Feehery/Brooks thesis? Is it that participants in the Tea Party Movement — by using new media to organize — are being subversive? That people who “march with signs of Barack Obama in a clown face” offend certain aesthetic sensibilities? Or is it that Feehery and Brooks are uncomfortable with the dynamism of a new activist center-right? Seriously, if the long-and-short of true conservatism is to relinquish tactical advantage, then may that conservatism go to pasture. The rest of us will continue working to stop the progressive juggernaut by any (legal) means necessary. Collectivization and crony capitalism are consuming our Founding Institutions–much faster than Tea Partiers are breaking with the ‘tradition’ of voting for weak-kneed Republicans pre-selected at $1,000-a-plate dinners.
“James O’Keefe the right-wing provocateur,” writes Feehery, “‘seems to enjoy channeling his inner Abby Hoffman.”
So the guy who almost single-handedly brought down the corrupt, illicit Acorn should never be let into the Country Club of Conservatism because he dressed up like a pimp? Or is it that he used guerrilla tactics? I think this illustrates that John Feehery’s tepid conservativism has had its chance. From 2000-2008, conservatives in office did little more than fetishize foreign policy. Otherwise, these wayward souls set about selling off yet more of our Founding Principles, piece by piece, vote by vote, in order to keep power. In the end, they were captured by special interests and lost power anyway due to corruption. The Tea Party says we’re done with that.
Now, the name Saul Alinsky is being tossed about lately as if it were the ultimate conversation stopper. Alinsky was a “radical,” sure. But a tactic is a tactic. Unless a tactic harms someone in the rights-violating sense, we should be willing a la Microsoft to “embrace and extend” whatever means will restore the health our Republic and our economy. And that includes funny hats.
Conservatives like Feehery and Brooks fancy themselves as daring defenders of a true conservatism. What’s really sad, however, is that they’re fertilizing their arguments with manure the MSM has been shoveling about the “teabaggers” for months. Indeed, have Feehery and Brooks ever actually been to a Tea Party? The proportion of normal Americans to troglodytes is a lot higher than you might think reading the Times.
As with any popular movement, the Teaparty movement is made up of all kinds. Some smart, some dumb. Some policy-savvy, some less so. But all are afraid of what’s happening to the Constitution. Some are conservative, some are libertarian and some are shades in between. Of course, there are the opportunistic LaRouchers who make the news because they carry an Obama-Hitler sign–which is unoriginal at best. So what? There are morons at every gathering. You can’t look the average Tea Partier in the eye and tell her she’s little more than a caricature dreamed up by the MSM. (Well, you can. But you’ll prove that you’re as out of touch as you are elitist.)
There are always going to be the John Feeherys and David Brookses of the world. They’ll sit on the sidelines and get paid to trash the only good thing going in American politics. Why? Because they want to distance themselves from the gaucheness of it all. Most of these conservatives roam the D.C. Beltway or the N.Y. Salon. Some of their best chums are progressives. It must be embarrassing to be chatting with said chums at the martini bar, when – gasp – some guy pops up on the plasma-screen wearing a ZZ Top beard and a Gadsten Flag. That guy can never be on my team, they’ll conclude with rectitude.
But the Tea Party movement is exactly the sort of grassroots groundswell that made the American Revolution possible. (BTW, that’s the event that built the institutions most conservatives claim to venerate.)
Of course, we’re starting to see copycat movements like the so-called coffee party–which touts “civic participation” and “cooperation” among elected officials. Fine. We should not expect activist tit for tat to go away as long as majority rule trumps individual liberty. But let us not confuse civic participation with a blind allegiance to state power. And let us not confuse peaceful demonstration with violent insurrection.
And now we’re offered this hollow conservatism?:
Whose traditions? Whose values? Wait, to have values at all is to have some ideology. To be free of ideology would be like being free of personality. That’s impossible, even if you’re boring. But seriously, does anyone think the progressives in power care a jot about your traditional views and values? According to Feehery and Brooks, we should all sit idly by as our institutions are being dismantled by people who use the Constitution as a litter-box liner. Why? Because custom says so? At least if we become irreversibly socialist, we’ll have done so with the dignity of Kirk and Burke.
Okay. Keep your traditional views and values close to your bosom as a soldier would a photo of his kids. But get out there and fight like hell–without the kid gloves, if necessary. To “true” conservatives everywhere, I say: Throw your powdered wig on the flame of liberty. Lay your teabag across the lofty bridge of the stodge’s nose. Throw up your coattails and expose your rosy bumcheeks to the elites who toss our tax-dollars carelessly into the gullet of Leviathan. And for goodness sake ‘rouse the rabble. We’ve got a lot more to lose right now than our sense of decorum.
