Tea Partiers the New Hippies?

After long ignoring them, David Brooks is just now trying to make sense of the tea party movement. He makes a good attempt, but doesn't get it yet. Though I'd like to believe otherwise, the tea party is soft core white supremacy. It's made up of people worried that non-whites have more power than they do. It's white people worried that these non-whites don't have their best interests in mind, that they're going to seek some sort of revenge. This is all irrational thinking, by the way. Brooks compares the tea partiers to the Hippy movement. At least the hippies stood for something good. Some tea partiers stand for fiscal conservatism, which is good, but mostly that's just a cover for white people scared out of their wits. I don't think tea partiers are saying extreme things to shock people. I think that's what they believe and they're finding the courage to say it within the tea party culture.

There are many differences between the New Left and the Tea Partiers. One was on the left, the other is on the right. One was bohemian, the other is bourgeois. One was motivated by war, and the other is motivated by runaway federal spending. One went to Woodstock, the other is more likely to go to Wal-Mart.

But the similarities are more striking than the differences. To start with, the Tea Partiers have adopted the tactics of the New Left. They go in for street theater, mass rallies, marches and extreme statements that are designed to shock polite society out of its stupor. This mimicry is no accident. Dick Armey, one of the spokesmen for the Tea Party movement, recently praised the methods of Saul Alinsky, the leading tactician of the New Left. Read it all at NYT