I have no problem with that: we are in desperate need of pep rallies right now. Without them as starting point, I doubt whether organized opposition and action would ever follow.
Many Americans are today disheartened, discouraged, alienated and angry. That is not a recipe for a successful movement. Among the projects of the Left during the past 50 years was a determined effort to dismantle the cultural institutions that have traditionally bound Americans together, and replace them with Government. These institutions are families, neighborhood, communities, churches, synagogues, membership organizations, and charities.
It is an index of the Left's success that so many Americans today feel "siloed" - isolated from one another and powerless to act. Many have turned toward the State for nourishment and security, as has been the plan. But many others understand the dangers inherent in statism/socialism and have resisted, even in the absence of political leadership. What they desperately need are means of connecting with others who agree with them, and share their ideas and perceptions, and the Tea Parties are a fine way of accomplishing this objective.
Now: Andrew Sullivan is an obnoxious and pusillanimous twit who enjoys nothing more than creating limp-wristed little straw men for him to blow down. And then, he congratulates himself for his perspicacity as though the artful construction of lies were a Pulitzer Prize category, as in this day and age, it may well be.
Nonetheless, those of us who insist on speaking plainly recognize very real threats that others may ignore at their own peril:
- Massive, unprecedented levels of debt, monetized by trillions of dollars of fiat currency and soon, by withering tax increases;
- Uncontrolled illegal immigration that creates nationwide social pathologies and imposes economically-damaging costs and leaves our borders open to attack by...
- A growing and irridentist radical Islamic movement that preaches and conducts violence against those who refuse to submit before it.
- A Congress utterly out of touch and out of control whose members revel not in solving problems but in building personal empires with other people's money, and which routinely violates the U.S. Constitution in pursuit of whatever ambitions it imagines it can get away with.
These are not small problems, nor will they be solved easily. To deny them, as Mr. Sullivan does, is petulant and self-serving. But to deny the importance of people wishing to gather together to share their concerns is to miss the necessity of personal connection and validation as a precursor to organization in pursuit of common goals.
I agree with everything you've said, including above, but that's not what I'm denying. I'm denying the efficacy of "being heard."