RIGHT TURN ON MAIN STREET

National Review and Steynonline ^ | 13 October 2009 | Mark Steyn

[JLS]

“The people! United! Can never be defeated!”

You need a bit of collectivism for street protest, which may be why conservatives have never been much good at it. I don’t mean merely in the philosophical sense that collectivist action for individual liberty is reminiscent of the old Steve Martin sketch where he’d get the crowd to chant along with his non-conformists’ oath:

“I promise to be different.”
(“I promise to be different.”)
“I promise to be unique.”
(“I promise to be unique.”)
“I promise not to repeat things other people say.”
(“I promise not to repeat things other people say.”)

And yet on the streets of Washington we have the Martinesque sight of hundreds of thousands of Americans (if not a million or more) standing shoulder to shoulder for the right to be left alone. Aside from the philosophical paradox, there are practical difficulties to be overcome. These people have jobs. I mean real jobs, not the kind where it doesn’t matter whether you turn up or not, or in which jumping up and down on the sidewalk all day is factored into the timesheet. These are not community organizers or union officials or college professors.

[JLS]

Steyn on the current political action.

[JLS]

Steyn ping opportunity.

[KarlInOhio]

By contrast, it’s not clear that the GOP does. Laura Ingraham made a good point on Fox News the other night – that conservatives are doing better than they’ve done in ages at a time when the Republican Party is leaderless. I like it that way. The tea parties are a pack not a herd, which is one reason they’ve been effective.

I like "a pack not a herd". The Democrats have worked hard trying to find the shepherd and his sheepdog so they can be destroyed leaving the rest of the herd to be scattered and eaten at their leisure. Wolves are much harder to scatter, it is much harder to pick out the alpha wolf from the pack because he is also a wolf, and if the alpha wolf shows weakness (cough, McCain, cough) he is quickly taken down a notch or chased from the pack.

[JLS]

BTW, I truncated the title while cutting and pasting. The whole title is RIGHT TURN ON MAIN STREET.

[JLS]

I really liked this line:

“It’s like landing at Ellis Island in 1883, coming down the gangplank, and finding everyone excited about this pilot program they’ve introduced called “serfdom”.”