Talk about intolerant...
Why the Tea Party is toxic for the GOP
By Michael Gerson
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Yet the Republican Party suffers its own difficulty — an untested ideology at the core of its appeal.
In the normal course of events, political movements begin as intellectual arguments, often conducted for years in serious books and journals. To study the Tea Party movement, future scholars will sift through the collected tweets of Sarah Palin. Without a history of clarifying, refining debates, Republicans need to ask three questions of candidates rising on the Tea Party wave:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/24/AR2010082405001.html
Most Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement are understandably concerned about the size and reach of government. Their enthusiasm is a clear Republican advantage. But Tea Party populism is just as clearly incompatible with some conservative and Republican beliefs. It is at odds with Abraham Lincoln’s inclusive tone and his conviction that government policies could empower individuals. It is inconsistent with religious teaching on government’s responsibility to seek the common good and to care for the weak. It does not reflect a Burkean suspicion of radical social change.
That guy is a piece of work. A common thread in his column is that he imples we are juvenile in thought. His words:
“But it is toxic for the GOP to be associated with the armed and juvenile..”
The air must be very thin where he sits.
Intellectualism is also an "ism."
You cannot tell a man that he is a lowbrow any more than you can tell a woman that her clothes are in bad taste, but a highbrow does not mind being called a highbrow. He has worked hard, read widely, traveled far, and listened attentively in order to satisfy his curiosity and establish his squatters' rights in this little corner of intellectualism, and he does not care who knows it. And this is true of both kinds of highbrow — the militant, or crusader, type and the passive, or dilettante type. These types in general live happily together; the militant highbrow carries the torch of culture, the passive highbrow reads by its light. — Russell LynesAmerican Heritage: Do you think that the middlebrow still tends to look up to the highbrow as a source of taste and guidance, as you implied he did in 1949?
Russell Lynes: No, I think the lower middlebrow, at least, now tends to look upon the highbrow as an intellectual fraud.
This guy needs to remember what Tonto said to the Lone Ranger as they were surronded by angry Indians, "what you mean we in trouble white man?"