Victor Davis Hanson: Where Did the Tea-Party Anger Come From?

Pajamas Media ^ | July 29, 2010 | Victor Davis Hanson

[PuzzledInTX]

Why is the Angry Public so Angry?

I think we all know why the Tea Party movement arose — and why even the polls do not quite reflect the growing generic anger at incumbents in general, and our elites in particular.

Anger at Everything?

There is a growing sense that government is what I would call a new sort of Versailles — a vast cadre of royal state and federal workers that apparently assumes immunity from the laws of economics that affect everyone else.

In the olden days, we the public sort of expected that the L.A. Unified School District paid the best and got the worst results. We knew that you didn’t show up at the DMV if you could help it. A trip to the emergency room was to descend into Dante’s Inferno. We accepted all that in other words, and went on with our business.

But at some point — perhaps triggered by the radical increase in the public sector under Obama, the militancy of the SEIU, or the staggering debts — the public snapped and has had it with whining union officials and their political enablers who always threaten to cut off police and fire protection if we object that there are too many unproductive, unnecessary, but too highly paid employees at the Social Service office. In short, sometime in the last ten years public employees were directly identified with most of what is now unsustainable in the U.S. The old idea that a public servant gave up a competitive salary for job security was redefined as hitting the jackpot.

The Tea Party is not over

There is another Tea Party theme that those who play by the rules are being had, from both the top and bottom.

[PuzzledInTX]

Victor Davis Hanson ping

[Yardstick]

*bump for later*

[Clintonfatigued]

Great editorial about the growing backlash against Big Government Progressivism that Libertarians have warned us about for a long, long time.

[hosepipe]

Sedition treason and espionage tend to piss some people off... even some democrats..

[Cyber Ninja]

bttt

[23 Everest]

Everyday citizens that go to work daily are getting pissed having to provide not only for their family but every lazy SOB on the doth and wasteful government spending, that’s who.

[23 Everest]

doth = dole

[PGalt]

There is an anger that the law is now malleable. Creditors are bumped at Chrysler, violating contractual agreements. We hear of rumors that cap and trade and amnesty can be accomplished by administrative fiat rather than by law. Of course, BP is demonic in its Gulf performance, but where does Obama obtain the legal right to demand $20 billion in confiscated capital (why then not $50,100, or 200 billion?).

Supra national corporations + internationalist totalitarian elitist interlopers = neo fascism

"Too BIG to fail" - neospeak

[corvus]

“There is another Tea Party theme that those who play by the rules are being had, from both the top and bottom.”

VDH nails it. Hell hath no fury like a public scorned. Let us take out the trash in November and trim our sails for a Constitutional course!

[PuzzledInTX]

VDH expresses it well. It has become all too surreal.

[Tzimisce]

Most of the elites Hansen is complaining about will be voted right back in to office.

[Stentor]

Everyday citizens that go to work daily are getting pissed having to provide not only for their family but every lazy SOB on the doth and wasteful government spending, that’s who.

One of my favorite things used to be driving from my very modest apartment to a job I hated going past fat hogs sitting on the the stoops of brand new public housing. Meanwhile, everyone I know is having to replace just about everything in their hundred year old city row houses out of their own pockets. Then taxes are increased. On the way home you can stop in the supermarket and see someone gabbing on the cell phone and paying for baskets of food with their Access cards while you shop for the cheap chicken and cuts of meat. Why would anybody be upset?

[ROCKLOBSTER]

the polls do not quite reflect the growing generic anger at incumbents in general, and our elites in particular

Probably because the general public is way too busy watching moronic TV shows or sports, to even know who the RAT elitists are, or what thieving bastards they are.

[LouAvul]

even some democrats..

Yeah, I happen to know the two who are angry.

[Senator_Blutarski]

VDH nails it. But personally, I’m just tired of being lied to.

[BobS]

We are entering the realm of the government beating down the people. There are not enough military or police forces to stop an uprising. They will be killed or desert to our side. Read that book ‘Unintended Consequences’ when people rose up there. And ‘Atlas Shrugged’ where people just walked away from their jobs and shut down the economy.

[rockrr]

OK FreeRepublic - Let's all shout it out together: "I told you so!"

[PGalt]

VDH expresses it well. It has become all too surreal.

Yes, he does. Yes, it is.

[TheCause]

Every time our country stands in the path of danger
An instinct seems to summon her finest first — those who truly understand her

When freedom shivers in the cold shadow of true peril
Its always the patriots who first hear the call

When loss of liberty is looming, as it is now
The siren sounds first in the hearts of freedoms vanguard

The smoke in the air of our Concord Bridges and Pearl Harbors
Is always smelled first by the farmers who come from their simple homes to find the fire and fight

LET IT BEGIN.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoW4aIRIa6A