It's Not Easy Being Sane

Tough times for the non-crazy conservative -- which I think one can see here:

Rod Dreher, 9/15

Two of the most empty culture-war concepts/buzzwords today are "educated" and "elitist."

Rod Dreher, 9/15 (a bit earlier)

The libertarian economics writer Arnold Kling gets it about right on the Tea Party phenomenon, I think. Excerpt:

"Now, the elitism of President Obama and his supporters has reached in-your-face levels. They have utter contempt for the Tea Party-ers, and the Tea-Party-ers know it.

"I wouldn't want the Tea Party-ers at the faculty picnic, either. But my sense of class solidarity with Obama and other educated progressives does not make me want to see them exercise power. If anything, being a member of the educated elite and knowing knowing them as well as I do makes me share the Tea Party-ers' fears.

"I come back to my view that this is white, small-town America making its last stand. However, I think, also, that the progressive elite is making a last stand.

(Kling does throw in a couple of uneducateds in the original post, too, along with four elites or elitisms, just in case you're wondering).

Perhaps one way to discourage terms you don't like is to avoid linking approvingly to those who use them a lot. Just saying. Really, though, it is pretty tough to be a non-crazy conservative these days.

I'll add a few somewhat less snarky comments...first, Kling (and Dreher) notwithstanding, I think it's highly unlikely that very many of the marchers on Saturday were from small towns. This strikes me as much more of a suburban group than a rural group, although I have no data to back that up. Second, this "last stand" rhetoric is silly. There are few if any permanent victories in American politics. "White, small-town America" has been a small minority of all America for some time now, but it's not going to suddenly disappear.

Third comment. If it's correct that there were some 70K people at the march...I'm a bit curious to know how many of them were Congressional staff and other Washingtonians. Just curious, that's all.