whose country is it? right. black folks'. latinos'. but white folks' too, right? this land is, etc. it won't do just to reverse the oppressions, will it? it's the tea partiers' country too even if they are unemployed, and for that reason among many others, the wrong sort of people. you'd get the feeling from blow or eugene robinson, say, that these folks are to be disqualified on the basis of their race and, most particularly, their class.

robinson, blow and their huge dominant ilk lob the term "anti-government" at these people as though to be anti-government was self-evidently to be insane. (to which i would just say: right. and you're therefore pro-government, i.e. a lover of your own subordination, a political masochist.) robinson in some column and many of these people at one time or another associate the claim that "obama is a socialist" with psychotic hyper-violence. well i am a political philosopher, a professional, and i'm here to say: i'm comfortable with the claim. but surely y'all said far worse about dick cheney, for example (come to that, so did i).

start out with this presumption: a large protest movement might just have a legitimate set of grievances, whether it's students at columbia or unemployed waitresses from amarillo. and make up your mind that any peaceful political expression - in particular that which is critical of the government - is protected by the first amendment and in any case is absolutely central to the idea of democracy. catch yourself sneering at people on the grounds that they went to the wrong college, or no college at all. listen to yourself just constantly hurling abuse at the "wingnuts" or "tea-baggers" and understand that lobbing names at people is not an argument, even if you went to harvard. consider the idea that america might really have to do with something other than the domination of the state in every aspect of every person's life, cradle to grave. pretend to care about freedom in some rudimentary sense: pay it lip service or something.

you can glory in your capitulation. that's cool; i congratulate you for finding someone to whom you can capitulate enthusiastically. it's obvious now that that's what you wanted all along. well, most folks do. but as you do, i want you to remember that dick cheney ran this country ten minutes ago and sarah palin will run it ten minutes from now. then what kind of terms are your going to be using in your extreme anti-government insane rhetoric? then are you going to take responsibility for the actions of a few anarchists at the wto when they break windows at the bank of america? etc.

the picture that blow or frank rich deploy is one of steady inevitable progress, so their idea is that the tea-partiers pine for an america that is lost forever. but white right-wingers (of a kind) ran this country a year and a couple of months ago. and the pendulum can swing again. see? it's never time for anyone to assume that the government is on their side forever and hence that to be anti-government is to be an evil extremist.