We're the ones we've been waiting for

Those rotten anarchist Tea Party nuts -- why, they don't want to listen to any of us!

It's easy to point out flaws in the Tea Party. What is getting old quickly is the political elite's criticism, which exhibits an intolerance and bad faith that it often attributes to the tea partiers. You don't have to read too much of this criticism to see that the powers that be and their fawning admirers in the media and intelligentsia dislike one thing in particular: the movement's apparent anti-authoritarianism.

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What's noteworthy is that the movement's anti-authoritarian tone  has establishment statists so upset. They seem really worried that this thing could get out of control. Any legitimate criticism they may make of the Tea Party movement is undermined by their abhorrence with anti-authoritarianism per se. They are anti-anti-authoritarian.

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“What's new and most distinctive about the Tea Party is its streak of anarchism — its antagonism toward any authority, its belligerent style of self-expression, and its lack of any coherent program or alternative to the policies it condemns,” Jacob Weisberg writes in Slate.  Note what's first on Weisberg's list.

There is also this priceless quote: "The most extreme faction in Weisberg's eyes 'would limit the federal government to the exercise of enumerated powers.' " So, sticking with "enumerated powers," the vision the founders had for this country, is not only extreme but "the most extreme." And some of you wonder why I get so agitated.

(Via Jesse Walker at hit & run, who observes, of homeschoolers and other DIYers that "self-organization tends to perplex people who think order must be imposed from above.)