Tea Part Parting Shots

Now that the media "elites" over at NPR and the Colombia Journalism review (whose director Victor Navasky I am currently writing an post on) are coming in to bayonet the wounded (or what they see as the wounded), I am reminded of something I read from Jonah Goldberg the other day. His whole post is worth the read, but this was the best.

3. These protests are unpatriotic astroturfing by plutocrats.

So much for "dissent is the highest form of patriotism"!

I find it sort of amazing that when groups like ANSWER, a Mos Eisley cantina of America-hating nut cases, take to the streets it's a full-flowering of democracy in action. When ACORN pays their ragamuffins to protest, or when Rainbow/PUSH shakes down businesses through racial extortion, it's the sort of direct democratic action Thomas Paine dreamed of. And when labor unions pay people to protest, it's populist. But when a bunch of independent Americans, talk-show hosts, and email campaigners organize hundreds of protests around the country, it's astroturfing.

Good stuff.