Double-teaming Ross Douthat

Lent’s over and Stacy — The Other McCain — is released from his vow of giving up the pleasure of punk-smacking Ross Douthat. I picked up the slack a couple of times during Lent — here and here — just so Douthat would stay in punching-bag shape, and I thought I could let Stacy resume and walk away.

But I just saw Stacy’s quote of Douthat’s dismissing the Tea Parties:

[The Tea Parties] have all of the weaknesses of the anti-war marches: Their message is intertwined with a sense of disenfranchisement and all kinds of inchoate cultural resentments, they’ve brought various wacky extremists out of the woodwork (you know, like Glenn Beck), and just as George W. Bush benefited from having opposition to his policies identified with peacenik marchers in Berkeley and Ann Arbor, so Barack Obama probably benefits from having the opposition (such as it is) associated with a bunch of Fox News fans marching through the streets on Tax Day, parroting talk radio tropes and shouting about socialism.

Really, Douthat should get it over with and come out already so he can celebrate in the marches and festivals for Gay Pride Day in June, which will mark the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village in New York that began the gay rights movement in June 1969. Those marches and gatherings are FOR something, and in one form or another, I’ve participated in them since the early 1970’s — including the major marches on Washington in the 1980’s and 1990’s — and BEING IN GATHERINGS LIKE THAT CHANGES YOU. That’s the real reason we did them. They changed people who felt isolated and hopeless into people who felt unified and optimistic and motivated to create change, starting with their own lives.

Although I missed my local Tea Party to be with my dying cat, when I arrived late I did meet a small group who had attended and I could tell they, too, had been changed IN JUST THAT WAY by their participation in the Tea Party. They said 600 people had gathered on our small town’s Main Street and they were thrilled, energized and determined to take their momentum and get things done.

That excitement has galvanized everyone who doesn’t like what Congress and Obama are doing to the U.S. out of a state of inertia. We’re moving, now, baby! And while it may take a little more discussion to sharpen our focus on what to do about the excesses and destructiveness of the spendthrift Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike — and a foolish, incompetent president whose only salient skills are to read from a Teleprompter and to get other people to do his homework for him — we’re a grassroots movement that has stopped waiting for a leader, organized itself and started marching. It is not comparable to the anti-war movement because it is not an anti movement — it is a movement FOR smaller government, FOR conditions that create opportunities for individuals and small businesses, FOR a strong military, FOR victory over our enemies and FOR secure borders.

Douthat can sneer as much as he likes from the porn wing of his — what does he live in? townhouse? condo? mansion? The first wave of Tea Parties has created a strong group consciousness and thanks to the distributed leadership of bloggers and the media of the Internet — online TV, podcasts, online radio, social networking sites and Twitter — we can’t be suppressed any more by the mainstream media and we don’t have to wait for a Dear Leader to tell us what to think and do. The efforts of the current Congress and president to bankrupt the United States and make government so big that individual liberty and opportunity will be destroyed are not going to be allowed to stand.

At least Douthat was smart enough to close his piece with the bar graph chart showing both the Congressional Budget Office and White House estimates of the deficit — which I happen to think is going to focus people’s attention like the prospect of being hanged. (Gateway Pundit has the chart and current explanatory info here.)

So — Douthat — because you took an unworthy shot at Ann Arbor — and I was there for the opposition to the Viet Nam war — this Wolverine just has to set you — gee, straight’s not the right word, you’re still looking for the magic porn that will solve THAT little problem — this Wolverine just has to educate you on what is really going on in the Tea Party movement. See you at Pride Day!

And — Wolverines!