Who Are the Real Cynics?

Members of the Tea Party movement have become used to the usual barrage of insults and invective from critics – "racist", "angry", "fascist", "violent", etc. But there's another more insidious and amorphous charge: that of cynicism.

Those making it – liberal Democrats and their water-carriers in the media – would do well to rethink it. As the recent primaries show, the fate and futures of many politicians lay in the hands of these supposedly cynical tea partiers. In Arkansas, in Nevada, in South Carolina, and elsewhere, conservatives in the grassroots are about to take their country back. When that happens, the event will stand as a shining example of pure American idealism.

Leftists have badly underestimated the resolve of the tea party to defeat them this November. President Obama calls the tea party protesters "illegitimate", on the grounds that they stand in opposition to "necessary change". But Obama's "change" is little more than an ill-disguised attempt at income redistribution. And all the high-flown rhetoric and political posturing in the world can't disguise the fact that the middle class is Obama's real taxation target.

This is particularly the case for senior citizens, with their lifetimes' worth of savings and assets. They are by and large more prosperous than the young and those who are on welfare. Boiled down to its vile essentials, the President's plan is to rob the middle class and well-off seniors and give the loot to the dependent class, to the unemployed and the never-employed. In return, the President and his party ask only for their votes. You can be sure he will get them.

Another important issue for the tea party is health care reform, and President Obama's choice of Dr. Donald Berwick to lead Medicare and Medicaid. Berwick has an almost erotic attachment to socialized medicine. He has been publicly quoted as saying that painful joint maladies can be treated with steroids, and terminal diseases with morphine. Those of us who've long wondered how Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can possibly save five hundred billion dollars from Medicare can stop wondering now.

By this warped logic, responsible, hardworking tea party people are just a bunch of rabble-rousing cynics for not wanting to hand control of their retirement savings and health care to the gummint. Instead, they selfishly strive to live six months or a year longer, and cling to their own IRA and 401k investments, not wishing to impoverish themselves for the common good. Nancy Pelosi's top aid, Steny Hoyer, has called tea partiers "un-American" for standing in opposition to ballooning debt, confiscatory taxes, and Obamacare.

What's worse is the attitude of leftists: as far as they're concerned, nobody dare criticize liberal policies of redistribution, which are only intended to serve the common good (though invariably at a terrible cost to just about everyone). Obama, Reid, and Pelosi were deeply shocked by the emergence of the tea party, appearing as it did out of the blue to stand boldly and courageously against socialized medicine. As liberals see it, Americans are stupid and unfit to rule themselves; only members of the liberal social caste are worthy of that task.

The tyrannical mindset of the political left stands thus revealed. Belief in representative government is a besieged thing inside the beltway. Real political dialogue is anathema to the Democrat party. They would rather smear the opposition as racists, fascists, and homophobes than engage in honest debate. Listen to how they express themselves. Hear their language: "whose ass to kick", "boot on the neck". This is not the language of people who believe in deliberative democracy.

By any fair reckoning, the tea party cannot be called cynical. The same cannot be said, however, about their liberal opposition.