Tea Party Metaphor and the Clueless Left

The Left [1] doesn't like the Tea Party; not one little bit.  No sirree bob!  They're, by God, extreme ultra right-wing fascists; violence waiting to happen.  They're a hate group.  And racists to boot.
The list goes on. [2]


The the Left's persistent and escalating attacks on the Tea Party were predictable, and, given that legacy media are the ideological handmaidens of the liberal establishment, they may find some success.  Unable to defend their pernicious legislative and administrative policy record, they can only hope to shift the focus of attention.  Reasoning that the best defense is a good offense, invective seems their only recourse -- at least in what passes for 'public debate'.

So far, the attacks -- growing more shrill with the ramp-up to 2012 -- do not appear to have had the desired effect for Democrats.  Ranging from the scurrilous "tea-bagger" epithet, to Pelosi's "astro-turf" characterization to the most recent naming as "terrorists",  the Left is telling us what it most fears.  The Tea Party has become their bete noir -- a symbol of everything it despises. If it is a symbol, how can it also be a metaphor?  Depends on how it is perceived.

In my view, the Tea Party is a metaphor on two levels.  First, in its reflection and renewed understanding and regard for Founding principles, and second as an expression of who most Americans are -- center-right fiscal conservatives, who believe in personal responsibility, free enterprise and meritocracy.  Democrats (and some big-government Republicans) who fail to differentiate between symbol and metaphor do so at their peril.



------------
1. What has become of the Left in America, in the West?  There was a time when the liberals, though differing from conservatives in their view of the world, were not so doctrinaire as they have now become; they were willing to engage in debate and sometimes amenable to persuasion.  They shared with conservatives the roots of 19th Century liberalism.  That changed, I believe, when they became institutional statists -- a faction that discovered it could leverage its power through the state.  In an effort go retain that power they underwent a narrowing ideological shift in the direction of Rousseauvian Jacobins and Fabian Alinskyites.  Sad.  And dangerous.
2.  There is an amusing irony in much of what the Left says about the conservatives.  It is remarkably self-descriptive -- pure projection.
Once again, I remind readers that fascism was a phenomenon of the far Left.  It was characterized as "right-wing" only by Marxists who vehemently disagreed with Germany and Italy which rejected world communism in favor of national socialism (Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism is an invaluable reference).  If violence (and hatred) were an industry, the Left would be facing anti-trust prosecution.
And who are the de-facto racists?