Libertarian Mob

Mark Lilla makes little effort to disguise his contempt for the Tea Party movement ( New York Review of Books , May 27).  His contempt is contemptible, and his charges that the Tea Partiers have “anarchist” tendencies and are animated by “anger” are off-base.

A few elements of his analysis, though, are worth reflecting on.  He begins by summarizing an article that he wrote for the same magazine in 1998, where he contended that the country is far less divided than we might think.  Conservative leaders attack the Sixties; liberal leaders attack the Reagan revolution’s exaltation of capitalist greed.  But the people of America cheerfully have embraced both revolutions.  ”This made sense,” he argues, “given that they were inspired by the same political principle: radical individualism.  During the Clinton era the country edged left on issues of private autonomy (sex, divorce, casual drug use) while continuing to move right on economic autonomy (individual initiative, free markets, deregulation) . . . . Democrats were day-trading, Republicans were divorcing.  We were all individualists now.”

The new Populism, he says, grows out of this setting and therefore has a different tenor from populist movements of the past.  Early populists used “the rhetoric of class solidarity to seize political power so that ‘the people’ can exercise it for their common benefit.”  Today, populist rhetoric “fires up emotions by appealing to individual opinion, individual autonomy, and individual choice, all in the service of neutralizing, not using, political power.  It gives voice to those who feel they are being bullied, but this voice has only one, Garbo-like thing to say: I want to be left alone.”  The new populism brings together “individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that.  This is the one threat that will bring Americans into the streets.”

Lilla calls it “the politics of the libertarian mob.”