For the past few days, I’ve been fascinated by the sudden barrage of editorials explaining why liberals detest Sarah Palin.
Though root causes of Palin-hatred are hotly debated in these editorials, none deny that liberals are having this visceral reaction to Palin. It’s too apparent to refute, I suppose. Still, their query seems a tad misplaced. For though these stories appear to explain the “Palin phenomena,” they’re really about the nascent Tea Party movement. It’s not Palin that so confounds these writers. It’s you.
Mocked and belittled, Palin is merely a stand-in for Tea Partiers or conservative populists. She’s the de-facto leader of the leaderless populists because the media needed someone in that role. They needed a person they could plausibly coronate with a leader-like status. An interviewee. And Palin fit their needs — she’s popular, populist, and vocal.
If Palin-hatred is a hatred for populists focused onto the person of Palin, then, by extension, elitist mockery of populists is a barely disguised disdain for ordinary Americans. The left-leaning media takes the “elitist” side, with Obama as Commander In Chief. On the other side are conservative Americans, itinerant and worried, but still unwilling and unable to accept Palin as their leader. Thus, Palin v. media is actually populists v. elitists — a classic sociological conflict.
But Palin isn’t the leader of the Tea Partiers for they don’t have a leader. Conservative populist movements, by definition, are leaderless. No one can claim the mantle of leadership, even those who jump in front of the populist parade. Palin, smartly, refused to rush to the front during last week’s Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. In her keynote speech, Palin claimed to be “a big supporter of this movement,” but not its leader. The movement, she cautioned, should remain “leaderless,” and undefined by any one person.
Liberal populist movements, in contrast, require a charismatic figurehead, such as the iconic Che Gueverra, whose image has been merchandized on the t-shirts worn by young wannabe Marxists who don’t realize, or perhaps care, that the image of their rebellious hero has been co-opted by the capitalist forces they hate. The irony is delicious. Even Obama was a “community organizer,” a paid fomenter of urban protest movements that never quite succeeded.
From the outside, a leaderless movement looks chaotic and untenable. And it is. I’ve been to several tea parties in Arizona. There’s no organization. None. People bring signs, usually homemade, and mill around aimlessly. Someone starts a chant. Others may follow … or may not. The point is just to be there. To stand with other like-minded populists. To acknowledge their growing numbers.
But as protestors, tea partiers are pathetic. I would have thought they’d get better at the disruptive thing, but they remain quiescent. Some of the older, ex-sixties radicals, occasionally try to get conservative populists riled up, but it always fails. They’re just too conservative. For them, protesting is uncivil. As one older woman said to me, “Isn’t protesting what the other side is doing?”
Perhaps. But protesting is essential to populism, though it takes many forms. Without an oppressive elite, populist protest seems meaningless. It’s equally meaningless, however, not to protest.
Tea partiers feel put upon. With protest, they’re defining their boundaries, as if drawing a line in the sand over which no elitist can step. The impetus of populism is the conclusion that elitists have overstepped their boundaries. Pushing back is their recourse. Thus, protest.
Protest, though, can be negative, that is, it can pull back rather than push back. One such negative protest is “Going Galt,” a phrase that takes its name from a character in Ayn Rand’s famous dystopic novel, Atlas Shrugged. This form of protest starves elitists of power and money by refusing to work diligently … for them. A Tea Partier who goes Galt, lets land lay fallow, earning just enough to get by. Since less money is made, fewer taxes are paid. “Going Galt,” then, is a form of protest that weighs the joy of prosperity with that of denying elitists, finding the latter more morally weighty.
Though intuitive, ordinary people have a sense of the law of diminishing marginal returns. They know when they’re being screwed. When they get to that point, they wisely stop working. But that’s not “Going Galt,” for naturally, conservatives are busy little beavers who would continue working in spite of decreasing financial reward. They’d keep producing. Perhaps it’s their internalized work-ethic, or maybe just the competitive desire to be better than one’s neighbors. Whatever the cause, when populists “Go Galt,” they stop working because they want to starve elitists. They want to take away their power. Cut them down to size. In their estimation, elitists are subsidized by their hard labor. So they stop.
When I first saw a “Who is John Galt” sign at a Phoenix tea party last summer, I remembered the character in Rand’s novel, and even the phrase, but couldn’t figure out the connection between John Galt and contemporary conservative populism. Now I think I understand, though through a glass darkly. Galt is a symbol of revolution and protest, a lonely cri de coeur of one man against the machine. But that solitary protest – the one among many – both defines conservative populism and explains its leaderless-ness. For solitude – Going Galt – doesn’t mesh well with mass protest. The thousands of solitary populists, standing alone, holding hand-made signs, only make sense if viewed through the prism of individualism, self-reliance and, of course, a populist revolt against elitists.
The left will never understand the solitude of a conservative populist.
They’ll never understand how conservative populists stand side-by-side, without being led.
They’ll never understand that populists want boundaries, with the sense of space and equity that only a small government makes possible.
They’ll never understand that at some point, ordinary Tea Partiers will simply stop working, protesting by what they don’t do, and not by what they do.
And they’ll certainly never understand that Sarah Palin is just one populist among many, not a leader.
Kristen Burroughs is a candidate for the House of Representatives in LD7. An educator, her doctorate and graduate degrees are from the University of Chicago and Yale University.
StateBrief's op-ed contributors include local and national
opinion-makers, elected officials and candidates. 
I see where the author is going with the elitist vs. populist analogy, but here is where it falls short… To cast the “other side” as merely elitists who hold a general disdain for ordinary Americans doesn’t really capture the full picture. As one of those on this other side (e.g., those who find Palin and the Tea Party movement a bit ridiculous), I can speak for myself as well as a number of those like me in saying that it’s not that we hold a general disdain for ordinary Americans. Rather, it’s that we refuse to believe the “ordinary American” is as ignorant as these individuals. Somewhere in this movement it seems that not knowing or caring about the difference between a Shiite and Sunni Muslim, whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the President of Iraq or Iran, whether one could remember their core beliefs without writing them on the palm of their hand, etc., became synonymous with being an “ordinary American.” I’m sorry, but I refuse to accept this definition of “ordinary American.” Not only is it sad to me given our forefathers were scholars, world travelers, inventors, and overall curious about the world around them, but I’ve found it excludes a great deal of Americans who may not be white, Christian, or living in the Midwest or South, but are proud to be Americans just the same. I’m not sure where it became acceptable that ignorance or simplistic thinking in black and white became a litmus test of whether someone is a true American, but I, for one, find the premise offensive and worth a little disdain. So, you see, it’s not that those of us on the “other side” hold a general disdain for ordinary Americans, it’s that we refuse to accept this narrow definition of what it means to be an ordinary American and are angry that something we hold dear has been reduced to such simplistic terms. So, if Sarah Palin has stepped into the role of leading these people (which, let’s be honest, she most certainly has tried to just as much as the media has strived to portray her as such), that’s where the anger is (rightly) going to be directed.
According to the media, if you live in a blue state, you are not ordinary. If you live in a fly over state (most red states are), then you are ordinary. That sounds about right.
This is to Amanda … you have reduced your argument to the same level of simplicity as those in the Tea Party Movement you criticize.
You said it yourself, “… elitists who hold a general disdain for ordinary Americans doesn’t really capture the full picture. As one of those on this other side”
Since by your own words, you are judging what American is “ignorant” and who is “enlightened” (like you), that puts you in the elitist class of judgmental “blue state” folks who are ever so “reasonable”.
Who cares what “…the difference between a Shiite and Sunni Muslim,” is Ms Amanda? Who cares and what difference does it make? Seems to me that both groups contain elements that want to kill us and rape you.
And in case you missed your history lesson, it was one of our forefathers who launched a way against Muslims on the Barbary Coast and let to the founding of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corp.
In 1785, Thomas Jefferson put it this way when speaking with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja; “It is written your Koran, that all nations which do not acknowledge the Prophet are sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every Muslim who was slain in this warfare is sure to go to paradise.”
Learn your history – I’m one of those “Tea Party” Palin supporters you decry.
You see Ms Amanda, I find you and the attitudes of those you speak for, quite frankly, offensive. I am however, compelled to tolerate your exercise free speech, something the people you speak for so often ignore when viewing those whom you disdain.
Oh by the way, I am a Mensan holding an MBA and I’m old enough to remember when Amerika was free. Something Euro-Socialists such as yourself seem not to know.
it’s great to live in a free country where we are all allowed to voice our opinions about any politician and opposing viewpoints. democracy allows us to vote someone in and out depending on their performance.
education about the issue is a right and privilege in this great country. without going into a lot of rhetoric about who’s right and who’s wrong, my opinion from watching Mrs. Palin in action is that she brings a lot of the criticism on herself by not reading up on the issues, not knowing her subject inside and out; and going for the “cute soundbite.” if this is where women in politics are headed, we are in serious trouble.
Arizona believer, then you must abhor Barack Obama who cannot exist without a tele-prompter to tell him what to say next – and without which, he makes some very dumb remarks and has to retract and redo.
Amanda Rogers doesn’t get it either.
First of all, an “ordinary American” may or may not be a Tea Partier. But most Tea Partiers are just ordinary Americans. They’re neither organized nor hired to be at XXX on anyone’s behalf, but have found each other through the Internet. Tea partiers protest the Federal government’s obscene tax-and-spend and “bailout” programs. Although excessive and punitive taxation and crony spending has been going on for many years, this administration has taken it to new extremes.
Tea partiers have actually been protesting quietly for years with their votes and with friends, but now they’re open about it. They’re saying, “Enough is enough … we cannot keep quiet any longer.” They protest patriotically and peacefully because they……are patriotic and peaceloving, not given to making a scene. Most have never before protested. Tea partiers, being just “ordinary Americans,” are plain, everyday people who are good neighbors, pay their bills, and most avoid all things “political.” For most of their lives, they had no voice. But now, they have a long list of worries including the monster, socialistic ObamaKare, the business-strangling Kap and Trade, and the Jobs bill that does nothing to create jobs. Ordinary Americans are smart enough to see that politics in Washington has not changed for the better as promised—it’s gotten worse. It is not that Republicans don’t want to do “anything,” it is that (hopefully) they do not want to do the WRONG things.
Ordinary Americans do not want Obama’s programs. They want to fix what is wrong with what we have. They are as mad at the Republicans who did nothing about health care as they are at Democrats who want to completely overhaul it and hand it over to the federal government. The government has proven it cannot run a business well. It does everything expensively with the maximum of bureaucratic red tape. This is why “ordinary Americans” know that the federal government should be forbidden from running any kind of business. Everything, whatever the government touches, goes bankrupt or costs too much money to fix. Thus, tea partiers do not want a bigger federal government. They want less of it. Much less.
Ordinary Americans repeatedly prove that they will help their neighbors without government coercion. Volunteers from all over the country went to New York after 9/11. And again when Katrina hit New Orleans, my own family stepped in to help. My daughter and son-in-law sent money. My sister-in-law worked at a soup kitchen near Baton Rouge. Another sister helped feed refugees at the Astrodome in Houston. When there, she heard able-bodied people bragging about being multi-generational welfare recipients, not needing a job and how they were just waiting for that next check from, well, ordinary Americans who do work for a living. This experience changed my sister. She now believes that those who will not work should not eat. This is not cruel….it is fair…and right.
Ordinary Americans know that some Americans cannot make it on their own. These people really do need help though they should first turn to their families or churches, and not the federal government. The federal government should be the last resort. I know a family who raised the money for a family member who had no insurance to fight his cancer. They held car washes and garage sales. And there are private charities such as the Bill Gates foundation — that are looking for worthy causes.
If the federal government—Congress and the White House—will get out of the way, Americans will do the right things, like help those in need. They will also voluntarily do things to improve the environment because we are all more aware of what kinds of things damage it. They long for honor in journalism.
Tea partiers have been quiet. Wrongly so. As liberals push further toward the left, tea partiers seek balance. They don’t want the extreme left or right. They see federal government pushing them toward the left more than at any other time in history, though it has been gradually moving that way for many years. Most Americans kept quiet, hoping the government would correct itself. They didn’t want to make a
fuss. Again, they only want federal government to get out of their lives—stop telling them who to hire, how to teach their kids, what to teach their kids….the list goes on and on and includes Congress spending their money in grotesquely stupid ways—repeatedly.
Tea partiers hate being put into bankruptcy by a Congress that can’t stop borrowing and spending. Any ordinary American knows that if you are in a money crunch you stop spending and borrowing as well as pay down any debt you already have. Apparently there are no ordinary Americans in Washington. Maybe they are elites, but I say they are morons and crooks. They are going the wrong way. They take money from ordinary Americans to give to AIG, GM and banks. But these entities are staying in business when they deserve to experience the consequences of their crooked dealings. Their CEO’s should not get bonuses – and the Congress should not be remunerated the way they are, much less get the raises they vote for themselves, while voting no cost of living raise this year for folks on Social Security.
Congress is raising taxes when they should be lowering them and increasing spending when they should be reducing it. Let the ordinary Americans keep more of the money they make. Let businesses owned by ordinary Americans keep more of the money they make. When a business sells more, they will hire more people. When people have more money in their pockets, they will spend more. When businesses grow, the economy will improve. We do not need government to do anything except stop strangling ordinary Americans who are trying to make a living.
Congress should repeal Sarbanes-Oxley and let more businesses go public. But no. Instead, they want to take from those willing to work and give it to those who are not.
In the past, Tea partiers have allowed others to run the show but now they know they have to do something to get America off this wrong road. Tea partiers protest because the Constitution is being ignored. They hope they have not waited too long.
I do not understand this: If you are an ordinary American, as you seem to claim you are, how can you possibly approve of what Congress is doing to us? For the life of me, I do not know why you will not listen to these ordinary Americans and at least consider their points of view, weigh them, see if an opposite view from your own has merit. Why do you swallow what “your side” is saying hook, line and sinker?
By the way, this is the first political thing I have written in my life. It won’t be the last. And I do NOT think Sarah Palin is presidential material.
sorry, veritus. i voted for Obama. better a a literate and calm mind than a total moron who had to have his daddy get him into Yale.
…and i’m not speaking of McCain, but Bush. his mistake was allowing the political consultants to run his campaign. if he had shown more of his “maverick” and less ambition to get that office, he would have had my vote and many others as well.
we’ll see what Obama does. it took a long time to mess up the economy and everything else that is in flux today so it might not be something that can be accomplished in one term.
if he doesn’t perform, we can always vote him out of office. i’m a registered Independent, after years of being a Republican.