Margaret says that the Tea Party isn’t selfish

Don’t Tread on Poor People!

In a riff that most of you won’t be able to read because it’s behind the Politics in Minnesota firewall, Margaret Martin claims that the Tea Party movement isn’t selfish; it’s just a call for self-government.

I’m sure she’s right; I mean think of all the flags you see at Tea Party rallies with the coiled snake and the legend: Don’t Tread on Poor People! What could be more selfless than that?

Uh, Spot, those flags read: Don’t Tread on ME.

Oh, hello, Grasshopper! You’re right, of course. Just illustrating a point.

Another term for SELF-government could be ME-government.

There is an interesting post at one of Spot’s favorite law sites, Balkinization, about the rise of the Tea Party:

The two most significant political events of 2010 are the enactment of health care reform and the rise of the Tea Party. These developments are, of course, related. To think about how the landscape will look after November, it would be helpful to put the Tea Party in some context.

Almost every broad mobilization for change provokes an equivalent counter-mobilization. These movements then battle for popular support until one prevails. In the course of that struggle, each side must engage the other's arguments and make some concessions to hold its coalition together. What emerges is a new constitutional consensus. [  ]

That seems right to me. In the case of health care, the mobilization was borne out of a generous and humane impulse. Virtually by definition, the counter-mobilization is borne out of the opposite impulse: grievance and resentment, and Katherine Kersten’s your piece of cake is bigger than my piece of cake mentality we talked about yesterday.