Part 2 (1/2)

Fear was all the rage The celebrated ”red state” blogger Erick Erickson (along with his coauthor, Lewis Uhler) has given an almost clinically precise description of what he and his fellow alarmists achieved

Many Americans who had never been politically active, never walked a precinct, never interrupted their golf gaovernripped with the sense that their govern stolen from them4 People all across the nation were tuned to the Mars-invasion broadcast this ti, delicious, even addictive It was the orgaseous injustices that would be done to the ”death panels” They purred to hear about the can of ”indoctrination” that the new president had planned for their innocent kids; their pulse quickened to think of the ”chains” he was preparing for their ined bravery to picture how they would be targeted by ”the co insurrection” Their heroes, they quivered to learn, were victims of ”persecution,” their nation was under ”systematic assault” by its own leaders, and they who had defeated Soviet communiseons of Guantana Bound,” as a popular website of the day moaned rapturously5 This time it was apocalypse that moved the needle, that swayed the undecided, that made the sale

We the Market

And what it sold was the great God Market The market's invisible hand would lift the threat of ”destruction” from the land It would restore fairness to a nation laid waste by cronyism and bailouts It would let the failures fail, at the saent Under its benevolent gaze, rewards would be proportionate to effort; the lazy and the deceiving would be turned away eain would justice and stability prevail

Froed fro, apocalypse (on the one hand) and perfect capitalisa and its alpha, its fear and its hope ”What do we say to socialiseles Tea Party protest in 2009, according to two pollsters who have studied the movement ”Nooooo,” yelled the crowd on hand ”What do we say to free market?” ”Yessssssssss”6 ”The ress is the free market,” declares the preamble of the 2009 Tea Party manifesto, the ”Contract fronate Steve Forbes, who maintains in his 2009 book, How Capitalis with their money” And then in the very next sentence, that ”in ets us closer to the grand social vision of the newest Right Markets are both natural and de democracies, places of innocence and wonder Just as we don't want to interfere in the fragile and no doubt democratic community of the coral reef, so we must leave (say) oil drillers alone to do their equally natural thing and express the popular will

A particularly telling expression of the free-market faith occurs in a 2009 Tea Party pamphlet called Spread This Wealth In order to teach readers about the nature of capitalisinary pris with other pri pronouncement

This whole process of free y is just the natural order of the world A tree exchanges oxygen for carbon dioxide A fire exchanges heat for oxygen Atoe electrons to becoht to make chlorophyll, which nourishes animals, which beco in nature is constantly exchanging So the free exchange of tined, natural order Conflicts erupt when this order is upset8 Reer situation in which Duke (and Forbes and the anonymous contributors to the contract) felt moved to pen all these reely to unfettered invest complex financial derivatives that not even experts could understand Monopolies and oligopolies were everywhere Hourly wages had been falling for decades But according to these voices of protest, the way toa state of econoovernment to stay out of it

I quote Mr Duke here not to rain down e is the clearest distillation I have yet seen of theeconomics Capitalism is a systeeneration of conservatives insisted, regardless of what the newspapers say about shadow banks or credit default swaps Arht vowed to accept no compromises, like better rules for Wall Street or smarter supervision; this was to be a war over ideals, over clashi+ng utopias, over fundamentals Economic policy needed to be understood as a quest for authenticity And when that was clear, you understood that ere suffering froiether over decades of compromises As Glenn Beck asked his radio audience in September 2008: Why did Fannie and Freddie not work? Because it is the hybrid between govern political power and injecting money into it That's why it didn't work Socialism doesn't work Marxism doesn't work Fascism doesn't work Capitalism works Capitalism put a , once you stripped away the coressives had saddled it over the years-so simple that Beck actually painted a picture of it, titled Capitalisle with sns There are no hu the picture, and no cars or power lines or anything else surrounding the object Just a basic shape in red with its name underneath: Capitalism In its bricklike siled world of conspiracies and disaster schemes-his serenity space, maybe, whence he travels mentally to escape fro capitalism

The problem that confronts us isn't how to fine-tune the controls; it's how to get back to that tranquil place The only system that works is the real system-the true system, the system God made9 With the economy in ruins, our mission was to recover that authentic state of pure capitalis in the process what the Founders really meant and what the Constitution really instructed us to do It was as simple as one of those self-help recovery books where we come face-to-face with our honest selves: we had to take our country back, purge the body politic of compromises and alien ideas

They Are Us

It is strange for the free market's reputation to have bounced back so quickly after its devotees cae when you consider the nature of free-market fandom Aside from the occasional Steve Forbes, the conservatives who are proclai their market-love these days are not tycoons or econoe people

And theto the newest conservatis to the populisht, markets are de their desires known through the channels of supply and demand When markets are allowed to function without interference, this form of populism holds, they are essentially elections, perfectly articulating the will of the people That's why those who participate s-like Rick Santelli's bond traders-wear the halo of coeness (they are the ”silent ulate markets froheads thwarting the will of the people with their iron fists

A reverse Marxism like this appeals to the country's winners for obvious reasons: it casts their success as the thundering approbation of the public, while depicting their traditional eneovernant know-it-alls That's why the idea's origins are found in the literature of wealth:huuides that extol the stock-picking genius of the srand historical tracts that retired bank presidents like to write, assuring us that free s in all countries

When I first started writing about o, it was almost exclusively a faith of the wealthy To write about it was to write about propaganda Average people, I thought, no more believed that the corporations of America were democracies than they believe that a Pontiac is ”fuel for the soul”

But then came a near-catastrophic failure of the economic system, and runtled A faith of the millions One reason for this is that utopian capitalisood in a time of disillusionment and collapse It is a doctrine that see, it held, because our leaders had broken faith with A the laissez-faire systeanized labor and the regulatory state The systeht of as everyday American practice-”capitalism”-was, it told us, an ”unknown ideal” that we had never really lived up to Our elected officials had never been pure enough; our business leaders had always sacrificed principle to grab at subsidies; governrown-and now, the story went, ould have to shape up if anted to prosper again

That we don't have a pure market system in America is not so For decades, the idea has been a staple of the Left, where the li The state is involved in the economy in thousands of ways, the libs say, because it has to be A co not even the business community itself wants to try As a fale overnment”10 The real probleo far enough; it merely doles out public subsidies of one kind or another while shareholders of private companies walk off with the profits, in the now-faain The bailouts are a perfect example, the liberal critic says: the systeamble however they wanted and then took over the losses after the bankers' bets went bad

The revitalized Right siovernment of the econo that has happened Market forces have never been truly free, and therefore they bear none of the blame for our current predicaaphones: Get government out of the picture completely! Smash what's left of the liberal state! Until the day free enterprise is totally unleashed, capitalis

Glenn Beck stages an allegory of the true faith in his 2009 book, Arguing with Idiots, in which a Founding Father in a powdered wig argues with a Soviet soldier over issues of the day One of theht on ”by a failure of capitalisovern Father character enlightens us: ”Under true free-overnment would have no involvement in hoe it through artificially low interest rates, Fannie and Freddie, tax breaks, or a ”Coe it either Rates would be set by market participants, based on risk, reward, and a clear understanding thatbad loans would result in bankruptcy

Do you see hoesoulation, everyone would live in har like collateralized debt obligations would ever be invented Bubbles would never happen Bankers would never build syste bad loans-their rational self-interest wouldn't let theet back to Beck: But we've done the co overnue that we need ulation to prevent those future ”excesses,” I would argue that it's the existing regulations that created those excesses in the first place In other words, what has failed isn't the idea of free markets, it's the idea that a overnment11 In order for markets to deliver us to our destiny, we had to become mindful of their freedom And ordinary people by the millions heard the call In October of 2010, Glenn Beck exhorted his host of alienated followers to donate est, baddest business lobby in all of Washi+ngton, DC-on the grounds that ”they are us” Ordinarily, of course, gifts to the chamber are denominated in the hundreds of thousands and are e of small donations followed Beck's appeal that it crashed the cha a Business of It

A handful of Washi+ngton's leading conservative institutions had seized the opportunity of the Santelli ”rant” to stage the first Tea Party protest, and other organizations iiti, like Grover Norquist's Arich was heading at the time Outfits financed by the Koch oil billions, like Aet on the bandwagon

Once the Tea Parties looked like they rabbed at the opportunity The Fox News Channel, for exan as if it was the network's own reality show People from the Cato Institute were not hard to find at Tea Party conventions, nor were the folks froeneral in the Reagan administration, started the Conservative Action Project, supposedly an organization in which the new Tea Party groups could coto a Washi+ngton Post story in February of 2010, was Patrick Pizzella, a former associate of Jack Abramoff And today there is no uerie, the direct-enius of the seventies who re news fro

There are former Bush administration office holders, like John O'Hara, late of the US Department of Labor, who published the first book about the Tea Party movement There are lobbyists, like dick Arurehead at the Koch-backed Freedoroup There are the free-market policy wonks, like Phil Kerpen of the Koch-backed Aroup, whose policy interests tend toward arcane corporate regulatoryproposed credit-card rules and suchlike-but who also writes essays celebrating the Tea Party's ”true populiss to the hearts of ”powerful elites”1 Pelf and Populis the official populist response to the economic disaster, opportunists both political and econoe as their very own shi+p, sailing benevolently into port Indeed, the categories of ”politics” and ”profit” becaht that by September of 2010 it was possible for Mike Poress in Wichita, Kansas, to describe the political reat American entrepreneurial spirit”2 There were sointo action so quickly in the wake of the protests, that you sometiitation all along

The most famous example was the National Tea Party Convention, held in Nashville in February of 2010, which featured an appearance by Sarah Palin and charged attendees 549 each What's anization turned out to be a for-profit outfit headed by ato set up a kind of Facebook-style web eers ”What was celebrated here in Nashville,” wrote the journalist Will Bunch, after cataloging the trinkets for sale there, ”wasn't soout of the conservative movement as the commoditization of it”3 The commodification continued wherever the ars, 125 per box, perfect for those one wrong and how to fix our government” An outfit called 912 Citizens, Inc offered for sale a silver coin coton, DC, rally of September 12, 2009; it could be yours for 5999

The comme year were of some baser metal, but they were painted in full color; I picked one up at the Liberty XPO held at the Shorehaton for a mere sixteen dollars At that sa jewelry, countless T-shi+rt designs, buans,” a self-published book offering success tips distilled froraph” of Ae at the botto the man-at-arms' superiority over various civilian occupations

This robust synergy of politics and profit extends to the highest reaches of the right-wing revival It is, to nanature approach of the ave up her elected post as governor of Alaska in order to indulge in a series of cash-in opportunities: books, speaking gigs, TV shows Let so

Then there's Glenn Beck, who has gone fro a TV performer able to cry on cue to a one-htly forecasts of onrushi+ng dooy of his gold-vending sponsor-an outfit for which he also cuts commercials Another product of Beck's preternatural opportunism is the 9/12 Project, whose putative object was to proetherness of the kind A with a passel of antigovernment sentiments that the TV host associated, inexplicably, with that occasion The ”project” did ton, DC, in the fall of 2009 But to ether in a hurry in order to slap a proprietary claier movement as a project of the empire of Glenn

And frouerie there ca Secrets for Tea Party Leaders” Not only was he charging 297 for the DVDs-hopefully yielding a profit for Viguerie's outfit-but the declared goal of the instruction was to teach you to take advantage of the right-wing ferment to raise money for your own outfit ”Not since the late 1970s has there been a anization,” the entrepreneur Viguerie enthused in his advertise winds are at your backand those winds are noing at hurricane force!”4 It was entrepreneurshi+p squared, with every party to the transaction an acknowledgedso you could get started as a political entrepreneur in your own right

I bring all this up not because I think Tea Partiers are uniquely covetous but-the very opposite-because the ht-wing uerie, for example, introduces his website with a salute to political entrepreneurshi+p froood that lea business of it” is exactly right That is the forave modern conservatism so many of its most notable institutions and adventures: the direct-mail revolution of the seventies, when it first beca was a profitable enterprise; the Iran-Contra episode, with its galaxy of panic-slinging fund-raising stars; the archipelago of Washi+ngton think-tanks and pressure groups that, for a modest consideration, will supply foot soldiers for your corporation's ith unions or environmentalists or consumer advocates; the careers of Jack Abra; and, of course, the entrepreneurial brilliance of the K Street Project5 And why shouldn't conservatives sell their services? They are cadres for capitalisruntled activists criticized the 2010 National Tea Party Convention for crass co those critics ”socialists”6 While his insultbeen unfairly criticized was accurate enough Viewed in the context of the last forty years, there is nothing strange about those who understand conservative politics as a career opportunity Nor is there anything contrary to conservative principle in regarding grassroots movements as ready-made roundups of suckers On the contrary; opportunism is one of the factors that has made conservatism so fantastically successful

Still, the appearances can be off-putting, and the resurgent Right often struggles to reconcile such naked enthusiase as the simon-pure voice of the common people Yes, the movement loves capitalism, but even prophets of the profit motive do not like to think of themselves as exploiters or corruptionists Markets must triumph everywhere, they tell us, but spondulics must never mix with statesmanshi+p This is why a Tea Party coffee-table book that includes dozens of pictures of protest signs praising capitalisins with a foreword (written by the action star Chuck Norris) co that ”the Constitution has been ousted by cash” and that ”the Bill of Rights has been bartered for corporate bonuses”7 It is another undecidableit both ways Take lobbying, for instance, the most basic activity of co as unspeakably dirty, an industry so repugnant that it can only be understood as a branch of the liberal e to eardless of those men's successes as political entrepreneurs On the other hand, lobbyists like dick Armey, who are not stained with felony convictions, are welcoma attaches to the Tea Party Express, supposedly a mobilizer of theoperation by a well-known California political consultancy8 Mass Individualis extends all the way to the newest Right's lowliest precincts The movement's trademark expression may be the rally in the town square, but Tea Partiers are not mass men Attend such a rally, and you will notice that just about everyone see hoeous costuuy who stood a few feet away frole every time he heard from the podiuinia Tea Party Convention, I watched aactually draped over his shoulders Otherpistols strapped to their belts, even though the event was held in the safe, civilized, and almost antiseptic premises of the Richmond Convention Center And, of course, people dressed in colonial garb-sometimes Revolutionary War reenactors or professional i Fathers-are a well-known attraction at Tea Party events

It can be a little euing over as the very first Tea Partier, exhorting their co to iotten fourth verse of the ”Star Spangled Banner,” or strategizing to parlay a singlecareer But these stabs at personal branding, these efforts peopleadvertisements-they are all of a piece, I believe, with the conservative establish Both are specimens of a kind of entrepreneurial self-assertion that distinguishes the As are filled with freelance Ja on soe Go to enough rallies, and you will learn about a group called GOOOH, which developed a plan to ”evict the 435 career politicians in the US House of Representatives and replace them with everyday Americans just like you” You will meet the folks fro Stick” to ress in retaliation for the bank bailouts You will discover that ”the anse've all been waiting for has arrived” in the forroup's ”Redeclaration of Independence,” which all are exhorted to sign Someone else launched a movement called We Read the Constitution, which aims to have people all over America hold parties where they will declai, but in truth it's a ”profoundly n up9 Everyone is a philosopher This is a s, and sht Montesquieus spin theories of govern only the information provided by the Bible, the Constitution, and The Glenn Beck Prograh these brave declarations of political faith, however, and what astonishes is not their idiosyncrasy but their sa, each self-published philosophe comes to the same conclusions: The divinity of er hanging over the head of the Republic

Going Viral

All of these thean at a public ust of 2009 This was ”Town Hall Summer,” when protesters took their complaints from the streets and into the traditional Q-and-A sessions held by their elected representatives It followed the saenuine as did the Tea Party moveroups instructing conservatives how to s or even how to disrupt sas were duly disrupted in spectacular fashi+on-with the disruptions captured for eternity on handheld video caht on The chance to inflict spectacular humiliation on some politician before the eyes of the nation was apparently the opportunity for which thousands had been waiting

At the town hallthat concerns us here, the subject was the Dee was Brian Baird, a bland, affable Deht-colored shi+rt; the local unemployment rate ell above 10 percent; and all across the country, public e Representative Baird hadsuch protests ”brownshi+rt tactics,” thus painting a big bull's-eye on himself

Thanks to those ubiquitous video ca with the spotlight fixed on his burly fraement consultant and for, participants had talked over a federal proposal to encourage the teaching of parenting skills, and now, as the cameras hummed, this man Hedrick stepped up to the le with Representative Baird ”I heard you say tonight about educating our children, indoctrinating our children, whatever you want to call it,” Hedrick began, after introducing hiress a reply, but before he finishes Hedrick erupts: ”Stay away from my kids!”

The audience explodes with approval at the unprovoked assault But the ; thirty seconds later he is i ”a little history lesson” to the hapless Dem: ”The nazis were the National Socialist Party They were leftist” These nazis, according to Hedrick and countless leaders of the revived Right who have seen fit to educate the nation on the subject of World War II, seized the very industries that the De: banks, automakers, health care Therefore, if liberals such as Nancy Pelosi wanted to search the country for people wearing swastikas, the angry hteousness, ”maybe the first place she should look is the sleeve of her own ar; a standing O for a guy who thinks we fought World War II to free mankind from universal health care Or, et a good verbal thrashi+ng, regardless of the delusions involved Hedrick, for his part, was not quite done yet; there was one more insult yet to come He had earlier mentioned the oath to ”support and defend” the Constitution that soldiers and public servants take-a ather-and now he flung it in the Democrat's face ”As a marine,” Hedrick insisted, ”I've kept ressain, the former marine turned his back and ust

The video of the confrontation ”went viral,” as the expression had it Its i up (literally, upward) at uncaring poas an aweso sort-that is, if you put aside the asinine things Hedrick actually said In the days that followed, the clip appeared on countless conservative websites It was played endlessly on Fox News Someone set it to music The forra the host that the Democratic administration's policies were the same ”almost line for line” as those of the nazis

The world briefly seemed to be at the forht, and an understanding of German history that bordered on complete fantasy Hedrick was the political star of the moment, the Santelli of the summer But the summer did not last