A letter writer in the latest Atlantic takes Michael Kinsley to task for failing to recognize the legitimate concerns that motivate Tea Party supporters:
I am astonished that Michael Kinsley cannot identify the central theme of the Tea Party movement (?My Country, ?Tis of Me,? June Atlantic), and sees in it only inchoate self-indulgence. I?m not a participant, and have followed the movement with only mild interest, but its core complaint seems perfectly clear to me, and no more incoherent or self-contradictory than that of any other mass popular movement. The Tea Party fear is that federal spending will increase until it requires either ruinous tax increases, ruinous deficits, or ruinous currency devaluation. These fears have been simmering ever since the 2001 recession put an end to the fortunate Mr. Clinton?s budget surpluses. They exploded when Congress, while the country was still recovering from the 2008 recession, enacted a huge expansion of government benefits, against the will of the people (if you believe the polls), with a preposterous claim that it will not increase taxes or deficits.
Tea Partyers know perfectly well that all of this was done by their duly elected representatives, but they claim with some plausibility that their representatives were elected to do one thing, have done another, and need to be voted out. If that is self-indulgence, then anyone who wants to avoid economic ruin for his own country is self-indulgent.
