ELITE SHOCK – AT 9:46 A.M. ET:  The American elites, often echoing their European counterparts, generally assume that the common folk aren't interested in anything but violent sports, war movies, and chocolate fudge.  And so, when the common folk show an interest in things political, the elite reason that they must have sinister motives.  Note the number of times the charge of "racism" is hurled at the tea partiers.

Dan Heninger, in the Wall Street Journal, gives a more rational analysis of what is motivating the mini-revolt we see among so many Americans today:

The left-wing critics are right: The rage is not about health care. They are also right that similar complaints about big government were heard during the New Deal and the Great Society, and the sky didn't fall.

But what if this time the sky is falling—on them.

What if after more than a century of growth in the national government, starting with the Progressive Era, the American people are starting to push back. Not just the tea partiers or the 13 state attorneys general seeking protection under the 10th Amendment and the Commerce Clause. But something bigger than that.

Sounds interesting so far.

The American people can and do change the nation's collective mind on the ordering of our political system. The civil rights years of the 1960s is the most well-known modern example.

And...

The tea party movement is getting the most attention because it is the most vulnerable to the standard tool kit of mockery and ridicule. It is more difficult to mock the legitimacy of Scott Brown's overthrow of the Kennedy legacy, the election results in Virginia and New Jersey, an economic discomfort that is both generalized and specific to the disintegration of state and federal fiscs, and indeed the array of state attorneys general who filed a constitutional complaint against the new health-care law. What's going on may be getting past the reach of mere mockery...

...The political issue rumbling toward both the Supreme Court and the electorate is whether Washington's size and power has finally grown beyond the comfort zone of the American people.

Where is the public right now?

My reading of the American public is that they have moved past "concerns." Somewhere inside the programmatic details of ObamaCare and the methods that the president, Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid used to pass it, something went terribly wrong. Just as something has gone terribly wrong inside the governments of states like California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts......

...the current edition of the Democratic Party has disconnected itself from the average American's sense of political modesty. The party's members and theorists now defend expanding government authority with the same arrogance that brought Progressive Era reforms down upon untethered industrial interests.

In such times, this country has an honored tradition of changing direction. That time may be arriving.

On the other side they say, "The times they are a-changing."  Goes our way, too.

Faced with a challenge to his vision last week, President Obama laughingly replied to these people: "Go for it."

They will.

As to the condescension and sniffing left-wing elitism this opposition seems to bring forth from Manhattan media castles, one must say it does recall another, earlier ancien regime.

COMMENT:  A very thoughtful, well-written analysis.  My only quibble is that Heninger may underestimate the ability of liberal government to buy off the citizenry, or scare them into submission by spreading the word that their benefits may be taken away.  That can happen in any period, but especially during economic hard times. 

Do we not live in interesting times?

Just wait 'til 2012 when, according to the Mayan calendar, the world will come to an end.  It won't.  But the Obama administration will, if we work at it.  Well, come to think of it, to the liberals that's the end of the world.  So, they'll go away mumbling, "The Mayans, from that wonderful culture to the south, were right.  Very fine people.  Very fine.  Much better than we Yanquis."

April 1, 2010