Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Tactical analogies are not the fodder for apt,
substantive comparisons. While the Tea Partiers may share with the 1960s
a distrust of an authoritarian ruling elite, it’s otherwise much too
facile for David Brooks to link the two movements to anything beyond
that simplistic similarity.

Yes, chaos and disorder may mark
both, but the 1960s worldview was one of a just society: challenging
institutions that perpetuated things like the growing gulf between rich
and poor, health care disparities, and racism and gender inequality.

Today, Tea Partiers rail against efforts to take on these inequities
and, instead, extol the virtues of selfishness.

Arnold S. Cohen
New York, March 5, 2010
The writer is president and chief executive of the Partnership for the Homeless.

Note from KBJ: What is it with progressives? Have they lost the capacity to engage in rational argumentation, or did they never have such a capacity? Instead of addressing the arguments of the Tea Partiers, which are obviously about justice, they impute bad (in this case, selfish) motives to them. If you want to play the selfishness game, what were Hippies if not selfish? Tune in, turn on, drop out. Get stoned. Withdraw from society. Free love. Let it all hang out.