To the Editor:
Re “The
Wal-Mart Hippies” (column, March 5):
David Brooks misses the
point of today’s revolt against big government. Yes, we read Saul
Alinsky, but this decentralized grass-roots network has little in common
with the New Left. It is rooted in the American traditions of
individual freedom and constitutional limits on government power, and
looks “anti-establishment” only because the political establishment
ignores these principles.
If that’s radicalism, sign us up.
Membership in this club already includes Jefferson, Madison, Washington
and (Samuel) Adams.
Mr. Brooks mocks Tea Partiers’ conspiracy
theories about “banks” and “corporations.” Yes, too many business
interests use the power of the state in a “conspiracy against the public . . . to raise prices,” but our source is the 1760s radical Adam Smith.
What do you suppose Smith would think about a $700 billion government
bailout of banks authored by a former investment bank chairman, or a
federal mandate that every citizen buy the health insurance industry’s
overpriced product?
Mr. Brooks is the one, not Tea Partiers, with
far more in common with those on the left who desire order dictated
from top-down structures or, as he puts it, “just authorities.” He will
find common cause with Abbie Hoffman, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
Dick
Armey
Matt Kibbe
Dallas, March 8, 2010
The writers are,
respectively, chairman and president of Freedom Works. Mr. Armey is a
former Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 