In a post about the latest attempt to medicalize political opinion, I interjected a gratuitous, unelaborated thought:

I often suspect that the culture war is intended to keep us bickering over penises in the hope we won't notice the country is going bankrupt, but that's another rant.

De gustibus non est disputandum is a Latin maxim. It means "there is no disputing about tastes"[1][2], and is essentially equivalent to the English expression "there's no accounting for taste"[3]. The implication is that opinions about matters of taste are not objectively right or wrong, and hence that disagreements about matters of taste cannot be objectively resolved.

While he was not talking about culture war issues, Thomas Sowell recently wrote about how distractions work:

If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office. Dire alarms and heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more of our freedom.

Magicians have long known that distracting an audience is the key to creating the illusion of magic. It is also the key to political magic.

Alarms ranging from "overpopulation" to "global warming" and crusades ranging from "affordable housing" to "universal health care" have been among the distractions of political magicians. But few distractions have had such a long and impressive political track record as getting people to resent and, if necessary, hate other people.

If country is headed for bankruptcy, in whose interest is it to keep people bickering over penises?

What I like about the Tea Party Movement is that for the most part, it has been able to avoid getting mired in these side issues. Sure, there are people who feel very strongly about gay marriage and abortion, just as there are birthers. But these issues are not central, and despite some attempts to insinuate them into the Tea Party Convention, the people who have really been there can see past it. (Incidentally, my hat's off to Eric Erickson not only for seeing past the birther issue, but doing something about it.)

On February 6 I was watching the Tea Party Convention live on CSPAN (at 11:57 a.m EST), and when social issues were brought up in a question, Amy Kremer said this unequivocally,

"We do not touch social issues, because that is where you lose people."

But remarks like Kremer's (one of the original grass-roots organizers of the Tea Party movement) don't tend to get reported. Instead, the emphasis is on the people who sounded off on contentious side issues -- like WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah (who yelled about the birth certificate "issue"), or Judge Roy Moore (who yelled about the homos). I wouldn't be surprised if someone yelled about abortion too. Or if there were people waving false Tea Party flags.) Never mind that these are not Tea Party issues.

Or perhaps I should say the Tea Party issue. I think Freeman Hunt put it best, even though she wasn't speaking about the Tea Parties per se:

You want a big tent? It's fiscal conservatism. The people are overwhelmingly in favor of it.

You offer that, you follow through on it, and you get the Republicans, the moderates, and a sizable chunk of disaffected Democrats.

Everything else is beside the point right now.

[...]

Embrace fiscal conservatism. Leave the rest to federalism.

It's easy. It's a no-brainer. It's even Constitutional. People are sick of the spending, sick of the debt, sick of the bailouts, sick of the handouts, sick of the back room deals, sick of the taxpayer funded bribes, sick of the bureaucrats. They want unyielding, unapologetic fiscal conservatism.

The left dreads nothing more than the idea of such a tent, so naturally they're delighted to give as much help as possible to the assorted cranks who can be depended upon to show up at Tea Parties and vent about side issues. The Huffington Post went out of its way to carry on about Farah's appearance at the convention, and of course it didn't take much work to dig through his archives to find a piece he wrote in support of a woman who murdered her philandering husband.

Obviously, the idea is that Americans should wake up and realize those crazy Tea Party types favor not only birtherism, but murdering adulterers! FWIW, I think it's awful that WorldNetDaily's founder thinks it's just fine to murder adulterers, just as I disagree with their position that the "homosexual agenda" is threatening to destroy America. And I think it's unfortunate that the man was given the stage there. But that is what happens when you get a lot of people together who disagree on various side issues. Disagreement is one thing, as we all disagree. But side issue fanatics are another species entirely. They are determined people with a knack for not only getting on the stage, but yelling about their issues and attempting to insinuate them into anything they can. Guys like Farah and Moore are distractions, and they play right into the hands of those who want us arguing over penises while Rome burns America bankrupts itself.

See? Despite my desire to avoid distractions, I actually wrote "while Rome burns." I blame WorldNetDaily for making me lose my self control.

MORE: Looking at a long New York Times attempt to link fringe racist crackpots to the Tea Party movement, Ira Stoll makes a point similar to the one I've tried to make here:

....the Times seems unable to give a reasonably sympathetic hearing to Americans mad at Wall Street, Washington, Republicans and Democrats but instead travels to Idaho to interview and emphasize what it depicts as a particularly strange group of them; that those Americans angry at both political parties would channel their anger toward immigrants; that minorities would feel intimidated by Americans mad at Wall Street, Washington, Republicans and Democrats. The Times doesn't get into the question of how anti-immigrant and how heavily armed the average non-Tea Party-activist Idaho resident is. Nor does it get into the fact that a certain set of wild-eyed true believers who don't appear normal to outsiders tends to exist on the fringes of just about every mass movement, from the AFL-CIO to the Obama campaign.

MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, more on the increasingly curious Nevada Tea Party

I cannot find any evidence that any of these principals have ever been involved in any Tea Party activities, until now. I've emailed a number of Tea Party organizer-activists in the state and so far, nobody has ever heard of any of the principals - except for Barry Levinson because he is a Las Vegas attorney.

Here are some snippets from my research so far:

Barry Levinson was part of the "Bush Lied, People Died" cabal (very strange creds for a Tea Party guy).

Not really core to the story but one of the principals, Larry Lathum, appears to be a 9/11 Truther. A number of sane Tea Partiers emailed me to say they are concerned about credibility and perceptions and are not happy to see Levinson's and Lathum's names on that principals list.

I'd also note that somtimes if you scratch a birther, you'll find a truther. It might also work the other way around.