As I have pointed out in a number of posts, what I most like about the Tea Party movement is that it consists of largely of people who want the government to leave them alone. That's a new phenomenon in American politics, because traditionally, political activists tend to be people who want to tell others what to do. That is why they enter politics. But the American people have finally wised up to the fact that the only way to defeat activists is by becoming anti-activist activists.

In a long intellectual criticism of the Tea Party Movement in The New York Review of Books (titled The Tea Party Jacobins"), University of Chicago professor Mark Lilla explains that wanting to be left alone is the driving force behind what he calls the "libertarian mob":

Many Americans, a vocal and varied segment of the public at large, have now convinced themselves that educated elites--politicians, bureaucrats, reporters, but also doctors, scientists, even schoolteachers--are controlling our lives. And they want them to stop. They say they are tired of being told what counts as news or what they should think about global warming; tired of being told what their children should be taught, how much of their paychecks they get to keep, whether to insure themselves, which medicines they can have, where they can build their homes, which guns they can buy, when they have to wear seatbelts and helmets, whether they can talk on the phone while driving, which foods they can eat, how much soda they can drink...the list is long. But it is not a list of political grievances in the conventional sense.

Historically, populist movements use the rhetoric of class solidarity to seize political power so that "the people" can exercise it for their common benefit. American populist rhetoric does something altogether different today. It fires up emotions by appealing to individual opinion, individual autonomy, and individual choice, all in the service of neutralizing, not using, political power. It gives voice to those who feel they are being bullied, but this voice has only one, Garbo-like thing to say: I want to be left alone.

A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that. This is the one threat that will bring Americans into the streets.

Welcome to the politics of the libertarian mob.

What he misses about the Tea Partiers is that they're sophisticated enough to understand why ordinary activism has failed, and why they are not being left alone. Simply electing the right people to political office cannot fix the problem of entrenched bureaucracies which were designed to be politically bulletproof, and which basically dictate terms to the legislators whose job is to pass legislation endlessly expanding their power, while increasing the size and scope of their irreversible demands on taxpayers' money.

And I do mean irreversible. Just get elected to even the lowest city council and try cutting staff positions or wages. They're unionized and they will simply take the city to court, where enforcing the terms of their union contracts is a legal slam-dunk. As to government pensions (which drain huge amounts of money), they are more of a legal entitlement than Medicare or Social Security, because the latter are not "entitlements" but acts of Congress which can in theory be revised or repealed. Government pensions are legally enforceable obligations. People who are legally owed money will demand and get it, regardless of whether the people who have to pay it ever consented to pay it, and regardless of whether they want to be left alone.

The Tea Partiers have seen past the game of pretending the legislature really runs things when in reality they are obsequious scriveners for unelected elites. Unlike conventional politicians, this "libertarian mob" is actually willing to say "no more" to the bureaucratic ruling classes and mean it.

This scares the crap out of them.