9-12

Never before in my lifetime have I seen the right function as a sort of rolling, morphing protest movement — and for the most part, I’m enjoying the change.

Today brings Tea Party events galore, which have sort of segued from the outrage a few months ago over the government’s massive deficit-spending and bailouts into town hall-inspired protests against socialized medicine. (Dan Greenberg, running for state senate in Arkansas, also plans to speak to a Tea Party down there and to mention my lamentations over government incompetence here in rebuilding Ground Zero.)

Glenn Beck’s conservative/libertarian “9-12” principles (core American ideas meant to remind us how we united the day after 9/11) provide a fairly decent fusionist rallying point this year — and this week also brings word that my old boss, John Stossel, has jumped from ABC News to Fox, where he’ll probably start sounding even more libertarian, if that’s possible.

Let Ph.D.s scoff if they wish, but America needs all these noisy things. And a measure of just how urgently I think we need them is that I don’t even find myself wanting to waste time complaining that belief in God is Beck’s principle #1 — even though I plan to go to an atheist-skeptic brunch tomorrow.