The Tea Party Jacobins?

Up to a point, Lord Copper.

I agree with Burke's Corner that the modern reincarnation of the American Tea Party movement appears as anti-tory and anti-government as its Boston predecessor of 1763. But let's not dismiss this libertarian mob as a bunch of juvenile antipolitical Jacobins when it is government that is getting way out of control with its trillion dollar deficits.

The Burkean is fundamentally about maintaining good order and the permanence of tested institutions as the best way to safeguard human liberty - the disorder we see in Greece and to a more limited degree in the United States, is not because a loose cannon of radio talkshow hotheads are revolting over the airwaves and egging on their followers, it is because the governments themselves are destabilizing our societies through their own reckless behaviour. The Burkean is not anti-government, but neither is he slavishly pro-government; we should be as concerned as the Tea Party about what is going on, and what this will collectively mean for us in the years to come.

We can make common cause here - let us put away the Pimm's and drink the tea.