The politics of the libertarian mob

Democrats were day-trading, Republicans were divorcing. We were all individualists now.

A wonderful line from Mark Lilla's essay in the NYRB, which has a neat title: "The Tea Party Jacobins."  Lilla is a professor at Columbia, after quite some time at Chicago.  More than anything else, Lilla is a faculty who is comfortable in both academic and journalistic domains--a trait I admire and look up to.
What is Lilla writing about there?

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.

Instead of the old Jacobins, who were leftist radicals, Lilla says we have the new Jacobins.  How different are these from the old?

When the new Jacobins turn on their televisions they do not tune in to the PBS News Hour or C-Span to hear economists and congressmen debate the effectiveness of financial regulations or health care reform. They look for shows that laud their common sense, then recite to them the libertarian credo that Fox emblazons on its home page nearly every day: YOU DECIDE.

Lilla has a point when he notes that the new Jacobins prefer:

the company of anti-intellectuals who know how to exploit nonintellectuals, as Sarah Palin does so masterfully.¹⁶ The dumbing-down they have long lamented in our schools they are now bringing to our politics, and they will drag everyone and everything along with them. As David Frum, one of the remaining lucid conservatives, has written to his wayward comrades, “When you argue stupid, you campaign stupid. When you campaign stupid, you win stupid. And when you win stupid, you govern stupid.”

So, where is this heading towards?  Lilla thinks that the Tea Party itself might dissolve soon, as much as a float is taken down after the Homecoming party!  But:

Now an angry group of Americans wants to be freer still—free from government agencies that protect their health, wealth, and well-being; free from problems and policies too difficult to understand; free from parties and coalitions; free from experts who think they know better than they do; free from politicians who don’t talk or look like they do (and Barack Obama certainly doesn’t). They want to say what they have to say without fear of contradiction, and then hear someone on television tell them they’re right. They don’t want the rule of the people, though that’s what they say. They want to be people without rules—and, who knows, they may succeed. This is America, where wishes come true. And where no one remembers the adage “Beware what you wish for.”

I wish Lilla had phrased something else in place of "libertarian mob" because true libertarians like the intelligent folks at Cato or Reason are not quite thrilled with the Tea Party folks' anti-intellectual ranting.  And, to a Libertarian Democrat like me, well, this nutcase mob is not anything like our idea of why we like the libertarian streak in our politics .... But, that is my only quibble :)