The Tea Party, in a nutshell

William Voegeli concisely gets us up to date on the Tea Party movement:

The sociological but not very comic reality is that Brooks’s
Achievatrons wound up being distrusted by millions of their countrymen
the old-fashioned way—they earned it. Our new meritocratic masters have
been more conspicuously smart than wise. They know a lot, but don’t know
what they don’t know. Their self-regard as the modern Americans who are
the "natural aristocrats" Jefferson looked for has left them with an
exaggerated sense of their own noblesse, and a deficient
awareness of their corresponding oblige. Their expectation that
the rest of us will be deferential to their expertise, like citizens of
European nations that are social but not especially political
democracies, has triggered the Tea Party backlash, and the resurgence of
the "Don’t Tread on Me" spirit.

Tip from the Instapundit.