Academic

MATT WELCH: The Real Reason Americans Are Angry: It?s The Big Government, Stupid: t?s been a hi?

By Glenn Reynolds

MATT WELCH: The Real Reason Americans Are Angry: It’s The Big Government, Stupid:

t’s been a hilarious August, watching media supporters of President Obama’s health care package puzzle over the obscure motivations of the noncompliant Americans rallying against it.

“Racial anxiety,” guessed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

“Nihilism,” theorized Time’s Joe Klein.

“The crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy,” historian Rick Perlstein proclaimed in the Washington Post.

While the commentariat’s condescension is almost comical, the whole evil-or-stupid explanation misses the elephant in Obama’s room: Americans of all stripes, it turns out, aren’t very keen about the government barging into their lives. . . . This isn’t about liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. A majority oppose Obama’s policies because they fly in the face of this country’s bedrock values of personal liberty and limited government. Robbing Peter to pay Goldman Sachs does violence to that fundamentally American ethos.

Read the whole thing.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on August 23, 2009 (boomark / email).