Michael Tomasky in the New York Review of Books:
We have never seen, at least in the modern history of the United States, a right-wing street-protest movement. Conservatives who oppose Roe v. Wade march on Washington every January 22, the anniversary of that 1973 decision; but aside from that single issue and that single day, the American right over recent decades has, until this summer, carried out its organizing in a comparatively quiet fashion, via mimeograph machine and pamphlet and book and e-mail and text message, and left the streets to the left.
So we have something new in our political life—the summer's apoplectic and bordering-on-violent town-hall meetings, and the large “9/12” rally on Washington's National Mall that drew tens of thousands of people to protest America's descent into “socialism” (or “communism,” or, occasionally, “Nazism”). How extreme is this movement, and how seriously should we take it?
More here.
