That said, I think that saying that there is some value in nearly all civic-minded gatherings shouldn’t go to grant that all are of equal significance. However many Mumia protesters might have been present at anti-war rallies in February 2003, it takes some doing to see them as significantly muddying the fundamental message. (One thing that just doesn’t fly is to criticize large numbers of people gathered to one larger end for having disparate paths of reasoning to that position. Some protesters six years ago may have been absolute pacifists, others angry at having been mislead about the case for war, others not trusting that president to carry out what they thought an otherwise just war competently — they all belonged there that day and in no way muddied the message, even if the speeches veered wildly in political outlook). On the other hand, I think it takes a focused and sympathetic mind to understand just what the tea Parties are getting at, but perhaps my sympathies are showing. That again doesn’t render the gatherings without social utility, as the post very well points out. But neither is there any reason to pretend the two series of events had equal coherence or political meaning (as Douthat seems to have done). We don’t have to abandon our critical faculties in order to accept that there is value in civic engagement of almost any peaceful form.

But I hear what you’re saying , the same would apply to somebody protesting about, say, the Iraq war at a Mumia demo. Regardless, I don’t think this dynamic within protests renders them useless by any stretch of the imagination.

On the flip side, there is an argument to be made that people protesting about disparate things at the same protest are as much building a community and demonstrating how these disparate issues are connected based on some relational qualities underlying the system against which they’re dissatisfied. I’m not entirely sure that that level of analysis is at work with every instance of an errant Mumia protesters, but neither is there anything saying that it is always missing, either. In some senses, this element of community building is the most noble and praiseworthy element of protests.

In the case of the tea parties, I think one has to recognize that people are coming together to demonstrate that there is an opposition to what seems like a massive tide of liberal awakening in the country. Those who oppose the Obamenon probably feel pretty isolated and irrelevant, so it makes sense that they would all come together to demonstrate both to themselves and to the country that they’re not some marginal minority. Doing so states their own case while at the same time bolstering their confidence.

That their messaging is all over the place is partly about defining that community and partly, one has to also admit, because Obama, Congress, and the Senate have put so many different points on the board so quickly.

Anyhow, some food for thought.

I do think that the the whole “we were going to have a conversation about *THIS* but you come in talking about Mumia and doing your damnest to suck up all of the air in the room!” phenomenon fits pretty well in either case, though.

Halfway through the first sentence, I realized that that was a hair “meta” and, instead, wrote this comment.