Chief among these is Glenn Beck, the radio and television demagogue who emotionally peddles socialist-and-worse conspiracy theories to an unquestioning audience four hours a day, five days a week. He is threatening to usurp Rush Limbaugh as the Chief Denunciator of all things liberal, as witnessed by the fact that Time magazine, admittedly not the publication it was, put him on its cover last week with a near-fawning profile…

The great question is whether all this thunder is confined to the hyperactive right or is achieving wider resonance. I suspect the former, at least for now. Even a casual look at the angry participants at tea parties and town halls reveals a collection of the disaffected and dispossessed, mostly older, whiter, poorer and less well-educated than the population as a whole, and with myriad motivations, of which belief in libertarianism cannot be high among them.

Still, a debate about the role of government has been ignited, far from the first time in American history. It may not be as intellectually elevated as that engaged in by the Founding Fathers but it bears some resemblance to that generated by the social policy reforms of FDR and later LBJ. It even has its own Coughlins and Winchells, the early radio polemicists.