Why are citizens rioting and striking in Greece? Despite the worst economic crisis in decades, labor unions and state functionaries demand that others pay for the early retirements, lifetime benefits and state pensions to which they feel entitled. In America, however, the tea partiers demonstrate not to get more from others, but rather against government growth, public debt, bailouts and a budget-busting government overhaul of the health-care industry.
In other words, the tea partiers are protesting against exactly what the Greeks are demanding. It is an example of American exceptionalism if there ever was one.
Instead of celebrating this ethical populism, however, many political leaders here denounced the legitimacy of the tea party protesters. “It’s not really a grass-roots movement,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed after the tax day tea party protests in April 2009. “It’s ‘astroturf’ by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid borrowed her metaphor to discredit the ObamaCare protests a few months later. Holding up a square of synthetic turf at a press conference last August, Mr. Reid declared that the town hall demonstrations were “about as phony as this grass.”
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