Thanks to Instapundit, I saw this today.
Yes, that seems right to me. It’s been almost surrealistic for the Left — as a whole — to be so venomous about the tea party protests. Isn’t this the People Power Party? I guess only when you’re protesting on the right side of things. And I’ll paste in a piece that Glenn pasted into his post, because it’s perfect:
What were the tea parties about? Reading the signs and talking to people (unlike CNN’s incredibly hostile Susan Roesgen, I actually let folks answer my questions in their own words), the “agenda” was crystal clear. Tea party activists were worried and angry about government bailouts for the irresponsible, about spending that “stimulated” record growth in government and not much else, and about government borrowing that will place unconscionable burdens on future generations of Americans. My favorite sign of the day: “Give Me Liberty, Not Debt.”
Some tried to diminish the tea parties as misguided tax protests. In reality, the protestors demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of economics that went well beyond objections to higher tax rates. You can’t spend money you don’t have, the tea party attendees understood, and government spending above current revenues must be paid for with higher taxes, more borrowing (to be paid for with higher taxes in the future), or artificial government expansion of money and credit, which can only debase the currency and make everyone poorer through inflation.
Yes! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying ever since these protests started. It’s not about the taxes we’re paying now — it’s about the future. Listen: you can’t run 2 trillion dollar deficits without eventually increasing taxes on the middle class. The only other option is inflating the value of the dollar to make 2 trillion dollars not as scary, which 1) makes everyone’s savings worth less and less, and 2) is exactly what tin pot dictators do when the going gets tough.
Tell me this isn’t scary. I dare you.
Columbia Gorge Dispatch 
Yeah because nothing strikes fear into the hearts of us lefties than the words “tea party”
=/
It probably didn’t really strike fear into the British hearts, either, back a couple hundred years ago. I think the historical connection is a little more important than the pinky up connotations. Now, I grant you that the average comprehension of US history by its citizens is pretty poor, but I think enough will get it.
In any case, don’t you think that dismissing an entire movement based on it’s name is, well, silly? Just like dismissing it based on some frat boy humor. It just belies the weakness of the opposition’s position, in my opinion.
While I agree that the majority of tea-partiers understand that you can’t spend money you don’t have, I think maybe the protests should have been more about taxes in general. Let’s have a tax protest, and let it be a protest against out of control government from the left and the right (since they’re pretty close to the same thing anyway). Let it be a protest against a monolithic bureaucracy siphoning off ever larger amounts of hard-earned property.
For a more lucid explanation, see Don Cooper and Ryan McMaken.