The Know Nothing Brigade

Thanks to the link from Daily Politics Blog, and welcome to its readers. It always gives us great pleasure to respond to our legion of fans, one of whom commented on the Liz post this morning. In his remarks, a certain Hugh Taylor referred to "Lipsky and his Know Nothing Brigade."

The tenor of the comment reminds us of how William Buckley responded to the followers of Ayn Rand, when the conservative columnist called her a fascist. When Buckley appropriately labeled Rand for what she was, he was subjected to an avalanche of vicious, self-righteous vitriol. To which Buckley responded: Rand's followers, "Dotted the "I's," and crossed the "T's," of my point."

In reading the Taylor commentary, we experience the same kind of smug self-righteousness, the sense that he represents the forces of light against the forces of darkness-a Manichean world view that underscores just why the legions of Taylors-and all of the Streetbloggers-simply don't get it. They look with contempt at the petit-bourgeois, outer borough boobs, and see their concern with taxes and fairness to be nothing more than narrow-minded selfishness.

We can see this in Taylor's diatribe against those commuters who use the "subsidized" East River bridges. The world view here is redolent with disdain for those New Yorkers who really do the lion's share to make this city productive-and who happen to drive their cars to work in the process. In addition, we also detect the redistributive philosophy that drives so much of the congestion debate-just read the DMI blog to get the full flavor of this pro-tax view.

So continue to call us Know Nothings Mr. Taylor. What you'll discover is that your contempt for the people will come back strongly to bite you on the asinine world view you so emotionally espouse.