In a piece Sissy Willis linked titled "The Tea Party vs. the Intellectuals," Lee Harris touches on what I think is the principal reason for the Tea Party movement's resiliency. It is at essence a movement founded on the principle of non-conformity -- of saying NO. (Even "EFF YOU"!)

Quite fascinatingly, this arises out of their refusal to be co-opted by a process Gramsci long ago called "Cultural Hegemony."

A generation before Orwell devised the idea of Newspeak, the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci had developed a concept that in many ways foreshadowed it, but with one major and considerable difference. Before Gramsci discovered Marx, he had been a student of languages. Gramsci was especially fascinated by what happened when two languages collided. Throughout European history, conquerors had routinely moved into new territories where the inhabitants spoke a different language. In some cases, such as the Normans in France, it was the conquerors who picked up the language of the conquered, but more frequently, it was the other way around. What explained this fact? Why did a conquered people so often abandon their own language in order to learn the language of their conquerors?

Gramsci argued that what led people to discard their native language was the greater prestige of the conqueror's language. The idea of prestige, which had never played a role in classical Marxism, became the key to Gramsci's most famous concept, cultural hegemony. For Orwell, the cultural hegemony sought by the totalitarian state had to be imposed on the masses through diabolically cunning devices such as the telescreen, a reverse television system that permitted the Thought Police to watch and monitor the activities of citizens in the privacy of their own homes. People did not watch the telescreen. Instead they were watched by it, fully cognizant that if they did anything to displease Big Brother they could face the most ghastly consequences imaginable.

For Orwell the basis of cultural hegemony was terror. For Gramsci, on the other hand, it was prestige. Cultural hegemony, according to Gramsci, did not have to be imposed on the people through threats and intimidation. It didn't need to be imposed at all. Conquered subjects sought to emulate the prestigious language of their conquerors, while they simultaneously came to look down on their own native tongue as gross, defective, and inferior. In modern liberal societies the same principle has been at work, but with different players. As education became the ticket to worldly success, it naturally became a source of prestige. Prestige no longer came from conquest by arms, but from earning a Ph.D. In modern secular societies, the eminence of the intellectual elite allowed it to unilaterally allocate prestige to select ideas, thinkers, and institutions. Objects imbued with the magical glow of prestige did not need to be pushed on people -- on the contrary, people eagerly vied with each other to obtain these objects, often at great personal sacrifice. That is why prestigious institutions, such as major universities, well-endowed foundations, and posh clubs invariably have far more candidates for admission than can possibly be accommodated -- a selectivity that makes them even more desirable and prestigious. That is the beauty of prestige: It doesn't need to lift a finger. It can just sit back and relax, confident that people will flock to its feet, begging for the crumbs from its luxuriant table.

PEER PRESSURE.

There is no culture on earth that has been free from peer pressure. Looking up to people, whether they are the "ruling class" or those who are glamorous, handsome, successful high-achievers, or just "cool." Gramsci was no magician, and there's nothing magic about any of this; it's just that they -- the followers of the Gramsci school and those who went along with them -- often imagined that they were into something new, so they set themselves to work trying to do what various ruling classes have done for thousands of years: create peer pressure and then apply it. The difference was that like Gramsci, his initial followers were not actually of the ruling class. The goal was to use ruling class tactics to undermine and ultimately overthrow the ruling class. From without and (if at all possible) from within.

What has happened is that there's been a cultural shift. An emperor-has-no-clothes shift. One of the problems in creating any sort of class to which people might want to aspire is that there has to be something likable about it, and there has to be something in it for the people who are asked to follow it. I think it is no accident that the left wing ruling class is really losing its luster now that it's been discovered that what they're offering is about as cool and has about as much appeal as asking people to wear a hair shirt. There is nothing cool about national bankruptcy, rationed health care, being told you can't eat the food you like, being forced to take public transportation, and the rest of it. No amount of Hollywood propaganda can make people like austerity. Sure, it might be possible to sell rationing during wartime, but only if there's a promise of future victory. The left now promises nothing like victory; instead it's all doom and gloom, lowered expectations, and an end to American exceptionalism. The agenda just plain stinks, and calling it "progressive" does nothing to sweeten its appeal.

Those who want to impose this hair shirt mentality on Americans may think they are possessed of "prestige," but a growing number of people not only see through it; they reject it out of hand.

Parenthetically, I should note here that nothing terrifies the cool and prestigious classes who want to be looked up to more than seeing people they thought they had "owned" embrace something they have deemed un-cool or worthy of censure and regulation. (Gun-toting gays and pit-bull-owning lesbians are two examples that immediately come to mind. And what if the Tea Parties become cool?)

Harris explains how this "prestige" racket is supposed to work:

A governing elite that has a monopoly over the allocation of prestige has immense power over a culture. It can decide what ideas, thinkers, and movements merit attention, while it can also determine what ideas, thinkers, and movements should be dismissed with scorn and contempt -- assuming that the elite even condescends to notice their existence. Needless to say, such a setup will lead to a high degree of intellectual cronyism, in which members of the "in" group mutually endorse and reinforce each others' prestige; but like crony capitalism, this is standard operating procedure of all elites and should come as no surprise. Relying on the natural human desire to gravitate towards prestige, the intellectual elite has no need to resort to the ham-fisted methods of Orwell's Big Brother.

Perhaps it was because he was writing in the early part of the last century, Gramsci did not forsee another problem:

Despite the fact that Gramsci regarded himself as a Marxist, the central role that he gave to prestige led far from Marxist orthodoxy. In Marxism the ruling class can be easily identified: it has a monopoly on the production and distribution of things. For Gramsci, there is a new ruling class, which has a monopoly on the production and distribution of opinions.

I especially like Harris's characterization of the Tea Party movement as one of "marginalized outsiders" -- and his contention that it is that feature which makes them revolutionary (even, dare I say it? in the Gramscian sense):

The only defense that the marginalized outsider has against this onslaught is to not give a damn. And the fact that the Tea Party movement does not give a damn about the current standards of intellectual respectability makes it problematic for the intellectual, who cannot take the same attitude. But it is also the characteristic that justifies the Tea Party's claim to be revolutionary. To be sure, this is not the revolution envisioned by Marx, in which the working class overthrows the capitalist class. It is rather the revolt of common sense against privileged opinion makers, and, by its very nature, it can only be carried out by men and women who are not constrained by the standards of intellectual respectability current in polite company. Again, it is precisely their status as marginalized outsiders that allows them to defy the monopoly of prestige possessed by the cultural insiders. This fact may put them beyond the pale as far as the conservative intellectuals are concerned, but it is precisely what makes them a force capable of resisting the liberal elite's efforts to achieve cultural hegemony -- a resistance that conservative intellectuals had hoped to mount but which they have not mounted, which explains why the Tea Party movement has so little use for them as a whole. As the Tea Partiers see it, what is most needed right now are not new ideas -- we have already had far too many of those. What is needed is the revitalization of a very old attitude -- the attitude shared by all people who have been able to maintain their liberty and independence against those who would take it away from them: "We do not need an elite to govern us. We can govern ourselves."

Quite wisely (IMO) Harris also warns that pure democracy is an illusion and that "elite rule may be unavoidable." But I think (and I hope) that it's going to be tough for anyone to coopt the Tea Party. By its nature, it is resistant to peer pressure -- outside and even inside.

Cultural hegemony is a two way street. This is something that the intellectual con artist Gramsci knew full well.

In the interest of disclosure, it's probably fair for me to point out that as a traitor to the intellectual left, I've been a marginalized outsider for many years now. So I can say I think the Tea Parties are cool and there's not a damned thing they can do except ignore me. Fine. Being ignored by them is cool with me!

MORE: My assessment that the Tea Party movement is cool is borne out by the results of a poll Roger L. Simon discusses:

Interesting: 54 percent supported the Tea Party Movement strongly or somewhat. The two categories of support were equally divided. Only 41% opposed the TPM (28% strongly, 13% somewhat).

Startling: 31 percent of self-identified Democrats support the TPM either strongly or somewhat.

Most Startling: Of the 54 percent who support the TPM, 52 percent do so privately [italics clearly deliberate]. Furthermore, just 9 percent consider themselves members of the movement but an additional 21 percent state they have friends and families who are.

In other words -- despite all those demonstrations and town hall meetings you may have been watching, reading about or participating in -- the Tea Party Movement is still largely sub rosa. Why? Well, a variety of answers suggest themselves (and I am sure you will have more), but, as a Hollywood screenwriter who voted for Bush, I know full well the necessity of keeping your mouth shut. And if we are a nation of people who have been keeping our mouths shut, look out in November.