The American Revolution, 2010

  Interesting. Sweden's moving right. Did you hear that? SWEDEN. 
  As in the 17th and 18th centuries, it appears America, this grand experiment, is shaking up the world and leading the way again as citizens, UNITE, to gain sovereignty over their own countries. Break with the hierarchy of lords and ladies! Freedom rules!
  Over at the NY Times:

Worthy, high-minded and often utterly predictable, Swedish politics has rarely offered much by way of excitement. Now an electoral earthquake seems to have changed all that.

  Over at Headline Bistro, Lopez discusses the tea party movement and its inception. She is one of the few who gets it.

Freedom is very much on American minds, frequently served these days, with tea. The tea party movement, such that it is – a dispersed, grassroots political phenomenon. It isn’t an explicitly religious movement, by any strength. But if you talk to people who show up to the rallies, if you listen to some of the candidates who have showed up to run for office this year -- to serve -- it’s hard to escape this is a cultural movement of people who feel called to something greater than themselves. They dare to hope, to believe that we can be better than we have been. 

  The Guardian has a whole series of breathless columns about the tea party. 
  And at Independent Political Report is an international report on tea parties, which ends with the remark that though its energy may be transported, its problems will too.
   Heh. 
   Like maybe the imperfect humans striving to preserve national sovereignty, unlike so many of the politicians today hankering for some sort of monstrous global unity that wants to grab all the money, energy and success of countries who actually work for a living and want to maintain a national identity. 

With the rumblings of the Tea Party continuing to make noise in American politics, it may be time to look outward at the rest of the world. While no mass movement of Tea Party protesters appears to be spontaneously taking to the streets of the Western world, signs do point to a small degree of modelling of the American movement.

  Then here's a mean little article from May over at Big Think, which pokes at Christians and citizen concerns over immigration problems, as if because people are concerned about immigration it is automatically xenophobia or some sort of psychosis regarding a threat to their safety. In truth, people are stirring in country after country because they don't want shariah law, harms to their physical safety or immigrants who whine that the system "owes" them something because they have come here (wherever that is) as immigrants and YOU, the working taxpayer, HAVE to provide for them. WBZ:

"If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen." Those are the words from 58-year-old Zeituni Onyango of Kenya in a recent exclusive interview with WBZ-TV. 

  Oh, and Obama's auntie is living on public assistance because, you know, she has that right and YOU have that obligation. 
  Twenty years ago, I met a young Swedish woman who was very concerned about immigrants who came to her country and did nothing but gather on street corners and collect public assistance.
  Twenty years ago.
  And where are they now?
  It's about time.
  Mock all you want. 
  It's an American revolution.
  And it's spreading, just like before.