This is the way I just saw a young activist instruct other tea party activists on how to “give our ideas a fighting chance” in the marketplace of ideas:

Go to any website that allows ratings of books, movies, etc., search for “liberal” products and give them all one star, then search for “conservative” products and give them all five stars. You can do this relatively quickly for “hundreds” of products. Isn’t that easy? It doesn’t require the ability to make a cogent argument that convinces other people, to listen to and understand other peoples’ stories, or all the time-consuming reading and thinking that would take. “The vast majority of the books I rate, I’ve never read,” the young man assures his audience.

This was filmed at an actual workshop at some tea party event at which new activists were being trained. I didn’t catch where or when this was, but it appeared to be in a large meeting room in some sort of conference facility. I give that detail because it shows this idea to be mainstream within the tea party universe, not just something some crank said to 12 people in his basement.

The irony is that tea party patriots are fond of quoting Mr. Jefferson’s famous assertion that the cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate; “whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”