Glenn Reynolds on the Third Great Awakening

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Glenn Reynolds, editor of Instapundit, has a new column published at the Washington Examiner in which he shares his thoughts on the recently concluded Tea Party Convention. America had two Great Awakenings, says Professor Reynolds, one each in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Unlike the earlier Great Awakenings, which were religious in nature, the 21st Century version is political:

I attended this past weekend’s National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, and I came away feeling that I had seen something important. The Tea Party movement is part of something bigger: America’s Third Great Awakening.

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Most of the attention focused on this weekend’s convention seemed to involve the keynote speaker, Sarah Palin. But though Palin wowed the crowd with red-meat attacks on overspending, weak national defense, and broken promises, the key phrase in her speech was this one: “All power is inherent in the people.”

And the biggest action item that she presented the crowd with wasn’t to support Sarah Palin, as most politicians would have asked, but to challenge incumbents in primary races. Primary battles aren’t “civil war,” she said. They’re the kind of competition that produces strength in the end.

This seemed to resonate with what I heard from conference attendees. Over and over again, I heard from Tea Party Activists that they were planning to take over their local Republican (and, sometimes Democratic) party apparatus starting at the precinct level and shake things up.

Read the full opinion piece here.

- JP