VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Rage On—and on and on…

I’ve been following the Wall Street protests, in New York and elsewhere. I read as well of the Democratic Party’s sorta interest in turning the anger of a few into a left-wing Tea-Party-like movement of many.

Against that background, I’ve also been counting up Barack Obama’s excuses (ATM machines are to blame and so are the tsunami, the EU, George W. Bush, the nine-month-old Republican House, the Arab Spring, the D.C. earthquake, and rising oil prices). He’s also growing his target list of various insults (everyone and everything from Clarence Thomas, Nancy Reagan, and the Special Olympics to fat-cat bankers, corporate jet-owners, millionaires and billionaires, and “the teabag, anti-government people”).

Out of all that chaos, I think there are two constants that explain the Obama frustration and the current outpouring of invective at Wall Street, “them,” the affluent, and our capitalist system in general.

On a wider political level, there is a growing realization that today’s brand of liberalism is really a form of slow societal suicide. We see red states recovering from recession; blue states are still broke. Greece is a mess; so is the entire anti-democratic, statist, and redistributive EU. . . . In sum, there is panic.

Palpably so.