The new rebellion

"Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming …"

In 1970, a four-minute song by Neil Young called "Ohio" was banned from several AM stations for its criticism of the Nixon administration. After the song found airplay on several illegal FM stations, "Ohio" quickly climbed to the top 20 on the Billboard charts.

Fast forward to 2011: A four-minute YouTube clip featuring an outspoken tea-party blogger getting arrested for speaking her mind at a city council meeting in Quartzite, Ariz., has reached near Justin Bieber status for going viral. In the video, Jennifer "Jade" Jones is seen delivering her remarks during a public-comment session. When the Quartzite City Council didn't like what she had to say, Jones was physically restrained and arrested for disorderly conduct.

"Officer, that woman has the floor. You are violating my rules of order," decried Mayor Ed Foster during the arrest.

Foster soon found himself thrown out of office, and Quartzite Police Chief Jeff Gilbert took over as mayor, claiming the YouTube video was inciting death threats against local politicians, including himself. Heeding Rahm Emanuel's advice to never let "a serious crisis go to
 waste," Gilbert declared a state of emergency, allowing him to hold quorums with the city council behind closed doors.

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The arrest of Jones followed an airport arrest only months earlier of University of North Florida professor Ognjen Milatovic by Transportation Security Administration agents. His crime? A bag he was carrying containing a bagel with cream cheese made a "suspicious noise."

Welcome to Obama's America of endless wars, massive government spending and a police state decried only when a black Harvard professor is inconvenienced by two police officers but not when hundreds of Americans are groped by TSA agents every day.

Where is Neil Young's "Ohio" or "Impeach the President"? Is Bruce Springsteen interrupting his concerts to deliver five-minute sermons on the horrors of war now that Obama has American troops committed to three countries?

Young and Springsteen's rebellious idealism is off somewhere blowin' in the wind, but a new movement has filled the vacuum. And this movement is filled with grass-roots citizens who won't be turning on, tuning in and dropping out any time soon.

From a 61-year-old woman giving the TSA a taste of their own medicine by groping an agent's breast to a group of protesters wreaking havoc on a secret Bilderberg meeting in Switzerland, the silent majority has become quite vocal while the leftist establishment continues to fade into a relic of the past.

The establishment is also losing the culture wars.

The New York Times, once considered the guiding light for all news both print and spoken, pales in influence compared to the Drudge Report, and even "The O'Reilly Factor" is permeating culture beyond Fox viewers. The infamous Dick Cavett interview with John Lennon of yesterday is today's Bill O'Reilly interview with Jon Stewart. And no longer are college kids grabbing the latest issue of Rolling Stone to read Hunter S. Thompson because they're reading Ann Coulter instead. (It's kind of hard to call yourself a counterculture magazine and put Snooki on the cover at the same time.)

Looking back on the late '60s, there are several similarities between Barack Obama and Richard Nixon. Like Nixon, Obama believes government should play a crucial role in the economy (price controls/stimulus packages); and like Nixon, Obama relies on slick political gimmicks to destroy his enemies. But unlike Nixon, Obama doesn't rely on henchmen within his administration to do his dirty work. After all, who needs a Spiro Agnew when popular comedians and MSNBC commentators do your hatchet work instead?

Americans, as King George III could attest to, are not fond of butt-kissing and see right through deliberate attempts by the media and Hollywood establishment to prove massive government bureaucracy is cool. It's not working, and one can simply look at the panic-stricken face of MSNBC's Chris Matthews to know the establishment is getting nervous. Matthews may lecture the public as to why they should consider Bill Clinton "President of the World" and should get a thrill up their leg when Obama speaks, but no viewer is going to hear him unless he's charged with a felony sex offense and appears on MSNBC's "Lockup" at 3 a.m. Simply put, the left has lost its anti-establishment appeal and has only Obama to thank.

Matthews and other "progressive" idealists have remained steadfastly silent on Obama's three wars, the Guantanamo Bay prison camp remaining open and his bypassing Congress to keep American military involved in Libya beyond 90 days; for the end of war has never been the left's aim, but rather a socialist retooling of society.

Today, the left is the establishment; they permeate our schools, government and culture. Artists like Young are no longer leading the charge against the establishment because they have become the establishment.

But the utopia liberals envision of Mark Zuckerberg-looking types biking to work after finishing a veggie omelette at their favorite non-Starbucks owned coffee shop is no longer universally accepted by all entertainers.

"I have nightmares that I'm going to wake up and everyone's driving a Prius and we're all living in a condo and we're all getting health insurance," the characteristically non-political singer and Motor City native Kid Rock told Megyn Kelly on Fox News last year.

Tin soldiers and Obama's coming. Cling to your religion, folks.

Jay Stephenson is a former newspaper journalist from Minnesota who covered everything from Michele Bachmann to the unsung heroes who reside in the Upper Midwest's small towns.