The media demonizes the Tea Party while making excuses for the British rioters.

As we all know, thanks to the unbiased media, the Tea Party people are racists and terrorists with no reason except hate for their position . If you don't believe that you won't find support for your position in the Virginian Pilot.  Meanwhile ...

A scholar at Johns Hopkins blames "austerity cuts." So does The New York Times: "Economic malaise and cuts in spending and services instituted by the Conservative-led government have been recurring flashpoints for months." Reuters says a "sense of disenchantment" is shared by a "generation of young people with opportunities that fall well short of their aspirations." And—

Well, you get the point: Yes, the hooligans have destroyed family businesses, trashed London institutions, sent millions of real and sweat equity up in flames, inflicted misery on thousands of innocent people. But one mustn't judge too harshly. One must try to understand. And to mollify.

You hear that sort of flummery a lot.

Or at least you hear it when the perpetrators of mayhem are objects of liberal approval. Labor unions, demonstrators against global free-trade agreements, environmentalist activists—they have legitimate grievances that must be addressed. The blind rage of young people in working-class neighborhoods is the product of socioeconomic conditions. They should not be held responsible for their actions—the people who created the conditions should be held responsible. (David Cameron, this means you.)

Funny thing, though: You didn't hear that sort of guff in 2009, when middle-class conservatives turned up at town halls across the country to vent about health-care reform. Back then, the town-hall events were filled with "angry, sign-carrying mobs," wrote Politico, which lamented the way constituents were "shouting criticism" at members of Congress. Signs and criticism: Oh my!

"Angry mobs" were trying to "destroy president Obama," fumed Democratic Party leaders back then. "This is something new and ugly," seethed Paul Krugman of The New York Times, which described the town hall events as "brutal." No one seemed interested in the root causes of the sign-wavers' agitation then. You didn't hear much about the "disillusionment" and "disenchantment" of Tea Party protesters who marched on Washington in September 2009, and again the following March.

To be fair, after the Taxpayer March on Washington on 9/12, Reuters did pause to wonder what the source of public anger was: "Protests Against Obama: Race or Policy?" it asked, noting how "former President Jimmy Carter said out loud what Democrats had been whispering for a while, that the protests against the country's first black president are tinged with racism."

When conservatives wave signs, it's not "unrest" caused by a "sense of disenchantment." It's because they're bigots. Society as a whole is not to blame; they are, individually. They need an attitude adjustment. When violent mobs of young people burn down a city, though, they are not individually responsible—society as a whole is (or at least that part of society that ostensibly ticked them off). They don't need an attitude adjustment: conservatives do.