Left-Wing Fascination with the “Sexy” Occupy Movement
An AP story in the online USA Today described the efforts of American museums and collectors----The Smithsonian Institute, the Museum of the City of New York, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan, the Queens College and more---to amass artifacts and electronic records about the Occupiers.
The formal statement from the Smithsonian explaining their intrigue with the Occupiers also acknowledged collecting some materials from the March 2010 Tea Party event in Washington, but there is no mention of the larger September 12, 2009 Tea Party march, or of the myriad other Tea Party activities around the country since early 2009.
This raises at least three questions:
- In 2062, fifty years from now, what will students in American schools or museum visitors learn about the two most noteworthy political movements in America today--- the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement?
- Why the fascination with the Occupiers, by curators and the media?
- What’s so great about the Occupiers’ mission and goals, especially as compared with those of the Tea Party?
Points to Ponder:
- An Occupier memorabilia collector, head of special collections and archives for Queens College explained his passion for collecting Occupy artifacts by saying, “Occupy is sexy, … hip.”
- While the Occupy movement started from the germ of a right idea, that the Wall Street bailouts were wrong, (and the Tea Party and the Occupiers share a disdain for the Wall Street bailouts and other government/corporate entanglements), it has deteriorated into a pit of self-serving and irrational demands.
- All that the Occupiers are really demanding is socialism. They want (to the extent any cogent description of their demands is accurate) the imposed “fairness” of government coercion to correct or prevent income inequality (forced income redistribution, or some other sinister and random oppression), government repayment of their college loans from which they reaped the educational benefit, and assorted other coercive actions only possible with a greatly empowered and expanded federal government. They want to wildly change America.
- The Occupiers’ loan repayment demand can be summarized: “We demand giveaways for us.” They want the government to repay their college loans which it can only do using money it confiscates from other Americans in taxes, many of whom paid their own college loans back.
- By contrast, the Tea Party wants free markets, freedom and constitutionally limited government, for everyone. It wants reduced government interference in the lives of its citizens, lower spending and less dependence on the government. It wants to perpetuate the system on which America was founded, and through which it attained its unparalleled success.
- The Occupiers are not spontaneous grassroots protesters. George Soros, the anti-American, anti-freedom, and anti-religion Left-wing behind-the-scenes guru, is funding Occupy.
- By contrast, though false allegations fly, the Tea Party is the genuine grassroots real thing, its various and intentionally unstructured groups finding what they need through thousands of individual donations.
- The call to shut down corporations, the actual shutting down of the port of Oakland at the cost of $4 to $8 million dollars a day which hurt working Americans, and arrests for indecent exposure and allegations of rape and sexual assault, all arise in Occupy encampments and out of the Occupy movement. Their extended presence on public property is costing the taxpayers millions in police protection, crowd control and use of the criminal justice system to pay for their miscreant conduct.
- By contrast, Tea Party rallies and marches draw larger crowds, but do not involve sustained encampments because they are comprised largely of people who need to get back to work (and who accordingly pay taxes). After rallies and even large marches, Tea Partiers leave public areas clean, a glaring contrast with the condition of the Occupiers’ encampments.
- News reports on the Occupiers ring of bravery for standing up against the establishment---but their 99% rhetoric and their demands are divisive and ultimately selfish. They are demanding “more for me…. give me a job … give me a free college education…take money from others and give it to me….” Not noble or brave at all.
- Far braver are the demands of the Tea Party that tell government to stop giving me free things using other people’s money, give everyone the same freedoms, and let people be free to live, thrive and achieve. The demand for the repeal of socialized medicine, the reduction and ultimate elimination of the federal debt, reduced spending, reform of the entitlement programs so they become sustainable, and a host of other proposals, are significant changes that will benefit everyone.
- So why are the Occupiers more “sexy”? Because outrage and anger against the “establishment” has always lured the American Left, including academia and the media. Because the almost primal urge to blame something or someone else “out there” for the state of human affairs and the inherently unfair nature of life itself, which is the core of Occupiers’ income inequality protest, finds emotional but utterly irrational resonance with the Left.
Americans are engaged in an ideological, philosophical and political battle over the future course of our nation.
It matters whether the freedom-loving Constitution-supporting Tea Party wins, or the Occupy America Socialist-driven agenda wins. We will need one day to thank or hold responsible the victor in this battle over freedom vs. socialism.
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Not so fast
I see nowhere that the Tea Party is demanding that the trillions the Wall Street stole from the American people. Where are the Tea Party signs that say Citi/Lehman/Godman etc. people need to be behind bars? I see no public demonstrations against the 2012 NDAA by the Tea Party. How can Tea Party people support candidates that not materially change the status quo? Candidates that don't slash the MIC budget ARE NOT SERIOUS about reducing the deficit. Tea partiers and occupiers have a lot more in common than you realize. It's just the Tea Party itself has lost its way. Free markets my @$. Voting for a Newt Gingrich who insults protesters exercising their constitutional rights or Mitt Romney who has all Wall Street backers is more than telling.