8 Reasons Why Today’s Occupiers Are Tomorrow’s Tea Partiers
8 ) The Futility of Protest Without Power
The word “powerful” is an epithet among many activists, regardless of their political persuasion. The Powerful are often evoked as a faceless, shadowy elite playing by a different set of rules at the expense of the rest of us. No distinction is made between the Powerful and power itself. As a result, the notion of obtaining power to affect change is often met with knee-jerk revulsion. There is an irrational fear that contact with power taints the activist, and an equally irrational conviction that power itself must somehow be neutralized. This creates a kind of anti-activism where nothing of real consequence is accomplished, protest without effect.
The Tea Party certainly has its share of anti-activists. However, most Tea Partiers realize that power is not inherently evil. The very notion of evil presumes a morality, and morality presumes agency and free will. It is how people choose to use power, and not power itself, which has moral consequence. More importantly, power is required to affect any change in policy.
Occupy is resistant to embrace the fact that power is a tool to be morally utilized. For this reason, despite their elevated media status, their potency as a political force is negligible. The same was true of the Tea Party early on, which is why there has been a marked drop-off in the amount and size of Tea Party rallies. Tea Partiers have come to realize that protest without power is little more than cathartic release. As Occupiers come to recognize that same futility, they will be one step closer to Tea Partiers.
7 ) The Futility of a Movement Without Focus
The Occupy movement prides itself on its lack of hierarchy, organization, and focus. Occupiers value inclusion over definition at the expense of substance and direction.
It makes sense when you consider the aforementioned fear of power. The notion that someone is “in charge” suggests authority, something the Occupy movement has great contempt for.
The Tea Party is similarly amorphous, lacking a centralized organization or explicit hierarchy. However, the Tea Party has a different motivation for its cellular structure. Tea Partiers generally respect authority and value organization, but recognize that the integrity of the movement depends upon independence from a hierarchy where individual leaders might be compromised in one way or another.
In addition, the Tea Party has a set of core principles which generally unite them – fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. Occupiers can’t seem to agree on anything, and instead operate from the vague sense that money and power are bad.
Without a clear focus, an objective and a plan to achieve it, the brighter Occupiers will eventually bore of fruitless activism and either reevaluate or disengage. Those who reevaluate may discover an affinity for the Tea Party’s message of proper governance and individual liberty.
I would like to know if the Occupiers are equal believers in many of these discoveries, particularly the one that begins:
It’s the one about the Occupiers’ resistance to sharing their food with the homeless people who showed up.
Walter Hudson sees this, and we see it. Do the Occupiers? How much self-awareness do they have?
Aquinas would say need is indeed a moral claim, when the needy person is in extremis — the classical example being the moral right to take food when one is immediately in danger of starving. A more modern example would be the moral claim to emergency medical treatment when one is gravely injured; a patient in extremis cannot rationally choose his care, and may not be able even to request it. So there’s a serious argument underneath the statement, but its scope has been blown out of proportion. The problem with Occupy types is that the left has generalized that narrow moral claim to include all non-immediate needs, which over time comes to include all wants too.
I think that both Aquinas and the Leftists are wrong on this point. Aside from those for whom one has voluntarily assumed specific, personal obligations; those in need, regardless of the magnitude of that need, have no moral claim on ones life. For some indication of the arguments in support of this claim, see: The Objectivist Ethics
“Aside from those for whom one has voluntarily assumed specific, personal obligations; those in need, regardless of the magnitude of that need, have no moral claim on ones life.”
I see the problem as being semantic. Today, the term “need” has been conflated with a misunderstanding of “right,” as in “I have a right to health care.” When demagogues use “right” to health care, housing, education, et al., the proper term is “need” for all these things. Anything that requires someone to work for it (give up part of his life for) is not a right. Your rights end where they require something of me. I can exercise all the rights enumerated in the Constitution as much as I want without forcing you to do anything. But if I demand a “right” to health care, housing, food, anything that costs money or labor of another, I am treading on the rights of everyone who must change what they want to do into what they must do for me.
Take it up with Jesus, then, because St. Thomas was just echoing Jesus’ sentiment from the parables of the Good Samaritan and The Rich Man and Lazarus. When you see someone dying in front of you and you have the capacity to help, then you have the duty to help. Why was the rich man condemned? Not for being rich, but because he wouldn’t let the man sitting outside his door eat his garbage in order to stay alive. It wouldn’t have even cost him anything to render assistance, for Lazarus would have been content to eat his garbage, but he was so lacking in mercy that he would not even let Lazarus eat his garbage. The Good Samaritan, by contrast, was upheld as a paragon of virtue for coming to the aid of a wounded man, when a priest and a Levite would not.
Lest you be confused by the vocabulary, “in extrimis” means “at the point of death.” It is the vice of cowardice to look the other way while somebody dies when you have the capacity to save them.
You don’t need to get to Jesus for this; it’s a basic theme of the entire Hebrew Bible, from Moses to Issiah.
Someone else’s need, assuming they are not not lazy or self-destructive, does put an obligation on us. The problem here is that the biblical model of obligations (including those not enforcable by the courts) is confused with the relatively modern notion of rights, which aforetime only applied to property.
AND, that does not mean that this obligation is best fulfilled at the point of a gun.
Take it up with Ayn Rand. She, like other Aristotelians such as St. Aquinas, recognized that there is an “ethics of emergencies” (Rand’s own phrase, if I recall correctly) that is different and distinct from the ethics of the ordinary course of events.
Try again.
Just what are the common principles between those of the “occupy” mobs and the peaceful assemblies of the Tea Party? Those whose means are to disrupt the community to acheve their ends. And those who gather only by licence, are respectful of the community, and leave their gathering places as they found them. Crime, rape, trashing the ground on which they demonstrate not for them.
On the one hand – Occupy – persons who believe they are “owed a living”. Owed a llving because they belong to the right clubs, in this case young, university/college students and/or graduates. Graduates for example in black studies, gender studies, media studies, and their like whose self importance is out of proportion to any value they might bring – IF they worked – to the community.
The value for the community from those young, university students/graduates, who do not appear at Occupy gatherings because they are working at, often menial, jobs. Or the value provided by immigrants who come to America for the opportunities lacking in the countries from which they emigrate, e.g Koreans And the willingness to work like coolies at whatever jobs are available to them until they have their feet on the ladder – admittedly unlikely members of the Tea Parties. Or like those immigrants proud to be American with no hyphen who made America the nation that provided “the greatest good to the greatest number”. That America the promise to the “tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
In contrast to the immigrant pets of the “liberal” troops of wannabee dictators called democrats. Immigrant pets who are often illegals, not to put too fine a point criminal or at least barging to the front of the queue/waitng list. Who come to America as the “Land of free money” called welfare. How’s that for “democratic” behaviour?
Then there are those poor mugs, “native born” and other who work for a living. Whose labours are taxed compelled with the fist of law. Taxes to pay the danegeld to the vandals. Vamdal politicians who cheer them on and increase the numbers to receive the danegeld. To keep them all in the manner to which they have become accustomed by sucking on the marrow of the poor beasts who actually work for a living. Who don’t have the time nor the freedom to assemble in their blackmailing gangs because they have jobs to do and bosses who require a day’s work for a day’s pay.
Tell us what could possibly be common principles between such groups?
This is a great example of the saying, “Conservatives think liberals are naive, liberals think conservatives are evil.”
But no, Occupiers are not just being naive, they are genuinely and earnestly calling for government control over virtually every aspect of the economy. Conservatives need to understand this and not think that someday they will just get over it…
We’re in a struggle of free markets vs socialism. And free markets lost long, long again, we’re just arguing over the degree of socialism.
Jeremy, if, as you say, Occupiers are genuinely and earnestly calling for government control over virtually every aspect of their lives, it’s no wonder that the wind has gone out their sails. The United Nations and its agencies directly and indirectly are way ahead of the Occupiers.
Don’t get me wrong. My thesis is not that Occupiers will have a conversion experience in mass. However, just as some percentage of trendy hipster leftists from the 1960′s grew up and became conservative, it is likely some percentage of Occupiers will grow into a more rational perspective.
I’m sorry, this is simply an absurd statement. Especially considering the number of Ron Paul-ites active within Occupy.
While hope springs eternal, Mr. Hudson, and while you [almost] correctly observe that “the only entity capable of [maldistribution of power] is government (your error there is in conflating and/or equating maldistribution [which, by definition, is “bad”] with moral redistribution [which, by definition, is “good”]), your hope is sadly misinformed when you claim that “Occupiers are [not] committed socialists.”
While your other Commenters this morning (so far) also recognize that error in your reasoning (being faith-based rather than evidential, and your faith is placed in a mistaken perception on your part, not ours), that doesn’t make them (or me) correct. Only evidence can prove reality. The single, anecdotal citation of “evidence” you provided for your mistaken understanding, however, a) does not define the movement at large (far from it, as I will support evidentially in a moment) and b) was buried within a tome entitled “Proposed Demands for Occupy Wall Street: Jobs for All, Medicare for All, MORE Social Security.” How anyone can miss the obvious here is beyond Nobody Important.
But perhaps that’s because Nobody Important manages a Web site with a page (among hundreds of others) devoted to the Occupiers. Readers interested in familiarizing themselves with who and what the Occupiers REALLY are can examine the evidence for themselves.
http://anotherslownewsday.wordpress.com/occupiers/
Sorry, Mr. Hudson, but hope and faith placed in objects unworthy of that hope and faith is hope and faith misplaced. It is not the Occupiers who will learn a hard lesson here about us, it is you who will, eventually, learn a hard lesson about them.
Could be. But, it depends on if the occupiers go too far on the guided path the manipulators are trying to get them to take.
Excellent piece! I’m sending it to my Occupy-sympathizing son!
One further point — much of the problem with government, as with society, comes down to corruption (mutual self-dealing). Cronyism is corruption, and the Chicago style of our fearless leader exemplifies corruption.
The majority of the Occupiers seem to be nothing but a bunch of socialists and anarchists. I heard a member of the Occupy “movement” (mob is more like it) on the radio the other day and he said that he thought all Colleges should be free in America and that all college loans should be wiped out. And he was serious, too. This is the mind set of the people your dealing with. He never thought about where all this money was going to come from to pay for all of this but, if he’s listening to Obama, if you tax to death all of the “evil” rich people that will solve all of our problems. Go tell that to the people in Greece, or Spain, or Italy, or Portugal, or Ireland, or Holland, all socialist countries that are just now finding out what happens when you run out of spending other people’s money. No, as long as the Occupy movement thinks that massive government is the solution to all of our problems, Tea Party members have nothing in common with them, let alone anything to talk about.
“I heard a member of the Occupy “movement” (mob is more like it) on the radio the other day and he said that he thought all Colleges should be free in America and that all college loans should be wiped out. And he was serious, too.”
You know what…good point. And let’s follow this to its logical conclusion: If college were completely free, that would mean all college professors would be donating their time FOR FREE. Which means they’d either have to have made their life-sustaining money from other activities earlier in their life and willing to work for free, or they’d become taxpayer funded employees. The facilities cost millions for maintenance, so somebody would have to donate that money for FREE. That would have to mean either taxpayers or evil corporations. So if taxpayers are funding both the professor salaries and overhead, then all people who pay taxes (everyone) would have to be guaranteed enrollment in order for this to be “fair”. What possible value would an automatic degree for everyone in society convey exactly? About the same endowment conferred on anybody who survived infancy, which in monetization termw would translate to ZERO employment guarantees. And this differs from today’s situation how??
And to think that the earliest colleges and universities in the Western world were started at monasteries by their Catholic monks.
What is old becomes new again.
Again, this is absurd. This country has been offering free education for more than a hundred years. It is simply the case now that a college education is necessary for many or most well-paid positions in the sort of information and service economy that the United States has.
Hi, Occupier. Regarding: “…It is simply the case now that a college education is necessary for many or most well-paid positions in the sort of information and service economy that the United States has”. I realize you said many or most, and you specify information and service, however I don’t see this as accurate. There are many professions that pay well that do not require a college degree. For ages, apprenticeships and technical school courses have afforded folks the opportunity to gain very valuable skills that do not require a college degree – plumber/heating and air conditioner service, electrician, mechanic, welder, sheet metal worker, construction contractor, and even information technology. Many of us have used these skilled folks in our home. What is the average hourly rate for these services? I’d venture to say $50.00 per hour and up. My plumber charges $78.00/hour. Also, there are jobs in many of these sectors that can not find folks with the essential skills.
“I heard a member of the Occupy “movement” (mob is more like it) on the radio the other day and he said that he thought all Colleges should be free in America and that all college loans should be wiped out. And he was serious, too.”
You know what…good point. And let’s follow this to its logical conclusion: If college were completely free, that would mean all college professors would be donating their time FOR FREE. Which means they’d either have to have made their life-sustaining money from other activities earlier in their life and willing to work for free, or they’d become taxpayer funded employees. The facilities cost millions for maintenance, so somebody would have to donate that money for FREE. That would have to mean either taxpayers or evil corporations. So if taxpayers are funding both the professor salaries and overhead, then all people who pay taxes (everyone) would have to be guaranteed enrollment in order for this to be “fair”. What possible value would an automatic degree for everyone in society convey exactly? About the same endowment conferred on anybody who survived infancy, which in monetization termw would translate to ZERO employment guarantees. And this differs from today’s situation how??
How would they like this: “College would be for (nearly) free, but all restrict admission to, say, the top 20% on an anonymous entrance exam (no AA games) and restrict the available number of places in any one major to roughly match the demand in the labor market for that major. Also, grades are based on anonymous final exams ONLY, no more umpteen quizzes, dropped grades. Furthermore, every major has a fixed curriculum — no more picking the low-hanging fruit from the course catalog to get a BA with minimal work. And there are nationwide standards — all guarantee a certain quality/standards level, aside from there being a few VERY selective elite colleges. Admission to the latter is, likewise, only based on stringent anonymous entrance exams.”
The above is a combination of actual features of several free or nearly free Euro (French, German,…) and Israeli higher ed systems. Somehow, I don’t think the ‘bong hits for Barack’ (a.k.a. OWS) crowd would like this.
This peice overlooks the fundamental difference between the Occupiers and the Tea Partiers; the Tea Party movement was largely bottom up, the Occupy “movement” is wholly top down. The people driving the useful idiots in the occupy “movement” are committed communists who view those idiot children as just that, idiots, and suitable only as cannon fodder. They’d like nothing more than a good “Kent State Moment” that they could blame on the right. They’re not above astroturfing some tubby bearded guys with guns or even having some little punks shot if it makes good media, and rest assured the media will be there and ready if it happens.
Who knows what would have happened to the drifters, hobos, and lost souls of the ’30s had WWII not come along and put everybody either in uniform or at work, but there was one Helluva lot more communist influence in the US in the ’30s than anybody today likes to talk about. The revolutiony movements of the ’30s were thwarted by the War and the backlash against communist labor unions and the USSR in the postwar era.
The student protesters of the ’60s and early ’70s were led and inspired by professors who became communists in the ’30s and ’40s and “student leaders” a few years older, born in the late ’30s and the War years; the Berkeley Free Speech Movement began in ’64 and Savio was born in ’42. To the extent there were any ‘Boomers involved at all, they would have been 18 year old freshmen. As the children of the ’60s became the young adults of the ’70s, most of them got a spouse, a car, a house, and kids and one Helluva lot of them must have become Republicans because Nixon was elected twice, Reagan twice, Bush I once, and Bush II twice since the ‘Boomers came to voting age. On the other hand, those ‘Boomers who went straight from school to government, the non-profits and interest groups, and journalism/media/entertainment have in the main kept the same ideas first inculcated by communist professors and student leaders of the ’60s and early ’70s and since those vocations are dominated by people like them, they think everybody is like them except some ignorant, slack-jawed, toothless mass out there that they really can only visualize in the abstract and would NEVAH associate with.
If the economy can’t be turned around to produce some low-skill jobs, we’re going to get to find out what would have happened without WWII. Even though they are highly credentialled, most of today’s yutes are pig ignorant of anything useful; they have no useful skills, nor even any work ethic or habits. It is unfair to them to make them put down their video game or turn off the TV and go to work at a particular time. It is unfair to them to insist that they wear appropriate clothing to work, to take their earbuds out, and to turn off their cellphone while at work. In other words, even if there were low skill jobs, these people can’t or won’t do them. And for all the “Communications,” “Studies,” “Education,” and similar degrees, the only jobs opportunities for those “skills” are in government, which has a tremendous debt and revenue problem at all levels, so whether the left wants to or not, it can’t grow government enought to employ or otherwise support these people above the barest subsistence level.
I don’t know, but I don’t think many of the OWSers and the young folk who support them have it in them to do what so many ‘Boomers did; get out and take whatever job you could get and work your way up. Ten years ago I was seeing it with recent college grads; it was inconceivable to them to have to start at the entry level and work their way up. They wanted it all and they wanted it now, and they didn’t want to do much of that working and rule-following stuff to get it. It took a world war to get most of the hobos, bums, and Wobblies to actually go to work. I hope we can get the OWSers to work with less effort than that, but I’m not hopeful that they would even work for that.
Great Observations Art. The whole affair is pretty wobbly in my view. I don’t know how we can hope to downsize this government and its’ overreach, entitlements, constant leftward movement short of a crisis and I am positive that a crisis is on its’ way. (As I have pointed out to those who will listen we have not closed down any agency or department that I am aware of in my 63 years, indeed just the oppposite and unfortunately only some of us seem to be aware that this is unsustainable) Still crises have a way of waking up the work ethic in the most moribund of souls, unfortunately what that work will be used for is the unknown, will it be to create or to destroy, something good or something bad. Don’t know and neither does anyone else, but history doesn’t hold out a lot of promise for a soft landing when we finally reach the abyss.
How much do you really know about Occupy, and how much did you learn from Rush Limbaugh?
A song that was popular about the time I was in high school contained the lyrics:
Tax the rich,
Feed the poor,
Until there are
No rich no more.
Even the 16-17 year old me thought “Now, that’s stupid. If you do that, who will feed the poor when the rich are gone?”
Any economy, just like an ecosystem, depends on producers. The malcontents of the Occupy movement haven’t figured that out yet.
Ten Years After. “I’d Love to Change the World”
That line had really bugged me as well at first. Later (and perhaps wrongly) I came to see the song as more of a dig at protesters and activists, full of grandiose ideas but with no clue how to implement them or even seeing a difference between good ideas and bad.
Even if I’m wrong, I’ll still give it a few points for the guitar work…
Last I checked, there were quite a few working poor. As for the rich, it is a little naive to think that rich people got rich by being super productive. They got rich by owning the means of production, and by taking rent. The whole idea of a business is to get other people to work for you, and to reap the profits from that labor (by paying the employees less than the net that their labor is bringing in). I mean, this is simply the logic of free enterprise. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were surely intelligent and hardworking people. But they didn’t get rich by being productive. They got rich by getting other people to be productive, building products people wanted to buy.
The problem with all these “solutions” is that government (let’s call him “Steve”) ends up deciding what’s “fair” and “just” instead of each individual. We have mechanisms in place, Steve. It’s called charity, and it’s voluntary (and tax-deductible), as it should be.
The House will begin debating H.R. 3523, the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act” (CISPA) today, and a vote on final passage is expected tomorrow.
We already have to be careful enough about our privacy on the Internet, but CISPA is the next great threat to further expand the government’s control over what we say and do online.
Unlike the fight against SOPA and PIPA, however, the cavalry isn’t coming to back us up.
This time, Internet giants like Facebook and Twitter are all openly supporting CISPA.
Please take a moment to contact Rep. Sam Johnson by phone at (202) 225-4201 and by email to urge a “NO” vote on H.R. 3523 and any other similar legislation
More contact information:
http://heritageactionscorecard.com/scorecard/index.html
And strangely, all those “communist, socialist Occuptards” are against these bills too! That’s crazy, isn’t it?
Only for the smarter ones.
No.
agree with snork
this should be a no go
the only thing needing to be enslaved and in shackles is the federal government
and to try to thread the needle on this one will play right into the left’s honeyhole– tinkering with hybrids of capitalism and socialism is the siren song of busybodies ages over and hayek’s masterpiece says all there needs to be said about this
as art chance stated earlier – the fundamental difference is the top down bottom up regarding ows and tea party “organization”- this essential separation does not need to get muddled up by some kind of organized powwow like the “no labels” crap and all the other left wing triangulation they try to pull when they find an adversary
I actually think this COULD be used as a bridge. As an earlier article stated liberal have a difficult time understanding the conservative viewpoint. This can be used to plant seeds in these young minds. To convince them that the conservative view is valid (even if they might disagree with the view). Once they take the first step through that doorway they will naturally moderate.
I myself am living proof of that. I used to be a hardcore, repubs are evil, liberal until I stumbles on LGF (before the author of the site went nuts). Shortly after 9-11, I found the site cathartic even if I disagreed with it on a lot and reading the comments caused me to acknowledge the conservatives on that site as being, at very least, legitimately intelligent. From there I discovered Hot Air and Ace of Spades and through them became a conservative myself (although I’d probably be consider a bit of a squish by many in this crowd).
That’s the first step. Get even a few members of Occupy to acknowledge thee validity of conservatism and that can become a gateway to at least pulling them into the moderate category. Our greatest weakness is we DON’T evangelize and we look down our nose at every chance we are given to do so. Who cares what the ORGANIZERS goal is? Go to these events and evangelize. If we can convince them to acknowledge us on one or two issues where we are closest, that can bait them to look deeper and give birth to new conservatives and moderates.
i’d rather put on my anti-che t shirt and hand out youtube addresses of milton friedman videos and “road to serfdom” excerpts on the streets of an ows get-together than let the so-called organizers get down and grandstand on our behalf and with our best interests at heart
No such “threading of the needle” is here advocated.
Trifecta: An Excellent Education Is Possible, Just Not In American Schools http://www.conservativevideos.com/2012/04/trifecta-an-excellent-education-is-possible-just-not-in-american-schools/
Darn. I was hoping this was satire. Phooey.
Dialog with “occupiers” should first be contingent on them learning how to use a toilet.
You rightly name yourself the Clown, Bozo.
It’s a classic, but it still rings true:
French Premier Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929): “Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.”
(often misattributed to Winston Churchill, who, if he didn’t say it, should have.)
I think reason number 9 (which is really a corollary to #1) is that these kids will grow up, learn reason that comes with life-experience, and change their minds…
_provided_ that they don’t entrench themselves with like-”minded” folk like the lame-stream media folks do.
PJ Media jumps the shark: April 27, 2012 – 12:03 am
Occupiers – parasites, all. Common ground with the Tea Party? Never.
This article was not about common ground, but reasons to convert from one mindset to another.
maybe the tip-off was when he said it was creepy.
Back in the first day or so of Occupy (when the idealists were allowed out in front of the professional organizers who took over later), I read a “list of demands” that contained some items I could agree with, and a few more that were poorly framed but libertarian in outlook, and I had the same idea.
(Let it be said, some of the list was just garbage, too.)
There is a chance of teaching some of the occupiers, and we shouldn’t scorn it.
Remember, we deal with people as individuals, not as members of identity groups.
The two major parties are made up of two groups. Pseudo-Marxists and Social Libertarians make up the Democratic party and Social Conservatives and Fiscal Libertarians make up the Republican party. Both groups of libertarians have a lot more in common than they’d like to admit.
The Tea-Partiers tend to come from the Fiscal Libertarian wing of the Republican party and I suspect this outreach will only entice the Social Libertarians among the Occupy crowd. From the images I’ve seen they are a small segment though so this may turn out to be a lot of nothing.
Trying to make economics “moral” means control and authoritarian impulses, there’s really no other way around it. That ain’t the Tea Party.
Yet, the very idea you’re expressing – that economics ought not be controlled – is a moral judgment.
No, it’s a practical judgement, based on experience.
Morality is a guide for making choices. So anytime you’re talking about something that involves a choice, you’re talking about morality. The choice to apply the government’s monopoly on force to control the market is therefore an application of morality. Morality and practicality are not mutually exclusive. If you are choosing to do something because it is practical, that simply means your morality is practical. Indeed, morality should be practical. Otherwise it is useless.
He isn’t expressing the idea that economics shouldn’t be controlled; he is silent on that point. Saying he is is like saying that someone who remarks that something is dangerous is telling people not to do it, when he might simply be pointing something out because he finds it noteworthy – say, if he was talking about base jumping.
I didn’t say he was advocating one way or the other. Regardless of his position on whether force should be applied in the market, his premise is that morality in markets requires authoritarianism. It does not. Indeed, the inverse is true.
First Walter Hudson does a bait and switch on Ben, then he does a bait and switch on me, and then on Ben again, changing the grounds and misrepresenting our positions. It’s one of the tactics outlined in Thouless’s “Straight and Crooked Thinking”. I will dissect it to expose it to readers:-
- Ben asserted, correctly or incorrectly, that ‘Trying to make economics “moral” means control and authoritarian impulses, there’s really no other way around it’. To this, Walter Hudson made out that “Yet, the very idea you’re expressing – that economics ought not be controlled – is a moral judgment”. While the idea that economics ought not be controlled is a moral judgment, that’s not what Ben put. What Ben described was what he believes is involved when people do try to make economics “moral”, and what shows up in people trying it. He never, not once, said they shouldn’t do it. He may in fact believe that, but since he didn’t claim that, Walter Hudson was switching that and raising a straw man.
- When I pointed that out, Walter Hudson used the same tactics on me. First, he (accurately) stated that he (Walter Hudson) “didn’t say he [Ben] was advocating one way or the other” – but not nowise, not nohow, did I ever suggest that Walter Hudson had done that. I pointed out (accurately) that Walter Hudson had misrepresented Ben’s position, but not that it was by asserting that Ben was advocating.
- Then Walter Hudson added “Regardless of his [Ben's] position on whether force should be applied in the market, his premise is that morality in markets requires authoritarianism”. No, Ben did not state that either (although, for all I know, he may actually hold that view). Rather, he was commenting on those who would seek to intervene actively to achieve morality in “economics”. It is entirely possible to believe that morality in markets does not require authoritarianism, say if you believe that Laissez Faire would deliver it, yet also believe that people who try to achieve that morality actively “means control and authoritarian impulses”. As it happens, I myself believe both those things. There is a great deal of difference between morality and intervening to make moral, and here Walter Hudson is misrepresenting Ben again.
Readers, read everything and don’t just take the word of the latest commenters about what the criticism really is. Read it and see for yourself – and feel free to do that with what I tell you, too.
Occupy has 3 factions, some we can work with, and some we cant.
A pretty large faction of occupiers are either committed socialists/marxists or astroturfed union/Soros hacks. We will never find common ground with them, and should never try.
Another faction are spoiled children who think the world owes them something. Provided they grow up a bit, realize they will have to support themselves someday instead of waiting for the Uncle Sam tooth fairy, and realize the way current huge big gov spending is going to stick them with the bill someday, they might be persuaded.
The occupy factions who are pissed off at bailouts, corporate handouts, cronyism, and regulatory capture, are even more persuadable. But they must make the intellictual leap that the primary culprits are not the capitalist system, nor the bankers and corporations that take the handouts, but the politicians that give them the handouts, and the big gov powers that make those givaways possible. They also need to realize that Obama and the dems are currently the chief practicioners of this kind of cronyism (although past repub politicos under Bush 2 are not blameless either, as the Tea Partiers realize, and should never be afraid to admit).
Well said.
Indeed, the thesis here is not that Occupiers are going to have a monolithic conversion experience. Rather, there are good reasons for them to reevaluate their worldview and methodology.
I think number five should have been rated as number one.
Every real evil stems from force or the use thereof. For example: sex with a willing partner (or partners) – awesome! Sex with an unwilling person – rape! Getting something for free cause someone gifted it – great. Getting it cause you just took it – theft. And so on…
It’s odd that the government is willing to recognize that this principle exists in almost every human interaction but when it comes to looking at their own activities it somehow becomes… different. Their actions assume legality not because they are truly moral or just but simply because it is done under the color of law.
They can justify their own force and therefore justify their own crimes. Their assault becomes a ‘pat down’; their theft becomes a ‘confiscation’; their torture becomes an ‘enhanced interrogation’.
I’d like to amend that part about sex. If you are married, you are stealing and defrauding your spouse if you have sex with anyone else. Quite simply, when you marry, you trade your sexuality for that of your spouse, so as a married person your sexuality doesn’t belong to you anymore, but rather to your spouse. Since your sexuality doesn’t belong to you, it isn’t yours to give, and so adultery is theft, just as it is theft to volunteer somebody else’s property for some so-called charity.
Excellent article, Walter! This is one of the most heartening things I’ve read in a while.
Below is a comment I posted at Belmont Club a couple of months ago. I don’t remember which thread it was; this is from a text file I saved on my computer.
___
Early on during the Occupy movement, a blogger (I don’t remember who) created a Venn diagram with two intersecting circles. The left one said, “Occupiers think corporations have too much power”, and the right one said, “Tea Partiers think the government has too much power”. In the middle it said, “Large corporations lobby for the government to have more power, and in return the government enacts laws and regulations favorable to large corporations.” This is one of the best descriptions of the situation I’ve seen, and clearly shows that there is potential for common ground.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Occupy movement has not been one of the conservative blogosphere’s finer moments. Most of the conservative sites I frequent have engaged in infantile name-calling, stereotyping, and painting with a broad brush. The groupthink and piling on remind me of high school cliques.
The Occupy protesters are not all the same. Sure, some of them are spoiled rotten trust fund babies. Some of them are dirty smelly hippies. But they aren’t all like that. There are also small government libertarians in the mix. Others have no particular ideology but know that something is seriously wrong.
As for the ones who espouse Marxism, they’ve been through the educational system which we all know has been thoroughly infested with Marxists. They’ve been indoctrinated with propaganda their whole lives. It makes no sense to blame them for regurgitating what they’ve been taught. How could we expect them to believe otherwise?
Regardless of their political ideology, a lot of them are pissed off, and rightfully so. They’ve been taught all their lives that they must have a college degree in order to amount to anything. So they went heavily into debt in order to get that degree. Now the economy is in the crapper, there are no jobs, and they’re saying, “How in the hell am I supposed to pay off this debt? I can’t do it by flipping burgers. The government bailed out the big banks; where’s my bailout?”
I read Karl Denninger’s Market Ticker blog, and I think he’s struck exactly the right position with regard to the Occupy movement. He believes that they have legitimate grievances, and has been cautiously hopeful that they will arrive at the right solutions. He thinks that the Tea Party movement should have joined forces with them, and tried to educate them with the message that limited government and free market capitalism are most likely to lead to happiness and prosperity. His Ticker Forum does not filter members for political ideology, and has members from throughout the political spectrum. I have read a number of boots-on-the-ground reports from people who were actually involved with the Occupy movement. Some of the commenters were quite intelligent and thoughtful.
And I can absolutely guarantee that some of them will change their political philosophy as they age and mature. I did it myself.
But the Occupiers got nothing but name-calling, ridicule, and blind sputtering hatred from the right. “Occupoopers.” A golden opportunity wasted.
What’s the alternative? Write them off as a hopeless lost cause, and hunt them down and kill them when the civil war starts?
So what you are saying is that Hope and Change is going to be the common ground between those who demand the government give them things they haven’t earned, and those who think that liberty includes the ability to fail? I don’t think that cute (but infantile) sayings like hope and change are going to be able to bridge the huge gap between people who want to live their lives in freedom, and people who want to live as slaves to a government.
The common ground is a desire not to get screwed over by Mr. Immelt and those like him. I don’t think that’s too outlandish.
If this is a means to identify and strip away smarter or less committed members of the “occupy” movement, or an attempt to throw sand in the gears of their memes, then maybe this might be worthwhile; something like getting the “Tier Two” Taliban to lay down their arms and deprive the “Tier One” if support and fighting power.
Of course parallel efforts need to be made to identify and disrupt the “occupy” movement’s sources of funding, and to aggressively counter their memes in the media and academia. Drying up Tier Two support is not enough given the massive amount of support the “occupy” movement has been getting from outside sources.
One other powerful tool needs to be employed; ensuring people properly equate the “occupy” movement with the Democrat Party. All the pro “occupy” statements of Democrat leaders from the President on down need to be circulated in every possible way (even if you have to distribute Samizdat on street corners. Pretending to be an “occupy” sympathizer and passing out leaflets highlighting the President’s pro “occupy” statements should be interesting…)
A few additional thoughts:
My (wholly unscientific) impression is that Tea Partiers tend to be older than Occupiers. If that’s true, then doesn’t the older generation have a responsibility to mentor and guide the younger generation? If we insult them, mock their ignorance, and push them away, then that will leave them to the tender mercies of the Communist organizers, who will welcome them with open arms.
If my thesis is correct, then the Occupy youngsters are the future. Shouldn’t we try to influence them and pass on our knowledge, history, and values to the best of our ability? Otherwise, we’ll wake up one day to find them staffing the death panels when it’s our time to go into the nursing home.
I’m a fan of the blog Neo-neocon. She also writes occasional articles for PJM. Some people do indeed change their fundamental political beliefs as they age and mature. I was quite the little left-wing radical in my 20s. (I got better.)
Back in the 1980s, I once got into a discussion with an older man, who was a Libertarian, about the minimum wage. His position was that it should be abolished, since it cut the lower rungs off the economic ladder for people who were seeking entry-level jobs. I thought it should be increased. He said, “Well, why don’t we raise it to $20/hour and make everybody rich?” I didn’t have an answer for that, and his retort continued to lurk in the back of my mind. It was sort of a mental time bomb that didn’t detonate until ten years later, after I started reading Ayn Rand.
The bottom line is: You never know. A simple offhand remark can reverberate inside another person’s brain, and you’ll go to your grave without ever realizing that it changed that person’s life many years later.
Ayn Rand is brain rot. This older gentleman asked a legitimate question. But instead of taking it seriously, and finding an answer, you rolled over and let someone else answer it for you. sheesh.
This is one of the best articles I’ve ever read. Thank you.
While I agree that nobody is automatically entitled to have an employment relationship, we should have the right to engage in mutual agreements for employment without the huge amount of government interference and taxation that we now have.
It’s government policies that have brought about all of the outsourcing, offshoring, underemployment, and unemployment that have taken place since Reagan left office.
What that leaves out is how the process works to sideline and dissipate, so that even when “the people get off their collective duff and start making use of the non-violent and lawful tools at their disposal” they get nowhere. That, at least, has been my experience here in Australia – and it is why they don’t make the effort any more, so the ones who are left are mostly those not getting a run around and it isn’t visible. In my book, that makes the system broken.
By the way, this article is frequently using “affect” by mistake for “effect”.
I don’t know about Australia, but in the US voter participation is much higher than the official statistics indicate because US voter registration rolls are so polluted. Since Motor Voter everyone who has any contact with government gets registered to vote even if they’re transients – in some places especially if they’re transients. People who travel a lot, who have winter and summer residences, and college students are very commonly registered in more than one location and all too often vote physically in one and by absentee in the other. There are many areas that have more “registered voters” on the rolls than the Census indicates there are voting age adults living in that area.
These inflated registration rolls and especially the inflation that comes from transients not living in the precinct, from the dead, and from fraudulently registered names of people who don’t exist are the mother’s milk of vote fraud, and this is the reason the Evil Party resists all efforts to enforce voter ID, list purging, and restrictions on early and absentee voting.
What I find most disturbing is the commonality between the OWSers and the Paultards. Since the Reagan days there has been an alliance between the Republican Party and the libertarians, albeit a sometime uneasy alliance. The current crop of Paul supporters aren’t even libertarians of any stripe I recognize. Most are some sort of populist with a lot of stupid government school ideas about business and power over government that makes them sound and act like communists – just like the OWSers. Here is an email that a Paultard leader sent to the Paul hordes at our Republican state convention:
“We have 48 hours left until the state convention. We have 3 goals over the next 48 hours:
1. Make sure all of Dr. Paul’s delegates and alternates show up at convention.
2. Educate all of our first timers on how to outmaneuver and confuse the Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney delegates.
3. Elect Ron Paul supporters to fill ALL 24 of Alaska’s national convention delegate slots.
There are 3 keys to success
1. This is a numbers game. If more of Dr. Paul’s supporters turn out than any other candidate’s delegates, we control them. If more of our people show up, we take over the state convention, we change the rules, and we take over the Republican Party. Turnout is key.
2. We vote as a block and never deviate from the voting instructions dispensed by our command center. On every vote, we vote together. We will be informing you via text message on how you need to vote on every vote that comes up. If you have not sent us your cell phone number you will have with you on Saturday, please do so right away. The Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney supporters will be splitting their votes because they will not be communicating with each other like we will be doing. Our internal numbers show that if Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney delegates vote as a block, they have a majority at the state convention. So it is absolutely crucial that we use whatever tactics necessary to promote division and confusion amongst their supporters. We promote confusion and division by:
a. Gaining the trust of our opponents’ supporters and taking advantage of their ignorance so that we can gain control of them and tell them how they have to vote. For example if you are talking to Santorum supporters, tell them you are also pro-life and agree with a lot of what he has to say. Tell them you used to support him but now that he is out of the race you are supporting the only constitutional conservative remaining in the race. Tell them whatever they need to hear so that you gain their trust and establish credibility with them. Once you’ve done that you will control them.
b. Deception and Misinformation – use any means necessary to divide and conquer our opponents.
c. Prolonging the convention through parliamentary maneuvers. The longer the convention goes, the better for us. Our opposition will have a majority at the start of the convention but as the day goes on their delegates will have to leave because their baby sitter is only scheduled to watch the kids until 3pm or because they have dinner reservations, or because they just get too frustrated because the convention is taking so long. We will wait them out. We are disciplined and organized while they are weak willed and lazy. So the longer the convention goes, more and more of them will leave. All of a sudden what started out as a majority for them dwindles away and the balance of power shifts to us. We will use every parliamentary tactic in the book to prolong the meeting. Dr. Paul’s campaign has sent national lawyers who will run circles over the local Alaska lawyers. Our lawyers are ready to sue anyone who tries to get in our way.
After we take over the Alaska convention, we will be able to nominate Dr. Paul from the floor at the Republican National Convention. We will have a floor fight at the national convention and when it’s all said and done, Dr. Paul will be the nominee. Despite what the Republican Party wants us to believe, this election is not about beating Obama. This election is about cleansing the Republican Party. The poor excuse for Americans that support Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney need to be run out of the Republican Party. Once we have cleansed the Republican Party and President Paul is elected, we will end America’s wars of aggression, we will put an end to American imperialism, and we will end the Fed!
DO NOT FORWARD THIS EMAIL. The element of surprise is critical. Our opponents don’t know what is about to hit them so they will not be able to defend themselves against our superior convention organization. By the end of the day Saturday, the Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney elements within the Republican Party will be cleansed from the Republican Party and we will deliver all 24 of Alaska’s national delegates to Dr. Paul!”
That isn’t the language or the tactics of the Right or even of libertarians of any stripe I recognize. That stuff is right out of Trotsky and Alinsky. If the libertarians want to control a political party, they have one already; the Libertarian Party, or maybe the Constitution Party or one of the Natural Law parties is more to their liking. It is evident though that the Paultards want to take over and disrupt the Republican Party and to attempt to nominate a man that hasn’t a prayer in Hell of winning any federal election outside his home district. If I were running the Soros Cabal, I’d be funding these state efforts to take over Republican state parties, and I’m not at all sure that they aren’t.
Here in Alaska with the complicity of Palin’s proxy Joe Miller, they’ve succeeded in taking over as of yesterday. We’ve struggled here ever since Pipeline days to keep some semblance of an alliance between the oil-field anti-tax libertarians, the black helicopter and Alaska Independence libertarians, the Libertarians who know they’re libertarians, the various sociopaths and aginners that Alaska attracts, and the relatively sane people of the Republican Party. That alliance just broke down yesterday and activist Republicans as well as Republican officeholders will NEVER tolerate the Party being run by a bunch of Palin/Miller whackos. Miller demonstrated how little electoral strength they have by being shellacked by Murkowski as a write-in candidate after the Paultards and the SoCons blindsided her in a low turnout Primary. Neither Palin nor Miller could ever win another statewide election here, but by allying with the Paultards and the more radical SoCons, they have themselves a Party. Let’s see how long the party lasts.
As I discussed above, there are a lot of alienated people in this Country and an abysmal lack of knowlege about the reality of the World we live in. The last time we had anything like this in modern times was the 1930s. WWII brought most of the dislocated back into the American fold. We’ll see if anything can bring today’s crop of bums, hobos, and Wobblies back into the fold, and I’m not betting on their siding with “Free Minds and Free Markets.”
The problem I have with the author’s thesis that Occupiers will become tomorrow’s Tea Partiers is that it ignores the actual ideological dimensions that they already align: libertarianism. Before people jump to conclusions: there are two poles to libertarianism. Namely left and right, or rather: social libertarianism and what is usually called (in this country) libertarianism. Chomsky is a social libertarian. Ron Paul is a conservative libertarian. Both believe in autonomy, local control, freedom, preservation of rights, and limitations of government power. Only those who don’t actually listen to Chomsky fail to understand him. The principle difference between social libertarianism and conservative libertarianism is, in my opinion, that the social libertarian is wary of *all* loci of power and all forms of coercion. Hence, you will find that social libertarians are more wary of corporate power than it is of government power. And there is a good reason for this: as a citizen, I can run for office. I can vote. In theory, if not actuality, the government represents the will of the people. It is the people’s institution, but corporate influence on our representatives make it their tool. The second difference is the social libertarian’s acknowledgement that social injustice and poverty exist, are problems that require collective action, are systemic rather than individual, and finally acknowledge that poverty, discrimination, and other forms of injustice: economic liberty doesn’t mean much when you can’t get ahead, when for all your effort you remain a high-interest debt slave, or when your dad gets thrown in jail for selling weed to help pay the bills. In this context, the question becomes: how do we as social libertarians balance our aversion to all forms of coercion with the necessity of solving the problems require collective solutions?
Anyway, for those who are interested, I recommend reading this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
Occupy is a libertarian movement coming both out of the social libertarian movements and the conservative libertarian movements. I see many Ron Paul-ites at those rallies.