Quote of the Day (on Occupy Wall Street)
From Mark Steyn, writing about the Occupy [Fill in the Blank] at NRO:
At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement’s aims: They’re anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life — just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth.
“Anarchists for statism.” It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? It used to be that anarchists were anti-government. But our new, improved anarchists, most of them privileged beneficiaries of an economic system they pretend to loathe, are positively Whitmanian in their embrace of contradiction. (“Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes . . . “)
It is hardly surprising that this fragile compact yields an unusual harvest. “What’s happening in Oakland,” Steyn writes, where the city authorities have actually urged people “to collaborate” with the protestors,
is a logical exercise in class solidarity: The government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class, and the criminal class in order to stick it to what’s left of the beleaguered productive class. It’s a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. Only the criminal class is reasonably upfront about this. The rest — the lifetime legislators, the unions defending lavish and unsustainable benefits, the “scholars” whiling away a somnolent half decade at Complacency U — are obliged to dress it up a little with some hooey about “social justice” and whatnot.
Meanwhile Rudy Giuliani, echoing something I wrote here a couple of weeks ago, notes that Obama and the Democrats “own Occupy Wall Street.” They support it, by word and deed, and it’s likely that it will bring down his administration. Rudy also asked one of the most splendid questions yet asked about Occupy Wall Street: “How about you occupy a job. How about working?” What a novel idea!
I didn’t pull the books out to check, but doesn’t Solzhenitsyn describes the Soviets similarly making common cause with the Russian criminal class in the Gulag Archipelago?
Yes, indeed.
Solzhenitsyn dwelt on Engels’ having referred to criminals as “socially friendly elements,” calling up a Russian folk saying to the effect of, “Tell me who your friend are, I’ll tell you who you are.”
Sounds like I need to read up on this earlier version of “anarcho-tyranny” that paleoconservatives started talking about a couple of decades or so ago. Especially in a disarmed society (which California sort of is, especially in terms of legal carry outside of one’s home or business), the government’s deployment of law enforcement can be used as a powerful coercive tool.
I heard this has happened in D.C. and it’s well established in the U.K., where Tony Blair explicitly said he wanted to wipe out “rural culture” and withdrew most of the police from those regions plus some other politically disfavored ones. With self-defense judicially nullified and gun ownership steadily oppressed the results have been ugly. Thank goodness our policing is done at the local, county and state level for the most part.
The Communist administration and the criminals worked hand in hand in the Gulag.
The thieves were regarded basically as people who had committed petty crimes against property – which was hardly a crime at all to Communists who didn’t believe in private property – and who had done nothing to question or undermine the Communist regime. Therefore, they were considered “socially friendly”. The thieves were seen as the ideal group to keep a lid on the “politicals”, those who were in the Gulag on suspicion of being opposed to the regime (although there was almost never any real evidence of actual opposition on the part of the “political”, only a “confession” elicited via torture).
The thieves were very tough and brutal and operated with impunity; the administration put few if any obstacles in their way. The thieves stole anything of value that they liked from the politicals, including food or warm clothing that were vital to survival, and offered convincing threats to kill anyone who resisted them, just like the Communists themselves. The thieves were like wolves to the politicals sheep. They could and did murder politicals freely without hindrance by the administration of the camps.
That’s exactly what too many of our mayors are doing, by using the Occubaggers as a club to hit the rest of us over the head with.
The single biggest problem is that I would not hire any of them for my business. Many can’t count. Many can’t write. Many can’t pull a comb through their hair. And virtually all of them lack critical thinking skills and knowledge of basic logic. They don’t care that the social compact requires learning of a skill or other personal service that can earn you a living (or even make you rich). Therein lies the problem.
Why should they bother to even try when unemployment and welfare allow subsistence? Why would any of these people bother to take their time (40 hours per week, at least) to go and work when they make only slightly less to just hang out and accept charity in a big pseudo-homeless campout?
It sure is a good thing that we’ve spent the last 40 years as a society removing the “stigma” of foodstamps, welfare, unemployment and the like. Thankfully, the economy is going to last forever to protect us when we’re all on state support.
Oh. Wait.
I have also made the observation that government welfare is one of the fundamental enablers of societal dysfunction. From an economic perspective, the poor are tasked with choosing minimum wage or government welfare. Welfare currently pays more. In some cases a lot more. While they are making a temporal rational decision for their current well being, they also have bought into the fallicy inherent in all so called social justice schemes….
They are never sustainable for any period of time. In the mean time the recipient of this forced redistribution does nothing to improve their lot. Over time they become less and less employable, never develop the skills to become productive and become as classically trained as Pavlow’s dogs to vote Democratic.
Best I can tell, this dysfunction is the current goal of the Democratic party, with Barry leading the charge.
And they lack simple common sense…..just like all demo er I mean Marxocrats.
It seems to me that welfare may be a way to shut down the Occupy sites.
Correct me if I’m wrong but don’t people have to have a fixed address in order to collect welfare? Transients and homeless people don’t qualify for welfare since they don’t have a fixed address. Couldn’t the welfare administrators stop benefits for those who demonstrably live full time in a tent and aren’t looking for work?(Not that the welfare bureaucracy in Obama’s administration is likely to enforce that rule….)
It seems to me that if the OWS types had their welfare cut off – or faced the threat of that – then their occupations would end overnight. Aside from the Red Diaper brats and Trust Fund babies, of course.
What these ‘youths’ have never been taught is that if you want to be successful, never, ever, voluntarily allow yourself to be a “victim”. This means you’ll have to occasionally sacrifice and practice self discipline, but the rewards can be exponential. Sadly, socialism is a movement that is steeped in supposed victim-hood, usually more imagined than real, especially here in the United States.
If the original young OWS protestors had half a brain they would see the need to get out now before the anarchists that have appropriated their movement pull an SDS and throw them to the Oakland wolves that make up the police force. But then If they had half a brain they would have seen through the Leftist nonsense fed to them in college before they spent a $100,000 on it.
I do feel sorry for many of these kids though. They have had two generations of Progressive indoctrination and really can’t be totally blamed for not knowing any better. Conservatives bare at least some of the blame for an education system that has completely failed to give them an actual education. Why have the Progressives been allowed to take this over and what are conservatives going to do about it?
“Why have the Progressives been allowed to take this over and what are conservatives going to do about it?”
Pretty much what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin. Why? What did you have in mind?
Besides your point? Stop reveling in the cops busting the heads of a bunch of misguided (in the most literal sense) kids. I personaly watched the SDS anarchists get kids maimed and eventaually some even killed in the 60′s by using them as cannon fodder to inflame to cops while they hung back. It would be nice to think Conservatives could be smart enough to not fall for that again. The anarchists you can throw to the wolves.
That’s bullship. The movement was not “appropriated”. It is passing through its logical phases of development; the “popular movement” was just phase 1. Thugs are the logical end phase.
The non-violent Occupiers are just the placenta of this monstrosity, necessary to feed and nurture the beast at the beginnings while providing cover for it during its vulnerable early stage. They are tossed aside once the movement has enough influence to begin wielding it.
All Leftist movements follow this pattern, from Tsarist Russia to Weimar, to the 1960′s hippies to all modern Leftist movements. Many start out (relatively) innocuous, but all end in the control of thugs. No “co-opting” necessary.
The one red flag which tells you that this is what you are seeing, is anti-capitalism. No totalitarian movement since 1793 has ever lacked a strong and integral anti-capitalist ideological base.
Anarchism has always been an objectively statist, even totalitarian movement.
This is so for at least 3 reasons:
* anarchists always induce a statist backlash;
* in the unlikely event that they prevail against this backlash and wipe out the State, an even more oppressive State would rise in its place, without constitutional constraints;
* self-defined anarchists are against private property, which necessarily means that all property is held by a totalitarian “collective” which we might as well call “the State”.
But I suggest that PJM readers and writers should go easy on the Occupiers: after all, they occupy blue cities, and are likely to be more of a problem for Democrats and their wealthy supporters (Wall Street, corporate lawyers, etc.) than for Republicans, the Tea Party, and the middle class.
PS: maybe I should explain what I mean when I say “go easy on the Occupiers”.
What I mean is:
a. Ridicule them, but do not demonize them: do not make them look more important than they are.
b. Do not, by any means, defend Wall Street and corporate fat cats from their attacks: by all means defend Jews in general, the Koch brothers, and capitalism in general; but not the fat cats who support the Democrats.
But as I said this is just a personal opinion.
“after all, they occupy blue cities, and are likely to be more of a problem for Democrats and their wealthy supporters”
Therein is the “organizers” greatest problem; they need their Kent State Moment and that is hard to get in a Blue city run by women and castrati and where the police union is helping fund the OWS. I’m sure the hardcore lefties spend their nights doing whatever lefties do that serves for praying that some tubby bearded guy with a Glock and an AK will show up and gun down a bunch of kids.
If they don’t get one naturally, e.g., the cops as individuals just get sick of the abuse, they’ll astroturf one. They need people to die for the cameras and they’ll get it one way or another.
The Qing rulers supported the Boxer rebellion for much the same reasons.
We know how that turned out.
But I do agree that this is an overwhelmingly “Blue State – Blue City” problem, and that’s who it is hurt, objectively thru property damage and politically by exposing both OWS and their leftist gov’t supporters and enablers for what they are. Speaking as someone who lives near Oakland and worked there for years, the sooner those Cities fail, and the uglier and more vicious it is, the better it will be in the long run.
We need to keep spreading the Word — this is what Leftists are really like.
The occupiers see themselves as populist revolutionary cake eaters when in fact they are nothing more than jesters from King Louis’ court… and the working class are not amused.
There is a problem : our society is not capitalist enough. We the owners have no power any more to sack or penalise incompetant CEOs and bankers.
If they were proprietors and as incompetant they would be penniless bankrupts – not in Wall Street but in Queer Street – in Querstrasse the street pointing away from Wall Street.
But we do have power, we’re just too lazy and disorganized to use it. Those CEO’s and bankers don’t own the companies they control. They control them because we, the stockholders, don’t hold their noses to grindstone. The vast bulk of the stock is owned by individuals and, especially, trust funds, pension plans, and mutual funds. There are ways to challenge management- shareholder suits, demands for audits, electing different directors, challenging salaries.
Costs money, effort and education. Have you heard of any efforts in that direction lately? Hell, we’ll be lucky if over 50% of us vote in the next election, and how many of those votes will be made with careful consideration of the facts and the positions, knowledge and qualifications of the candidates? Consider ’08.
I don’t mean to suggest there is no hope, but if we want to get this done without a civilization bruising battle, or worse, we have got to begin to use our system more than our blogs.
The modern “anarchist” movement isn’t, actually, anarchist. They’re the left’s thugs, their brown shirts. To quote myself:
“The modern anarchists are just the far-left’s muscle. Look at when and where they show up, who they march with and for, and how carefully the press ignores them and their acts.”
I still remember my own first hand look at anarchists in action 20-odd years ago. The anarchists had gathered to protest the Vincennes incident when an American ship had inadvertently shot down an Iranian commercial jet, mistaking it for an Iranian warplane. The anarchists, of course, insisted that the Vincennes had deliberately shot down the Iranian airliner because the military was a bunch of psycopathic cold blooded murderers….
A small group marched down the side street behind the building where I worked at lunch time and I just happened to be out running an errand. One small guy was out in front a bit and, at a moment that he seemed to judge appropriate, he turned and looked at the guy in the middle of the front row for permission to do something that had clearly been planned in advance. As soon as he got the signal he wanted, the little guy started yelling and chanting and swinging his sign around, then jumped onto a car parked at a meter and started jumping up and down on it. The police saw him and started toward him and he tore off in the opposite direction. I don’t know if they caught up with him because the protester and the cop were soon out of sight. But I was still there a few minutes later when the car-owner came back and found his roof trashed by the protester. He was far enough away that I couldn’t hear him but his body language made it clear he was upset, as any reasonable person would be. I thought it was ironic that he was black since I’m sure the anarchists, if asked, would insist on their solidarity with the poor oppressed blacks, at least in general.
That’s all I needed to see of the Anarchist to dismiss them. Their protest made no sense since the Vincennes had surely not deliberately shot down that airliner and the damage done to that guy’s car served no one except their own need for attention.
I expect no better from the OWS types.
At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical.
Anarchists have always been tools of the left. http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/
Cheers,
OV
I don’t understand the nostalgia for the radicalism on the part of people who are old enough to know better. Perhaps the 60s was the last time they got laid.
Less freedom, more handouts– now! Only selfish, racist RethugliKKKans work for anything! (Pretty much, that’s it.)
Is Obama’s “democratic” Administration with his leftist troops perverson of jaw-jaw instead of war-war preparing the end-game of their strategy towards the USA? To fire up, literally, their within this past half century cold civil war by jaw-jaw into a hot civil war-war?
The evidence of the criminality with apparent impunity of this Executive, his tsars and lackeys in Congress/Senate/Court points to their complete disregard of lawful limits to their actions? Ample evidence over the months and years of their tenure shows they cannot be trusted with the safety of the USA. So blatant is their disregard to the limits on their actions the major response among informed observers is mouth agape dismay.
We have seen them send in their brown-shirts, on the streets and the glamourous (and one or two less than glamourous)subspecies in the institutional media and Hollywood when they do not get knee-jerk obedience to their demands.
We have seen them attack without limits to their slanders and libels the brave citizens who demand they answer for their depredations to the US legal system to which they are bound by oath.
We have seen their hammer and tongs approach to anyone with any public forum who requires them to answer FAQs. Some of which directly about the lawfulness of this administration. And these only the things we are informed they have done.
Their rhetoric increasingly pits citizen against citizen along racial and class lines. These are not actions of well-meaning government representatives in any circumstances. And while doing all this, Obama smirks and smiles and charms.
Where are the Legislature and Judiciary in their duties to stop the overstepping of limited powers delegated in the Constitution? As two thirds of the tri-partite co-equal branches of the federal government they seem to be no more than “present”. Is it possible they take Neville Chamberlain as model for their public responsibilities?
At what cost to the structures of the American system of government, society, attitude about themselves as American, and the world?
It is becoming more and more obvious that Obama is completely unaware of the freight train headed his way on November 2012. He has embraced the OWS crowd. All of the marxist, communist, socialist chants, the ‘abolish capitalism’ and ‘kill the rich’ slogans are music to his ears. He actually thinks we would al be down there in Zuccotti park if we could. His is totally unaware that we see the OWS’s alliances with the American Nazis Party, Communist Party USA, MoveOn.org, SEIU, Venezuela’s Chavez, Cuba, the KGB-created WWP, et al and when we see Obama embracing it all we recoil in horror.
Mark my words, one year from now Obama will wonder what the hell happened.
As the wise man once said…”Don’t get cocky, kid.” A few things to remember:
(1) Obama’s planning on spending as much as a billion dollars on his reelection campaign. Government Sachs may not be counted on to pony up this time around, but you know that between Soros, the laundered foundation money and the foreign contributions via untraceable preloaded debit cards, funding’s not going to be an issue for The One.
(2) Rest assured that the media’s still VERY much in Obama’s back pocket. There’s not even the faintest pretense of objective and fair coverage anymore (see Cain, Herman) – they regard themselves as being on a sacred mission to “change the world” by getting this empty-suited Marxist reelected.
(3) Even the “unemployment rate” may not help much over the next few months. It’s been in the news the last day or so that more and more people are exhausting their unemployment benefits – IIRC, close to one-third of jobless folks have now run through their eligibility. Problem is…this means that these folks magically fall out of the government’s (phony) unemployment-rate stats. By this time next year, real unemployment may be at 20% or higher, but Obama’s media army will be crowing over an official “8% and declining” number.
Sort of describes Bill Mahar. He goes on and on about the wonders of socialism, but the moment he hears the word “marijuana” he stands on the libertarian square.
As long as it’s mischief, indolence, hedonism and perversion, they want the government out of their lives. But people who want the government out of their lives for the purposes of industriousness and civilized ambition? Well, they’re the damned 1% and we must kill and devour them!
And what these anarchists and communists on Wall Street never seem to answer is where all this money to support them is going to come from? Even if you took away all the money from all the “rich” people (and that definition of “rich” seems to keep changing day by day), it still would not make a dent in our national debt and national budget deficit. So first they came for the heads of the rich, then they came for the middle class, then they’ll come for the bureaucrats, and then they’ll come for you. It always works out that way in communist societies. And I just find it ironic that we spent about 45 years fighting the Cold War to defeat communism, and now we have people in this country who want it to make a comeback. Ronald Reagan is probably turning over in his grave.
OWS is toast. They blew it royally, and lost much of the support they had in the beginning. The nightmare scenarios in New York and Oakland have convinced the public that they are an economic and cultural liability. NYC is still forced to give the police millions in overtime pay just to keep an eye on the protesters and their parasites, and their disruptive behavior has hurt both business and tourism. In Oakland, a day of peaceful demonstration degenerated into a day of Lets Burn Down The City Again. Made a very bad impression on all the folks watching on CNN and FOX. That’s why dozens of cities across the country have declared OWS persona non grata, and refuse to tolerate their presence. Because they got this political activism thing all wrong. They blew a once-in-a-lifetime chance to legitimately confront the poisonous corruption in our political and economic system. Now it’s only a matter of time before the agent provocateurs kick off the much-anticipated New York riots that will seal the movement’s fate.
What Jessica said. OWS is done. The only question that remains is how many liberal politicians careers it is going to drag down with it.
Personally, I hope this completely destroys the Democratic Party for the next 50 years…but never underestimate the stupidity of Republicans….
Unfortunately I don’t think this will hurt the Quislingcrats much at all. Glenn Reynolds is already on this; once OWS’s antics start to hurt the ‘Rats in the opinion polls, the DNC’s media army will slap a total embargo on all “coverage” of OWS. Remember all the detailed, unbiased and informative stories about Climategate in the American MSM? Didn’t think so. Plus, OWS will have to worry about Soros putting the checkbook away…
The MSM, aka “Lame Street Media” doesn’t count anymore. They’re obsolete, they just don’t know it yet. Most of America get their news from the internet now, where there are no gatekeepers. Twenty years ago the Old Media said, “If we don’t report, it didn’t happen.” That doesn’t work anymore.
Brother Roger:
Have you, in fact, some religious objection to the use of “that” as a conjunction? I wonder. I do indeed. It serves as a useful mortar between the individual bricks of our discourse. Try it. You’ll like it.
Now to the substance. I note that, here in the buckle of the rust belt, the mayor of Detroit has hit upon a new slogan to attract urban pioneers—-Occupy Detroit. Please.
But, really Brother Roger. I agree that a pack of drum circling ners do not a revolution make. But, can you seriously refer to that pack of meretricious, disingenuous, thieves at Goldman, MF, Citibank and others as “the beleaguered productive class?” Have you been drinking with young Sebastian again? Be honest, You must have read Ayn Rand at so tender and impressionable an age that it warped your young mind permanently. That passel of rougues produced naught but misery and decline. Atlas shrugged? I think not. Atlas shagged all of us. It’s time for them to bring coffee to the Aryan Brotherhood at Pelican Bay.
I believe journalists, particularly paper journalists, are encouraged to avoid using “that” as a conjunction because it is usually unneeded and takes up column space.
“Goldman, MF, Citibank and others ” don’t make up the entire productive class. Anyone with a job is a member of the productive class.
The problem with the OWS crowd is that, though their numbers are few, they are representative of the unproductive class, which is growing apace. About 47% of the population currently pays no taxes. This doesn’t mean they’re all jobless, but they, along with every government employee at all levels of government, plus a large number of easily duped people in the productive class, can easily perpetuate the Big Govermment welfare state.
Patrick, when you were young and impressionable didn’t your mama ever tell you, “I don’t care what anybody else does, I only care what you do, and you are to do what is right!” The people trying to regulate the banks and traders out of business are the same people (B. Frank and C. Dodd, Fannie and Freddie with help form ACORN) who caused this mess to begin with by thinking it was their right to deny ownership of anything to anyone, except them of course!
The “occupiers” are simply “taking up space,” creating chaos, making life more difficult and dangerous for those who work anywhere near them, fostering disease, and otherwise being good little dupes for the communists, socialists, nazis, and various government officials who sanction them.
Yes, it’s coming, the time is coming. If unemployment benefits run out, if the real99% get fed up with OWS and the Dem’ Party, we will see the fulfillment of the words of St Paul and Vladi ir Ilyich: “Who will not work, shall not eat”. For an awful lot of people out there, strict regime is in their future–in the Gulag.
Can someone please explain to me why these people are allowed to go on with their open-ended occupation of public spaces, without the authorities calling time? Everyone has the right to protest and demonstrate; to stop this pathetic rabble from doing so would be an outrage, and, up to a point, unconstitutional. But surely there is a limit? How long are they entitled to get in the way, foul up public spaces, and generally make a nuisance of themselves? The answer seems to be that in the US, from what I can gather, some of the civic authorities are too timorous to stop the “occupations”, and the rest positively encourage them.
It’s one thing for private enterprise to suck up these self-indulgent idiots, mendaciously and in the hope of gain; it’s quite another for civic authorities to do so.
In Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, the “occupists” were given weeks to make their point in busy public spaces. Their dirty campsites were tolerated, their right to protest respected. When the mayor of Sydney foolishly visited them and made vaguely sympathetic noises, they responded with an absurd series of demands – free wifi, free food and – get this – free car parking in the city so they could come and go as they pleased! Eventually, with businesses being seriously affected and the public inconvenienced, they were first warned and then dispersed by police, with scuffles and arrests but nothing more serious – and the wider public couldn’t care less.
Indulging these brutes emboldens them, and leads only to what happened in Oakland.
Tell them to Occupy Planned Parenthood instead. http://www.occupyplannedparenthood.com
I would be impressed with the ‘Occupy ?’ movement if the people made an effort to alleviate income disparity by working with Habitat for Humanity, or working (picking fruit?) and donating some of the proceeds to people struggling to pay a mortgage. Otherwise, color me skeptical…
OWS is an extension of Occupy Congress by the Democrats. The DNA is no different.
Many decades ago the economist Joseph Schumpeter, explained all this in terms not very optimistic. He foretold that capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction. Capitalism provides the prosperity and excess capital to support the non-productive elements of society, on the fringes. Academics, actors, public employees, etc., any people not capable of productive enterprise, are automatically shunted into non-productive roles, where they relentlessly condemn the capitalistic society that supports them. The productive people lose confidence in themselves. Their own materialistic way of life seems so tawdry compared to the idealistic, lofty, protests of their critics, who disdain the entrepreneurial class. It is interesting watching this drama play itself out.