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!