If you are one who still thinks…even after all of the stories of criminal behavior and general indecency that have been revealed to us...that the Occupy movement is replete with a strong sense of nobility and coherent, righteous indignation, I have, quite literally, news for you.
Courtesy of the November 8, 2011 edition of the Boston Herald, we learn that Occupy Boston has been encouraging participants to avail themselves of services meant for the homeless. According to the article (Occupiers Poach Homeless Services), Andy Claude, who works in “logistics” for Occupy Boston, said, “It’s for anybody; they’ve opened it to anyone who is in need.” The “it” to which he is referring here is St. Francis House, a long-standing, Boston-area homeless shelter that receives its funding from private donations as well as from the state and federal governments.
This behavior, in part, clarifies what the Occupy movement is largely about: taking from others…any others…to give to oneself. The mentality is as clear and succinct as it is frightening: if you have something, and I do not have it, I am entitled to take it from you. If this movement was ever about any sort of high-minded ideals regarding corporate excess, it is that no longer, and now seems to be a simple expression of the same sorts of inclinations that characterize petulant children: to get whatever they want, whenever they want it, and if that does not happen, to throw fits…and, in some cases, extremely violent ones.
In the very, very beginning of all of this, if someone perhaps thought that the Occupy movement was going to be an intelligent, peaceful-but-still-vocal expression of populism against some of society's grossest economic inequities, I can at least sort of understand that person according a measure of sympathy to the movement; there is plenty that has taken place within corporate America in recent years that has been nothing short of disgusting, and I have been a strong supporter of those that are revolted by the excesses that seem to have profited only the richest in society while so many rank-and-file Americans have lost homes and seen their jobs shipped overseas to Third World dumps, all in the name of bolstering shareholder value. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with shareholders making money, and, in fact, when they do, it can benefit us all, but when shareholder value becomes such a priority that it comes at the acute expense of organic American industry and jobs, then there is plenty wrong with it.
However, now that it is abundantly clear to any clear-thinking person that the Occupiers are just people who feel entitled to redistribute to themselves anything that anyone else...including a homeless person, for God's sake...has, then any person who still signs on to the "movement" can be justifiably characterized as either dumb as a box of rocks, or an outright enemy of a society that chooses to exist right-side up, and either way, the rest of us can happily do without you.
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Bob Yetman, Editor-at-Large at Christian Money.com (www.christianmoney.com), is an author of a variety of materials on personal finance and investing, as well as on topics of fitness and self defense, to include the book Investor's Passport to Hedge Fund Profits (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) and the unarmed combat training DVD Thunderstrikes - How to Develop One Shot, One Kill Striking Power(Paladin Press).
Where do we begin?
Let’s start with the concept of “occupation.”
If you decided you wanted to protest me, you can do it; you can park your tail on a public street in front of my house, and you may protest. You can hold up signs, shout bad words, all that sort of thing. Of course, there are laws that will prevent you from interfering with the rights of my neighbors to go about their own business peaceably, but as long as you are complying with those, you should be fine.
You may not, however, occupy my property. You may not destroy my property. I am free to occupy my own property, and even destroy it, if I want to, because it is mine. You, however, may do no such thing. If you try, you will be arrested, and if that doesn’t work out sufficiently, I will get to shoot you. That is as it should be.
I’m a big believer in civil disobedience, actually, and think that true libertarians make all too infrequent use of it. However…and this is a salient point…civil disobedience is, by definition, utilized to combat governments, which, as Thoreau believed, are generally more destructive to the citizenry, at any given time, than they are constructive or otherwise useful (to the people). Civil disobedience is not about, and has never been about, “occupying” the property of other private citizens, including corporations, in a way that suggests the occupiers are free to then claim it as their own and do with it whatever they please.
Beyond the silly notion that “occupation” is somehow justified is the intellectually dishonest nature of the protests, which is particularly evident in events like the shutdown of the container port in Oakland, the nations’ fifth-busiest. Those responsible didn’t apparently care that the port employs, among others, dockworkers and truckers…the very sorts of people whose economic interests they’re theoretically supporting.
Although I am a bit of a populist, which can sometimes see me at odds with my dyed-in-the-wool conservative friends, I never signed on to this “movement;” it was clear from the start that this wasn’t about useful, intelligent, right-headed anger, but more about a communal interest in causing trouble, smelling bad, and expanding the clearly-leftist direction of our current government. How was it clear? First and foremost, by looking at what is the target of the protestors’ wrath, or, more accurately, what isn’t: Corporate America is, while Government America is not. The government…which has largely been the source of the economic inequities in this country, as well as a principal facilitator of the massive housing collapse through social engineering that is at the core of this giant boil…doesn’t seem to be catching any flak, now that its fearless leader is, not-so-coincidentally, the community organizer-in-chief. Any movement for social justice that does not have the government at the top of its “Most Wanted” list is disingenuous, at best.
The wishful embrace of overt communist ideology aside, all this really looks like is a bunch of 40-year-old adolescents, who never really applied themselves to anything terribly meaningful and genuinely helpful and/or productive, wanting to hang out and break things. No reasonable person has any problem with sincere, lawful protest, but this doesn’t resemble that very much.
Even The Beatles, who became counterculture symbols, both individually as well as collectively, got the message that destruction for the sake of itself or, worse, for radical leftist ideals, goes nowhere - note perhaps the most famous line from the song Revolution: “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.” Supposedly, John Lennon later said he regretted including it, presumably because he wanted to mend some fences with the far left who objected to the anti-radical tenor of the song, but nevertheless, it was there. It’s worth noting, too, that Lennon, with an estimated net worth of $150 million at the time of his death, clearly had a lot more in common with today’s 1% than with the 99% who would surely like to claim him.
I guess the benefit of the violence about which we’re now hearing so much, and which even the so-called mainstream media can’t suppress any longer, is that those who were actually duped into thinking that this was somehow something more honorable than it is are finally getting it. Poll numbers in support of the Occupy movement are steadily dropping as more and more Americans who, while still dissatisfied with much of what they see around them, prefer living in a structured, lawful, society that allows for the reward of hard work and respect of general decency, and are fast deciding that too many of the Occupiers are acting in obvious contravention of those ideals.
As it has become apparent that the core of this movement is about replacing capitalism with communism, the rabble are finding that when you go off and try to do that, you become the 1%...the 1% the rest of us are perfectly happy to see disappear from the face of the planet.
Agree or disagree; please register your comments below.
Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/robertyetman.
Follow me on Christian Chirp at www.christianchirp.com/robertyetman.
Bob Yetman, Editor-at-Large at Christian Money.com (www.christianmoney.com), is an author of a variety of materials on personal finance and investing, as well as on topics of fitness and self defense, to include the book Investor's Passport to Hedge Fund Profits (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) and the unarmed combat training DVD Thunderstrikes - How to Develop One Shot, One Kill Striking Power (Paladin Press).