What We Evil Capitalists Actually Believe

Daniel Hannan (who is always delightful to read for his wit, clarity, incisiveness and unapologetic conservative convictions) has a very helpful post up called: "Memo to the Occupy protesters: here are ten things we evil capitalists really think."

I think he is right that the Occupy Wall Street folks really don't understand the capitalist position; heaven knows they caricature us continuously. So, in the interest of actual communication and dialogue, let me list his ten points. I'll just give the first sentence of each paragraph; if you are intrigued you can go to his post here and read the whole paragraph or two he gives on each point.

If the Left-leaning folks could ever bracket their massive self-righteousness and self-assurance long enough actually to listen to what we conservatives have to say, they might find fewer straw men to knock down and more moral complexity than can fit into slogans designed to be chanted by mobs. I know, it is probably a vain hope . . . sigh. But in case any open-minded people read this post, here goes:

1. Free-marketeers resent the bank bailouts.
2. What has happened since 2008 is not capitalism.
3. If you want the rich to pay more, create a flatter and simpler tax system.
4. Those of us who believe in small government are not motivated by the desire to make the rich richer.
5. We are not against equality. . . Our objection is not that egalitarianism is undesirable in itself, but that the policies required to enforce in involve a disproportionate loss of liberty and prosperity.
6. Nor, by the way, does state intervention seem to be an effective way to promote equality.
8. Capitalism, with all its imperfections, is the fairest scheme yet tried.
9. Talking of fairness, let’s remember that the word doesn’t belong to any faction.
10. Let’s not forget ethics, either. There is virtue in deciding to do the right thing, but there is no virtue in being compelled.

Read elaborations of each point here.

My guess is that most of those led astray by Marxist Utopianism either do not understand capitalism or do not wish to understand it. But simple-mindedness is no virtue in matters of morality. There is a vast difference between child-like faith, (which Jesus commended) and a childish refusal to apply one's mind to difficult problems out of a sense that solutions to the most complex of life's problems ought to be simple and obvious.

One last point: it cannot be stressed enough that the defense of capitalism is, for me and most conservatives, based in moral principles rather than a counsel of despair that simply gives up and says that the world is bad and nothing can be done to improve it. For Hannan, and most of us conservatives, the issue is which economic system leads to the most wealth for the most people, the most social equality, the most opportunities for the poor and the best standard of living for the most people. History shows that capitalism is best according to these deeply moral measures by a wide margin.

Conservatives believe that it works because it accommodates itself best to actual reality. As in experimental science, when predicted results occur as a result of an experiment that constitutes confirmation of the theory. Capitalism can be thought of as an economic theory that has be tested in the laboratory of history with excellent confirming results compared to other theories. So it works best because it is truer than the rival theories. That is what conservatives claim regardless of how viciously the propagandists impugn our motives.

Occupy Wall Street as an Heretical, Medieval Cult

If you check out the coverage of Occupy Wall Street from conservative sites like Big Government, America Spectator and The Weekly Standard, instead of relying strictly on the mainstream media, it becomes clear that there are three main groups of people involved in the uprising:

1. There are relatively ordinary people, especially idealistic young people, with cell phones, high student debts and often no job. They have been taught in university that capitalism is evil, socialism is benign and communism badly misunderstood. They don't have a clue what really is wrong or how to fix it. They are the focus of the mainstream media, however, because they seem like a group that a large number of independent voters can relate to.

2. There are street people, petty criminals, mentally disturbed people and sexual predators mixed in among the others and causing havoc. Here is a "rap-sheet" for OWS, a compilation of stories about various crimes committed or alledged against people involved in the anti-capitalist movement. No wonder the latest poll shows the growing unpopularity of OWS; its approval rating is not down to 30%.

3. There are ideologically aware, left-wing agitators who range from the Communist Party, the Democratic Socialists of America to union organizers, environmentalists, and anarchists. Here are their signs from the Occupy Oakland general strike march. See here, for example, and here, or just google "Democratic Socialists of America + Occupy". They are using the naive "dupes" for their own ideological purposes.

Absolutely nothing new has been said by the OWS movement. It is important to realize that it is just rehashing the same old anti-capitalist rhetoric the kids learned in university classes from tenured, aging hippies like Bill Ayers who have been predicting the imminent collapse of capitalism - any day now - since the 1840s.

If anything coherent is behind OWS it is Marxism in its most day-dreamy, extreme, religious form. Marxism is actually nothing new in Western culture. It is another expression of millenarian cults that have risen up periodically with a radical message that society is corrupt and the end of the present order is near since the 13th century.

Norman Cohn's book, The Pursuit of the Millennium, is not about Marxism. But it is essential for understanding Marxism. (I scored a copy of the 3rd edition for $4.00 at the Trinity College booksale a couple of weeks ago, thus enabling me to remove it from my Amazon cart.) Originally published in 1957, this remains the only book on its subject: "the tradition of revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism, as it developed in western Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries." (p. 9)

Chapter 6 deals with "The Emperor Frederick as Messiah" and discusses the emergence of the heretical thought of Joachim of Fiore, which was a forerunner of Marxism. Cohn writes:

In the course of the 13th century yet another kind of eschatology appeared alongside the eschatologies derived from the Book of Revelation and the Sibylline Oracles - alongside them at first, but soon blending with them. The inventor of the new prophetic system, which was to be the most influential one known to Europe until the appearance of Marxism, was Joachim of Fiore (1145-1202). Ater many years spent in brooding over the Scriptures this Caliabrian abbot and hermit received, some time between 1190 and 1195, an inspiration which seemed to reveal in them a concealed meaning of unique predictive value. (p. 108)

Joachim forecast a new interpretation of history as consisting of three stages: the age of the Father (or Law), the age of the Son (or Gospel), and the age of the Spirit, which "would be to its predecessors as broad daylight compared with starlight and dawn, as high summer compared with winter and spring." (p. 108) Whereas the first age had been the age of fear and the second of faith and filial submission, the third would be an age of joy and freedom when all men would know God directly. The world would be a vast monastery in which all men would contemplate God mystically and ecstatically.

Cohn points out that the long-term influence of Joachim's vision can be traced right down to the present day, most clearly in the 19th century 'philosophies of history' of Schelling, Ficte, Lessing and Hegel, as well as in Auguste Compte's ideas and the Marxist scheme of primitive communism, class society and a final communism "which is to be the realm of freedom and in which the state will have withered away." (p. 109) Cohn also points out that the idea of the "Third Reich," first coined in 1923 by publicist Moeller van den Bruck, would not have had the emotional resonance it had in the European mind if it had not been for this "phantasy of a third and most glorious dispensation" which had "entered into the common stock of European social mythology." (p. 109)

Marxism stands in a long tradition of millenarian movements that range from the "children's crusades" to the Taborites to Thomas Muntzer and the millenarian cults in the English revolution like the Levelers and the Diggers. (I'm leaving out far more than I'm mentioning.) As such, Marxism is, for all its scientific pretensions, essentially an irrational, mystical, millenarian cult. It is eschatology for those who have lost their orthodox, Christian faith.

Occupy Wall Street is thus a dream come true for historians and anthropologists who want to study an actual contemporary example of one of these social movements in the form of living, breathing, 'true believers' rather than in dusty historical records.

In the 13th century the mainstream Church followed Thomas Aquinas in his orientation to Augustinian orthodoxy and rational (Aristotelian) science rather than Joachim and his mystical anarchism. The Church has been on the side of science and reason ever since, whereas Marxism stands in the tradition of the irrational, mystical, cultic, free-spirited, perfectionism and millenarianism stretching back centuries.

In the final analysis, it is not possible to reason with those who believe they have received a Divine revelation not accessible to most ordinary people and who believe they are on the cutting edge of history, which is about to be transformed into the kingdom of God. Like the Iranian mullahs and Adolf Hitler, the Marxists believe that no act of violence is unthinkable when the result is going to be the kingdom of God on earth!

Christianity, on the other hand, teaches that Divine revelation coheres with natural law and reason and therefore can be debated, discussed and understood by all who wish to engage in study and dialogue. Marxism, by way of contrast, like all heretical cults, requires the sacrifice of the intellect, the acceptance of secret revelation and irrational belief in the goodness of man, the imminence of the millennium and the need for purifying, revolutionary violence as the doorway to utopia.

It is little wonder that people who believe such things had to be suppressed by force by the public authorities in previous centuries and it is likely that free and rational societies will need to defend themselves against the forces of lawless disorder again in the future. We would do well to heed the warning from the OWS Oakland sign: "We came unarmed, this time."

Will a culture sunk deep into postmodern relativism, sexual promiscuity, hedonistic materialism, uncontrolled public debt and declining educational standards be able to muster the strength to resist the anarchistic cultists? And will it be able to do so without falling into tyrannical dictatorship? Do we have it in us to overcome another Nazi death cult without losing democracy?

These are the questions that should preoccupy all of us today.

The Evangelical Left's Nostalgia Trip Down Wall Street

Mark Tooley, who is always worth reading, has some thoughts on the embrace of Occupy Wall Street by left-wing leaders. (Why, by the way, are those leaders always jumping on secular bandwagons to prove their relevance?)

In an article entitled, "Religion Flocks to Wall Street" he writes:

Because they are Americans, the Wall Street Occupiers are suffused with messianic purpose, as are nearly all our nation's American political crusades. But the often raggedy Occupiers themselves do not seem specifically oriented towards organized religion.

Not to worry. Religious Leftists of all sorts have rallied to the Occupiers' bedraggled banners. Guided by the Social Gospel's emphasis on social justice over theological details, these religionists discern God's Kingdom among the squatters' tents and sleeping bags. One group of clergy visited while carrying a mock golden idol shaped like the dreaded Wall Street Bull, the very incarnation of greed.

Praising the Occupation is a gamble for liberal evangelicals, who have tried so hard to appear centrist in recent years, anxious to softly persuade suburban churchgoers to abandon their conservative voting habits. Oldline Protestant elites, along with left-wing Catholic activists, of course welcome the Occupation as a long overdue 1960s revival.

After reviewing the police lineup of the usual suspects from the Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ and Methodist church hierarchies, Tooley comes back to left-wing Evangelicals.

This call towards utopia, enshrouded simultaneously in grievance, entitlement, idealism, and youthful naiveté, has understandably seduced old-style street activists like Jim Wallis of Sojourners, or even Brian McLaren of the emergent church movement. "When they stand with the poor, they stand with Jesus," Wallis has pronounced, even before himself visiting the Occupation, which doubtless only amplified his excited nostalgia. "'The occupation of God has begun'" might inspire the same fear and hope among people today as 'the Kingdom of God is at hand' inspired in the first century," gushed McLaren, after attending his own local Occupation protest.

Indeed, I'll bet Jim Wallis is re-living his old Students for a Democratic Society days as he basks in the glow of the nostalgia. Is Brian McLaren even aware of how much he sounds like old-fashioned, early 20th century social gospelers when he compares the latest social trend to the kingdom of God?

I sometimes wonder if they grasp just how out of date they really are; the leftists who operated in the pre-World War I era and pre-Soviet era could be excused to some extent because they had never seen the fruits of Communism (although they should have been warned by the orgy of violence that was the French Revolution). But to gush about "equality" and "building the kingdom" with secular protest movements today is to have one's feet embedded in the cement of nostalgia while the parade passes by.

Representing a newer generation of Evangelical liberal is Shane Claiborne, a winsome young white man who typically sports dreadlocks, a bandana, and a rustic smock, while proclaiming good news for the poor to attentive middle class evangelical students. "In a world where 1 percent of the world owns half the world's stuff, we are beginning to realize that there is enough for everyone's need, but there is not enough for everyone's greed," he recently insisted. "Lots of folks are beginning to say, 'Maybe God has a different dream for the world than the Wall Street dream.'"

The dubious statistic about the wicked "1 percent" aside, Claiborne speaks some truth. But he and the other religious enthusiasts for Wall Street aren't calling for individuals to shed their wealth for God's Kingdom. Of course, they primarily want an all powerful state to seize and redistribute wealth according to some imagined just formula, after which the lion will lie peaceably with the lamb. It's a utopian dream, not based on the Gospels, always monstrous when attempted, and premised more on resentment than godly generosity. But it's a message that will always have an audience in a covetous world.

What strikes me is the insight Tooley offers in the last sentence. Is it not transparently obvious that the whole appeal of the OWS protests to the ordinary, fuzzy-minded, college kids with iPhones and $100K of student load debt is nothing other than plain covetousness? The Gospel is about generosity; socialism is about forced redistribution. Why is this? Because the Gospel changes lives while socialism fiddles around with social structures. Socialism cannot make people generous; only the indwelling Spirit of God can do that.

But really, religious leaders promoting covetousness??? I suppose it is no stranger than religious leaders promoting fornication . . . or divorce . . . or murdering pre-born babies. Breaking the Ten Commandments seems to be just what the Religious Left does.

So How is That Lovely Anarchy Working Out in NYC?

New York Magazine has an interesting article entitled: "The Organizers vs. the Organized in Zuchotti Park" in which the "order" that is supposed to arise organically from the bottom up is not exactly producing a society of love, harmony, equality and peace. I read Orwell's Animal Farm a month or so ago and it occurs to me that it is no wonder that book has been so widely read. Life resembles it. [my comments in square brackets and in red]

All occupiers are equal — but some occupiers are more equal than others. [Remember? "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others?"] In wind-whipped Zuccotti Park, new divisions and hierarchies are threatening to upend Occupy Wall Street and its leaderless collective. [divisions and, gasp!, hierarchies arising spontaneously in the midst of people who deny that hierarchies are necessary - say it ain't so, Uncle Karl!]

As the protest has grown, some of the occupiers have spontaneously taken charge on projects large and small. But many of the people in Zuccotti Park aren't taking direction well, [you don't say!] leading to a tense Thursday of political disagreements, the occasional shouting match, and at least one fistfight.

It began, as it so often does, with a drum circle. The ten-hour groove marathons weren’t sitting well with the neighborhood’s community board, the ironically situated High School of Economics and Finance that sits on the corner of Zuccotti Park, or many of the sleep-deprived protesters.

“[The high school] couldn’t teach,” explained Josh Nelson, a 27-year-old occupier from Nebraska. “And we’ve had issues with the drummers too. They drum incessantly all day, and really loud.” Facilitators spearheaded a General Assembly proposal to limit the drumming to two hours a day. “The drumming is a major issue which has the potential to get us kicked out," said Lauren Digion, a leader on the sanitation working group.

But the drums were fun. They brought in publicity and money. Many non-facilitators were infuriated by the decision and claimed that it had been forced through the General Assembly. [Forced? You mean like unpopular health care legislation being forced through Congress? But, I thought this was the alternative to that . . . I'm confused.]

“They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music," said Seth Harper, an 18-year-old from Georgia. “The GA decided to do it ... they suppressed people’s opinions. I wanted to do introduce a different proposal, but a big black organizer chick with an Afro said I couldn’t.” [She wasn't named Nancy Pelosi, was she? It could have been a disguise.]

To Shane Engelerdt, a 19-year-old from Jersey City and self-described former “head drummer,” this amounted to a Jacobinic betrayal. “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest," he said. "They didn’t even give the drummers a say ... Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.” [I feel like occupying something to express how much I ache for the poor, oppressed drummers.]

The drummers claim that the finance working group even levied a percussion tax of sorts, taking up to half of the $150-300 a day that the drum circle was receiving in tips. “Now they have over $500,000 from all sorts of places,” said Engelerdt. “We’re like, what’s going on here? They’re like the banks we’re protesting." [Can you say anything worse to a person in that movement? A low blow indeed.]

All belongings and money in the park are supposed to be held in common, but property rights reared their capitalistic head when facilitators went to clean up the park, which was looking more like a shantytown than usual after several days of wind and rain. [Is it just me or do I detect a faint note of sarcasm in this sentence? I mean, this is the mainstream media, after all. They are not supposed to take the Revolution lightly or fail to support it in every possible respect.] The local community board was due to send in an inspector, so the facilitators and cleaners started moving tarps, bags, and personal belongings into a big pile in order to clean the park.

But some refused to budge. A bearded man began to gather up a tarp and an occupier emerged from beneath, screaming: “You’re going to break my f******* tent, get that s*** off!” Near the front of the park, two men in hoodies staged a meta-sit-in, fearful that their belongings would be lost or appropriated.

Daniel Zetah, a 35-year-old lead facilitator from Minnesota, mounted a bench. “We need to clear this out. There are a bunch of kids coming to stay here.” One of the hoodied men fought back: “I’m not giving up my space for f******* kids. They have parents and homes. My parents are dead. This is my space.” [I don't think he understands socialism. So many people don't at the moment they are being asked to sacrifice for the Revolution.]

Other organizers were more blunt. “If you don’t want to be part of this group, then you can just leave,” yelled a facilitator in a button-down shirt, “Every week we clean our house.” Seth Harper, the pro-drummer proletarian, chimed in on the side of the sitters. “We disagree on how we should clean it. A lot of us disagree with the pile.” Zetah, tall and imposing with a fiery red beard, closed debate with a sigh. “We’re all big boys and girls. Let’s do this.” As he told me afterwards, “A lot of people are like spoiled children." [Light shines into the darkness!] The cure? A cold snap. “Personally, I cannot wait for winter. It will clear out these people who aren’t here for the right reasons. Bring on the snow. The real revolutionaries will stay in -50 degrees.”

“The sunshine protestors will leave,” said “Zonkers,” [Is he for real, or is he a refugee from a comic strip?] a 20-year-old cleaner and longtime occupier from Tennessee. (He asked that his name not be used due to a felony marijuana conviction.) “The people who remain are the people who care. You get a lot of crust punks, silly kids, people who want to panhandle ... It disgusts me. These people are here for a block party.”

Another argument broke out next to the pile of appropriated belongings, growing taller by the minute. A man named Sage Roberts desperately rifled through the pile, looking for a sleeping bag. “They’ve taken my stuff,” he muttered. Lauren Digion, the sanitation group leader, broke in: “This isn’t your stuff. You got all this stuff from comfort [the working group]. It belongs to comfort.” [It belongs to the pigs. They hold it in trust for all the animals.]

And as I spoke to Michael Glaser, a 26-year-old Chicagoan helping lead winter preparation efforts, a physical fight broke out between a cleaner and a camper just feet from us.

“When cleanups happen, people get mad,” Glaser said. “This is its own city. Within every city there are people who freeload, who make people’s lives miserable. We just deal with it. We can’t kick them out.” [Its true - irony is dead!]

In response to dissatisfaction with the consensus General Assembly, many facilitators have adopted a new “spokescouncil” model, which allows each working group to act independently without securing the will of the collective. “This streamlines it,” argued Zonkers. “The GA is unwieldy, cumbersome, and redundant." [Oh my goodness; they have already got bureaucracy! That is obviously making their lives better and happier.]

From today’s battles, it’s not yet clear who will win the day: the organizers or the organized. But the month-long protest has clearly grown and evolved to a point where a truly leaderless movement will risk eviction — or, worse, insurrection.

As the communal sleeping bag argument between Lauren Digion and Sage Roberts threatened to get out of hand, a facilitator in a red hat walked by, brow furrowed. “Remember? You’re not allowed to do any more interviews,” he said to Digion. She nodded and went back to work. But when Roberts shouted, “Don’t tell me what to do!” Digion couldn't hold back.

“Someone has to be told what to do," she said. "Someone needs to give orders. There’s no sense of order in this f******* place.” [But once you abolish "civilization" and demolish hierarchies, the order will bubble up spontaneously from below and it will be better, much better, than what we have now. It's true. I read it on a website.]

Lech Walesa Says "No Way" to Occupy Wall Street

Lech Walesa was rumored to be heading to New York to address the Occupy Wall Street protest, but it turns out that once he found out the true nature of the organizations behind it he backed out - in a hurry. From the Big Government blog:

The Polish champion of freedom and liberty, founder of Solidarity, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, and first President of modern Poland Lech Walesa had been rumored to possibly be traveling to New York to stand with Occupy Wall Street protesters. Press accounts reporting this “breathless” news had given all of us pause.

We suspected that the European news media had filtered out accurate information about the genesis of Occupy Wall Street (OWS).

When Walesa’s comments hit the AP wire last week, my team immediately reached out to our Polish contacts. We made the point that the political themes of Occupy Wall Street may have started out with some of the principles that we share, but OWS themes were rapidly being morphed into anti-freedom and anti-liberty messages. At the core is the want for a big, powerful central government to dominate the lives of individual citizens.

Using biggovernment.com plus other news sources, rapidly we painted an accurate picture of the groups training, leading, and organizing the “movement.” The movement is organized by anarchists, Code Pink, the American Communist movement, jihadists, anti-Israel, socialist, and anti- free enterprise interests. OWS folks are politically to the left of President Barack Obama.

At the Lech Walesa Institute Foundation in Warsaw, they were thankful to receive this information.

Based on our discussion and intervention, President Walesa is not going to get involved with the OWS. He is not comfortable with the “organizations” behind the movement. It was not a difficult discussion.

The lifetime of good work exercised by President Walesa has lifted people around the world fighting tyranny. Through the Lech Walesa Institute Foundation in Warsaw, Walesa has supported freedom and liberty around the world. As a man primarily responsible for vanquishing communism in Poland, Walesa has a personal bent toward helping the underdog and the downtrodden.

This spring, when President Obama visited Poland, President Walesa refused to meet with him.

Lech Walesa is a genuine hero of resistance to the totalitarian state. Getting him to speak would have been a tremendous propaganda coup. But unfortunately for the leftists behind the movement he has been around the block a couple of times and isn't going to fall for their tricks.

I especially noted the part about President Walesa refusing to meet with President Obama. Obama has treated Poland abominably over the whole missile defense system issue. A free Poland should be a valued ally of the West and the US in particular.

Maybe we ought to be as concerned as Lech Walesa about the hard left manipulation of the OWS protest.

An Occupy LA Organizer Refuses to Condemn Anti-Semitism: Defends it as Free Speech

If you are going to protest and call for change, you have to be against some things and for some things. The OWS movement is quickly losing credibility by refusing to be honest about what it wants. They hide behind "democracy" and claim that no one person can speak for the group, which means that they don't officially want anything. Well, they got nothing. So why don't they go home now? They got exactly what they wanted.

The point is that OWS is not really interested in participating in the democratic process; they actually want to subvert it. Well, fine if that is what they want they are an enemy of all democratic people and we need to keep them under control so they don't succeed. Hitler succeeded in subverting democracy and so did Lenin. But we won't let it happen here.

The other day an OWS protester was filmed spouting Nazi-like anti-Semitic garbage. She was a part-time teacher with the LA School Board. She has now been fired, which is appropriate.

But in this clip from a local LA news station, she is unrepentant. The clip also features an interview with an "organizer" of Occupy LA, who is asked to denounce her. The organizer refuses.

Now if you asked the organizer to denounce the banks or the 1% she would, of course, have no problem doing so. Why? Because there is consensus in the OWS movement. But she won't denounce anti-Semitism. Why not? Obviously, there must not be consensus about that issue.

So this seems to me to establish quite clearly that anti-Semitism is (1) present in the OWS movement and (2) tolerated in the OWS movement.

Therefore, I denounce the OWS movement as immoral, hateful and prejudiced and I call on all moral people to do the same.

Can anyone see any flaws in this reasoning?

If You are Thankful for Your Job, Hug a Billionaire

OWS and the Obama administration are continuing their juvenile class warfare rhetoric designed to trick the stupid into thinking they really care about poor people and the middle class. But the more they talk about how much money they should allow the "millionaires and billionaires" to keep, the more they resemble a gang of thieves sitting around talking about how much stuff they should take when they break into your house tonight and how much they should leave in place.

A healthy society is a free society and in a healthy, free society there will be more millionaires and billionaires every year. This is a good thing and a sign of a prosperous society. In a static or declining society the number of millionaires and billionaires will stay the same or shrink year by year and that is not a good society for anybody to live in.

Millionaires and billionaires (hereafter M&B's) play an essential role in the economy and in a capitalistic society there is an incentive for them to invest their wealth in socially beneficial ways rather than hoarding it. The capital gains tax is too high in the US right now, which discourages risky investment in the kind of start-up companies that could employ more people if given a chance to succeed. But Warren Buffet wants to increase it further, which would be sure to increase unemployment. Yet he is seen by socialists as a hero! This is nonsensical.

Look, when a person goes to invest his money there are lots of blue chip stocks and bonds that offer low to moderate returns and little risk. There are also other possible investments in start-up companies or ones that want to expand. They offer a possibility of high returns but say 3 out of every 5 will go bankrupt. So in order for it to be worthwhile investing in the risky options the return on the investment in the 2 of 5 risky businesses that don't go bankrupt will have to be higher than the safe return on blue chip stocks and bonds. The rate at which this investment will be taxed is crucial. It is one of the big variables in deciding what is rational to do. It is a matter of math, not emotion.

So, if a country has lots of M&B's and a low capital gains rate, then its small businesses that want to start up or expand will have a ready pool of investment capital available and the result will be job creation, which is good for the poor and the middle class. But if a country decides to tax the M&B's down to middle class levels with high capital gains and other taxes, then the economy will stagnate, which is bad for the poor and the middle class.

Giving a few hundred dollars to middle class people, as Obama wants to do by extending the payroll tax break, does nothing to provide investment capital for small businesses. That money will get saved, used to pay down debt or, in the best scenario, spent on consumer goods. The most it can do to help the economy in the short term is to stimulate demand for consumer goods. But it cannot help spur investment.

The problem is that OWS and the Democrats are framing this issue in emotional/moral terms. They claim it is an issue of fairness. Do you want to help the M&B's save money or do you want to help struggling middle class families? But it is not that simple. What if the best way to help provide employment is to stimulate investment by lowering the capital gains tax? But that messes up the overly-simplistic narrative the liberals/socialists construct to justify higher the taxes needed to pay for increasing entitlement programs.

Every time I hear the "Tax the 1%" meme, I feel personally threatened. I feel as though someone is out to destroy the economy and create the kind of conditions in which I could, potentially, lose my job. The war against the rich is really a war against the middle class and it is based on emotional manipulation, rather than reason. The people who are involved in it may be sincere, but they are much too gullible.

Maybe economics should be a compulsory subject in high school and maybe we ought to start purging socialists out of our universities so that free market principles once again dominate the curriculum. OWS and liberal/socialist propaganda is getting out of hand and people are getting hurt.

In the meantime, if you are thankful for your job, hug a millionaire or billionaire. Or at least don't demonize them.

Greed is Not Limited to the One Percent

Tasha Kheiriddin has an excellent column in the National Post today entiled: "Greed Doesn't Stop at the 1%" She begins:

Oh, that nasty 1%. Based on the global protests inspired by Occupy Wall Street, they are the source of all the world’s ills. The placards say it all: “End corporate greed”; “Paycheques not credit card bills”; “Banks for the 99%!”

But what about that 99%? What responsibility do they bear for the situation the world finds itself in? The answer is: plenty. Greed doesn’t just live on Wall Street: it finds a home on Main Street too. And when people think it’s perfectly OK to take out mortgages they can’t afford, or rack up credit card debt to buy flat screen TVs, clothes and appliances, or draw on their home’s equity to finance cars and vacations, well, as they say, you reap what you sow.

Of course, there are people who are hurting as a result of the recession through no fault of their own, she goes on to note:

Yes, there are many people who legitimately struggle to make ends meet. Who work two jobs at minimum wage, who eschew things many consumers take for granted – cable TV, a car – and who watch every penny. For them, I have sympathy: they are the collateral damage of the market meltdown, as jobs dried up and wages stagnated.

But you only have to crack open the business pages, or watch a reality TV show like Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s “Princess” (about heavily indebted young women) to start questioning the moral purity of the 99%. Many of these people are the authors of their own misery: they consider credit to be cheap, if not free, money. The result is that even here in Canada, the ratio of household debt to personal income has hit a whopping 150%, up 78% in real terms in the past twenty years.

This is the problem: many of the OWS protesters are people who have been personally irresponsible and now want big government to bail them out. Any recent graduate of a Canadian university who has a $50,000+ student loan is irresponsible. That represents the financing of a lifestyle, not an education.

The reality of the world is that there are always going to be many good things that some people cannot afford - or cannot afford without self-denial, hard work and delayed gratification. That is reality and many OWS protesters seem to be in denial - not of self, but of reality.

Kheiriddin goes on:

Sure, it’s easy to blame the Wall Street CEOs for bundling rotten mortgages and contriving arcane debt instruments that weren’t worth the paper they were written on. But someone took out those mortgages. Millions of people, actually, who bought more house than they could afford. Did someone hold a gun to their head? No. They were just as greedy as the 1%, only on a smaller scale.

Governments are also just as guilty. In the U.S., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac granted mortgages to people deemed disadvantaged – minorities, the poor – in the hopes of increasing home ownership. This spurred the private sector to compete and fuelled the infamous subprime mortgage market.

This part is important. Several US administrations, going back to Clinton, have attempted to defy economic reality and common sense by pressuring banks to give mortgages to people who can't afford them. In the name of increasing rates of minority home ownership they have pushed for smaller down payments, longer terms and lower financial qualifications. This does not help minorities. It does not help anyone. What would constitute really helping minorities would be a growing economy in which they could actually qualify for mortgages under the old rules. But liberals cried "racism" at anyone who challenged them and the eventual result was the subprime mortgage crisis.

The subprime mortgage crisis was the main driver of the 2008 financial crisis. The problem was that too many financial institutions held worthless mortgages they had paid a lot of money for and they faced losses that threatened to sink them. They demanded that the government bail them out (using tax payer's money) because it was government that created the mess in the first place (which it was).

The moral of the story is that the old mortgage rules should have been kept in place. As a matter of fact, they were kept in place in Canada and you didn't hear about any banks failing in Canada, did you?

So it was government, coupled with individual greed, that created the mess. Wall St. just went along for the ride and it was no wonder government was so quick to bail them out. That way government can pass off blame for creating the mess to Wall St., which doesn't need to get re-elected.

That is how the world works. But the lesson is that we don't have too much capitalism; the lesson is that we don't have enough capitalism. If we had a real capitalist system the banks would have been allowed to go bankrupt, their profitable assets would have been bought up cheap by their competitors and the system would go on. But we don't have real capitalism; we have cronyism instead. If we actually had real capitalism there would have been no crisis in 2008 because the government would have stayed out of the regulating banks into giving mortgages to people who didn't qualify and there would have been no subprime mortgage crisis.

The point is that greed is indeed a problem, but greed is not limited to the 1%.

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Capitalism Always Go Together

Defenders of OWS claim that the many video clips circulating on the internet of anti-Jewish signs and OWS protesters spouting anti-Semitic garbage do not represent the movement as a whole. Well, they might not represent you in particular, but if you are an OWS supporter the fact is that they do represent the movement you have chosen to identify with. The mainstream media is maintaining a discrete silence about the anti-Semitism because it wishes to aid the protesters, who align with their left-wing, anti-capitalist, anti-Israel biases.

Here is a post from Big Government reporting on how OWS Chicago joined in an anti-Israel protest organized by Code Pink, the Gay Liberation Network and the ANSWER Coalition.

Here is another post from Big Government on Lisa Fithian, a union organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, the Teamsters, the UAW and the SEIU. On May 31, 2010, she led an anti-Israel demonstration. Video of her rants is included in this post and the following comment is given:

The footage above was shot on May 31, 2010 and features Lisa Fithian shouting through a megaphone, accusing the state of Israel of “slaughter[ing] Palestinians every single day.” As Fithian, organizer of the Democratic Party’s new favorite mass protest, looks on, a menacing man decked out in a Palestinian keffiyeh leads her activists in the chant:

“Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea!”

You don’t need a degree in geography to know what that means. From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea there lies a small nation named Israel. If “Palestine” were to be free within those geographic boundaries, that would mean the destruction of Israel– America’s most reliable Middle East ally, and the only true democracy in the entire region.

But the vile chants under Fithian’s leadership don’t stop there. The mindless robotic herd is also led in the chilling chant:

“Long live Intifada!”

The intifada that the Fithian troops pine for is the bloody terrorist war waged upon innocent Israelis, the latest incarnation of which claimed the lives of more than 1,000 (mostly civilian) Israelis–not to mention thousands of Palestinians killed (most of whom were combatants).

As President Barack Obama, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and other Democratic Party leaders line up with the Fithian-led “Occupy” protesters, they might want to consider that they are supporting a movement headed by a woman who organizes and leads radicals who want Israel eliminated from the map.

Fithian is a moving force behind the OWS protests, which are not spontaneous uprisings nor are they a mass movement. They are organized and funded by the hard left in America and other countries and they use unemployed young people and college students as their dupes.

But as this post from FrontPageMag.com reminds us, anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism have been historically associated with one another since before Marx.

It’s a long history. As New American columnist Daniel Sayani points out, the OWS, despite self-professed notions that they are leading a new movement “are merely perpetuating the socialist belief that Jews are to blame for ‘social injustice,’ an idea that began with Proudhon.” Proudhon was a self-professed anarchist who published What is Property? Or, An Inquiry Into the Principle of Right and Government in 1840. He inspired Karl Marx​, who maintained a years-long correspondence with the author. In 1844, Marx himself wrote “On the Jewish Question​,” (alternatively entitled “A World Without Jews”) in which he blames the Jews for the same “income inequality” and “dollar worship” that irks many of today’s protesters.

Furthermore, Sayani points out, the American Left’s favorite economist, John Maynard Keynes​, whose economic policies “of bailouts, central banking, and massive governmental intervention to ‘stabilize’ output over the business cycle” was himself an anti-Semite who once stated, “It is not agreeable to see civilization so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jews who have all the money and the power and brains.”

No Christian should have anything to do with OWS, which is a hateful and negative movement that uses naive people who have grievances to advance a worldview that is opposed to Christianity.

More Anti-Semitism from Occupy Wall Street

Here is another very calm, very coherent, very hate-filled OWS protester admitting to an interviewer that she thinks the Jews who run the bands and the Federal Reserve should be run out of the country. She talks like she thinks that everybody agrees with her and it isn't even that controversial. In her circles it probably isn't.



Tony Katz has a post in which he describes his interview on Cross Talk, which was afterward posted on YouTube. He gives a list of the some of the comments it attracted and the anti-Semitic theme was prominent once again.

HAs tony ever been punched? Id like to be the first. – MrMrEvin

The only acts of violence are by the police! don’t listen to that Jew! – murmur6666

lol, just what i expected from a tea party douche. Pull the string, get the pre-programmed ideas. Sheesh. – ForestSongUnLTD

The guillotine needs to make a comeback. – bamboo4tameshigiri

T. Katz needs a bitch slappin’. Pick me! Pick me! – phillisthebarbarian

Teabaggers need to be put in re-education camps! Roseanne Barr was right! – petersz98

Tony’s face would look good arguing from the bottom of a basket. – Will224000

What a fat f*** – arturro666

tony should be wearing a white hood… – SHACKTRESS

What a dumb Zionist tool in the bottom right corner – megamogx

will someone please violently obliterate the man on the bottom right – humanboy1221

Who is this stupid Tea Party guy. Make me want to stand up and punch his face. What a dick head!!! – nhu111

Didn't we see this movie before in the 1930s? Do you who identify as leftist not see the danger of your 1% class-warfare rhetoric? Don't you see that it has already led you to become identified with some really seriously evil people and attitudes? Do you really want to be part of this?

Remember, in 2012 in North America conservatives are neither racist nor anti-Semitic. Conservatives stand against hate and prejudice. Will those on the Left join us in condemning anti-Semitism and rooting it out of their organizations?

Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street and Leftist Hypocrisy

Some of my critics think I an being too hard on Occupy Wall Street. (See comments on the last post.) But, actually, I've been restraining myself. No, really!

There are several (probably a lot more than I've seen, but I've seen several) videos circulating on the web of evidence of gross anti-Semitism being expressed and tolerated at OWS protests. When I saw the first one, I thought it was an isolated wacko and it might be dangerous to put it up; after all, maybe the leaders of OWS have already condemned it. Then I saw more and heard nothing from the OWS leadership about it. I checked the website. Nothing.

But the Emergency Committee for Israel, which is doing yeoman's work fighting back against the Obama administration's anti-Israel agenda, has just done an ad in which excerpts from several of these videos are collected together. The point of the ad is to challenge Democratic leaders for daring to support a protest movement that is obviously deeply infested with filthy anti-Semites.

Just imagine if right-wing anti-Semitic groups showed up at Tea Party rallies and ranted against the "Jewish bankers" who control the country and if they were tolerated by the rally organizers and participants. Just imagine how big a story it would be. Just imagine what Keith Olberman, Lawrence O'Donnell and Chris Matthews would say. Just imagine what Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean would say. Just imagine how vilified the Tea Party would be and how much screaming and self-righteous indignation would ensue.

Now listen to the silence from the Left over anti-Semitism at OWS: (cue sound of crickets chriping)

Here is the ad from ECI.



I think the silence is eloquent.

Note:
Don't even bother leaving comments saying that the movement can't be held responsible for every loon who associates with it and that an open, democratic movement can't police itself. That is baloney. Maybe OWS can't prevent an anti-Semitic thug from carrying an OWS sign and getting filmed spouting anti-Semitic garbage, but once that happens and they are called on it, the movement can disown, denounce and separate itself from the anti-Semitism - if it wants to do so. When that happens, let me know and I'll gladly post a notice of it.

Remember When They Said the Tea Party was Weird?

Check out this interview of a Maoist and a Marxist at Occupy Philadelphia from Michelle Malkin's blog.

The Maoist thinks the figures of people killed by Communist regimes in the 20th century are "made up." The Marxist thinks we just can't know what happened. How very convenient; I wonder if he is a 9/11 Truther too.



It is interesting that Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz and other leading Democrats up to and including the president are rushing to embrace Occupy Wall Street. I agree with George Will who said he hoped the movement lasts and that the Democrats continue to cuddle up to it. It will make electing Republicans so much easier in November 2012.

Clearly, the OWS movement is bringing out every weirdo in town to join in an orgy of self-pity by aggrieved self-proclaimed victims. That is the way Democrats build "coalitions" out of victim groups. But somehow I just don't think these victims will generate much sympathy from independent voters in the middle of a recession. And I can't see Mitt Romney shaking in his boots at having to go up against Barack Obama and his pal "Rainbow Boy."

Mind you, I could be wrong. Maybe gender-confused Maoists and hippie Marxists straight out of central casting will turn out to be the Democrats' secret weapon.

Why Occupy Wall Street Will End in Violence

Tim Stanley is surely right about this:

The Occupy Wall Street movement is an exercise in nostalgia. It’s an attempt to recreate the excitement of 1968, when the world’s youth took to the barricades. . . .

Photos confirm what I suspected: that most of the protesters are kids looking for their Sixties rush. Naked girls are painted in psychedelic colours. Handsome boys lounge around in cable-knit sweaters. Angry, doomed youth wave signs in the faces of frustrated policemen. Numbers are exchanged; kisses are snatched behind the barricades; disease is spread. This is what every generation of liberal has tried to recreate since 1968, be it the Watergate protests, the Battle of Seattle or the Stop the War Movement.

And Stanley has a point when he predicts that this movement will help elect Republicans in 2012:

If the existential hope of the Occupy Wall Street movement is to recreate the 1960s, then the protestors need to watch out. Culturally, the Left dominates our memories of the decade. But, in fact, it was the Right who politically triumphed. In 1960s America, antiwar protests generated counter demonstrations that were often bigger. While some students occupied campuses, others held “bleed ins” to provide blood for the troops. Ronald Reagan made his name as Governor of California by facing down students at Berkeley and popular reaction against radicalism helped elect Republican Richard Nixon in 1968. On 4 May 1970, four students were shot dead by the Ohio National Guard at a protest at Kent State University. Shockingly, the public had little sympathy. A Gallup poll found that 58 percent blamed the students for the deaths, 11 percent blamed the National Guard and 31 percent expressed no opinion. Two years later, the squares re-elected Nixon in one of the biggest landslides in American history.

But Stanley's point is limited. Yes, the right did win in the short term. As long as the hippies were smoking drugs, spreading disease and chanting hate slogans in the name of love, they did nothing but hurt their own cause (i.e. socialism). But soon after the end of the 60s, they put on suits and ties and, under the guidance of gurus like Saul Alinsky, began the Gramasican "long march through the institutions" until they became the establishment.

It is precisely the leftist establishment, which dominates the media, Hollywood, the universities, and the unions, that we have to fear and we must not underestimate the cunning of left wingers in using popular street theater for their own purposes.

"How so?" you ask. Well, consider this perspective. If, as I believe is evident, the essential goal of left-right politics in a two-party democratic system, is to move the center in one direction or the other, then the establishment left may well be able to make use of the revival of 60s radicalism to accomplish this goal.

Obama's re-election problem is how to position himself as a centrist when he pursues consistently left-wing policies. In 2008 it was easy because he had no record and he was a smooth talker. But in 2012 he has a record and it is impossible to paint it as centrist. So why would he adopt the strategy of moving leftward and "placating" his base in the run-up to the election? Doesn't that defeat his need to appear centrist?

Well, that is where the OWS protesters come in. Obama has been encouraging class warfare, divisiveness and anti-capitalism for months now and like evil spirits rising up out of the caldron we behold the old ghosts from the 60s taking shape before our eyes. Their demands are crazy; but that is the beauty of it. They call for the utter destruction of the capitalist system and the beheading of bankers, which re-defines the left and thus allows Obama to position himself as the moderate alternative. Obama just wants to tax them to death, not behead them, so he is moderate.

If the left is for "Communism Now" and that center is for "Creeping Socialism Under the Banner of Liberalism" to keep the revolution from boiling over, some cautious souls in the center of the electorate will consider Obama to be a safer choice. The goal here is to portray the Republicans as the polar opposite of the left, which makes them a polarizing choice - and therefore "dangerous."

Few conservative voters will fall for this trick, but that is beside the point. Obama needs to win big among moderates, centrists and independents, as well as among various victim groups and special interest groups. His base alone is inadequate and he will never win the 40% of Americans who are conservatives. His only hope is to repeat his trick of 2008 and appear as a moderate who can "hold things together."

But a few hippies chanting slogans in the park don't scare middle America. They are considered a joke by normal people. But news came last week of the big unions inserting themselves into the OWS movement and of hard-core anarchist agitators taking control of the leadership. They will whip up violence and sow fear and uncertainty and if they can succeed, with the help of the left-wing media, in creating an atmosphere in which events seem "out of control" then Barack Obama can step forward as the only one who can talk to both sides and calm the troubled waters.

It is a classic tactic of both fascist and communist movements. The goal is to make us think there is no alternative to Obama. If you think "it can't happen here," think again.

In this situation, the only way the conservatives of America can stop a second term of Obama and the transformation of America into a democratic socialist state modeled on the failed states of Europe is to be ready to confront violence with massive force and a cheerful willingness to let the leftist radicals take their best shot without backing down. One of the tragic paradoxes is that, in certain historical situations, free societies cannot defend themselves without meeting revolutionary violence with force (eg. the American Revolution, World War II).

The irony is that it won't take much to scare the hippies and then the hard-core anarchist agitators will have no tools to use anymore. Civil war is not necessary; a bit of fearless and implacable parenting is all that is needed. The children must be told "No." The left does not have the stomach for a real fight, but, like children, they specialize in bluffing, propaganda and rhetoric. The patient inflexible resolution of Scott Walker in Wisconsin will beat back the left every time - if only America's leaders have the courage of their convictions and stand up to bullying.

Occupy Wall Street will "end" in violence in a double sense: it will spawn violence and that violence will be the end of it as a movement.

Occupy Wall Street: Collaboratism in All Its Splendour and Glory

The following video, which is making the rounds on the internet, was originally published on Drudge. It is from Occupy Wall Street Atlanta and it features a "People's Assembly" in action, well at least kind of.

They are in the midst of their agenda when Congressman John Lewis arrives and so someone suggests that he be permitted to address the Assembly. What follows is 10 minutes of comedy gold, except for the "repeat after me" part, which is just downright creepy. In New York, they are not allowed to use megaphones, so the repeating is to ensure people can hear. Anyway, that is the rationalization. But even though the Atlanta leader (sorry, facilitator) has a megaphone they repeat everything anyway just because they like to do so.

If you want to understand the mentality of the people leading this "movement" you simply must watch this video.



These people want corporations to be taken over by People's Assemblies. God forbid! We would be running through the fields naked starving in a month. That is, we would if everybody did not die in the civil war.