By that logic I suppose you could feel sorry for the entire black community because they've been lied to as well?
I really don't feel sorry for the anti Wall Street mob. What you have, for the most part, is a bunch of intellectually lazy, selfish kids. Have they been fed a bunch of BS? Sure. But when doesn't that happen?
but they have never been told the truth about who were the people who actually screwed it up.
Yes, they have been told the truth. The conservative message is out there. Even on a uber liberal campus echo chamber, the facts are available. These lazy mush heads just don't want to hear it. They are taking the easy way out, demanding other people's money, insisting someone else provide for them and attempting to avoid real life.
They’ve been victimized and abused by our educational system—intellectually raped, in fact.
These kids are no more victims than say, the people of Greece. People who know perfectly well the social welfare state doesn't work, yet refuse to accept that fact as long as there is someone else to blame and the hope they can steal money from the actual producers of society.
We have a LOT of work in front of us, friends . . .
Now THAT, I agree with. People here on FR and elsewhere that think 2012 is going to be some sort of cakewalk are kidding themselves. Almost half of Americans pay no income taxes. The American public, such that it is, is fully addicted to the social welfare state. Obama is going to give people someone to blame - corporations and rich people, and a near majority are going to like that message. Hussein will get no less than 45% of the vote, and he could even win.
I think you generally overestimate how economically sophisticated many Americans are, and underestimate how completely lied-to, misinformed, and kept ignorant many Americans have been.
Yes, the information is out there. No, it isn’t that easy for a lot of Americans to come by. It certainly isn’t pushed into your face every day by the media and the culture kings the way the other side is.
I don’t know what your background is, but I a) grew up in pretty-conservative South Dakota and b) had sisters who read Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein among others, so I was exposed early and often to an alternate narrative. Lots of Americans aren’t that lucky, unfortunately.
Most Americans don’t read FR, Instapundit, Tyler Cowen, Arnold Kling, Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, any newspaper, or really any information outlet anywhere where they’re exposed to basic economic concepts. They get their news from Jon Stewart and ESPN, for heaven’s sake! They have absolutely no idea where wealth comes from. That’s the fundamental problem.
A lot of people really do think wealth comes from the government. Go ask them.
A lot of people really do think that the rich people are rich because they’re taking all the money from the government that’s supposed to go to the people. (This is, in a wildly distorted, funhouse-mirror sort of way, kinda, sorta true, for a certain class of rich person.)
A lot of people really do think that they’re poor because their government isn’t giving them what it owes them. A LOT of people think that.
The linkage between “working harder” and “getting ahead” has, for a lot of people, been almost completely severed by government welfare programs on the one hand, and oppressive government laws and regulations on the other.
That’s the problem we’re facing.
Yelling at these people, making fun of them, and calling them names won’t fix the problem.
(And yes, there are those who are simply lazy “takers” who are simply parasites on the rest of us. They are why we have prisons.)