Posted on 10/12/2011 6:47:58 AM PDT by Kaslin
I hate to say it, but watching the various YouTube videos of the Occupy Wall Street protests and reading accounts of protesters' goals and "demands," prompts me to shake my head with a resigned, "I told you so."
I've been warning this was coming.
Recently, Regnery Publishing released my new book, "Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid." In it, I claim that, thanks to the left's unchecked influence on our young people through our education system, entertainment media and pop culture, our children are being molded into the first generation of American socialists.
Now, almost with the timing of a well-written script, the "Occupiers" have emerged, chanting anti-capitalist slogans and demanding "democracy" in exactly the manner I forecast.
Interviews with young protesters illustrate what my research revealed: They are patently uneducated about our system of government and generally ignorant of political theory and economics. Instead of American civics, they've been fed a steady diet of liberal Kool-Aid that has resulted in a well-formed leftist belief system.
As former speaker of the House and current Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich summarized, "I regard the Wall Street protest as a natural outcome of a bad education system, teaching them really dumb ideas."
But it's more than that. The left appears to have successfully altered the very character of our youngest generation, such that it's unlikely we can sustain our republic for want of a citizenry that understands and values it.
In short, we won't have an America like the one established for us without Americans who exhibit the same character and virtues exemplified by our founders.
Unlike our founders, the Occupiers aren't demonstrating for their rights as individuals to engage in their personal pursuits of happiness, or for religious freedom or for the liberty to make the most good of their talents and treasure.
Instead, they're demanding the opposite: equality of outcomes irrespective of effort, "economic justice" and the "security" of a bigger, more powerful government fueled by a misguided belief in the inherent virtue of democracy (with a small "d").
Worse, because of their ignorance of history, they ironically have been convinced that collectivism is the moral response to corporate and political corruption, as if there won't be ambition or avarice, apathy or abuse when "the people" are the ones with unbridled power.
Now, after nearly a month of pointless protests, the Occupy Wall Street movement predictably is attracting the unfortunate and the unmotivated: homeless folks looking for free food and young people looking for a rager and an excuse to have exhibitionist sex in a public park (in the spirit of responsibility, organizers are giving out condoms at supply tents); not to mention unionists and political opportunists from every radical leftist interest group with poster board and a marker.
Who's surprised? A directionless mob that can't articulate a concrete purpose virtually screams, "Lead me!" As the saying goes, since they don't know what they stand for, they'll fall for anything.
Perhaps there is some earnest yearning fanning the flames of outrage among the Occupiers. It's possible this generation is so in need of a moral compass that it's simply searching for true north.
Sadly, having been left for so long to the devices of liberals, this generation of would-be revolutionaries mistakes emotion and placards for ideas and ideology.
Caught up in their civic circus, they're fighting to give up the only thing that really matters: their legacy of American liberty.
Surely convincing a generation of young Americans that their very freedom is worth the guarantee of a predetermined "living" wage, forgiveness of a student loan and a lifetime of inferior health insurance must be at least as immoral as buying votes in Congress.
Isn't it?
Maybe Marybeth sees something I don’t but it appears to me the “occupiers” are lesser then the antiwar groups of ten years ago, and microscopic compared to the 70s radicals.
I disagree with the author. This group is just like any other group of your protestors looking for a “cause”.
This is just the kool thing to do now. They are followers and the guys figure it might just get them laid by some free love bimbo.
Most of these kids are out of work , or can not find a job because they have a degree in liberal arts, political science, drama, theater or some other useless field of study. If they had gone into petroleum engineering or similar they would have mulitple offers before they even finished school.
The professional anarchists, like the Boston police cleaned out of the park the other night, are a whole different story. These are the extemeists that show up at the G7 summits around the world. They are true ecoterrorists types like “Earth First”. They are dangerous nuts.
It offers a chance for ugly kids to get laid.
I don’t believe I did, but that does not surprise me. They can’t
I use politicians as a teaching tool for my kids.It’s not what you say that counts but what you do. Remember Clinton “I did not have sex “ Honesty and principle I use Romney he has neither.
Sounds like a great idea, if we were only talking about the sheeperals - let them live their dystopia and be the wiser from it when it crashes.
But we’re also dealing with hardcore evil communists who are deceiving the sheeperals and hiding their “wolf” nature.
These types would never let you or I “out from under their thumb” to live in peace, because their ideology requires EVERYONE to be a servant of the communist state.
There can be no “amicable divorce”. There would be War for Independence III. The record so far is 1 win (1776), 1 loss (1863).
Sorry: extremists
spell checker is your FRiend :)
double sorry
“kool” should be cool
maybe I should sue my “skool”
I think that's where we are ultimately headed. The Northeast can go its own way, California who knows, and states wanting to follow The Constitution can join together.
“Civil War II is coming.”
Thank God for the founding fathers and The Second Amendment.
What we are seeing in the cities where "Occupy Wall Street Thugery" is happening, are the great grandkids of the early Progressive thugs pushing the same old bs of evil capitalism.
How big where they in the early 1900's? Their 1912 National Progressive Convention at the Chicago Coliseum is an indicator of their size at that time.
The demands of those early socialists/communists and facists/leaders are the backbone of today's progressives/socialist/communist and elite fascist/leaders.
Fortunately WWI and later WWII put these hate America bastards into near irrelevance. After WWII, they dropped the Progressive label and became democrats.
As I was just discussing on a similar thread, it’s fine and necessary to analyze the Occupy Wall Street movement and what it says about where we’re at and where we’re going as a society.
However, it’s time now to use this ridiculousness to make some important points. That requires boiling our response to the Occupy Wall Streeters down to a couple of saliant points:
1. THEY are the greedy ones.
This needs to be said over and over again. We should quit engaging their particular and wide-ranging demands and just call them out for what they are: PURE GREED.
These cretins call it “greedy” to want to EARN money and then KEEP SOME of it.
Yet they are getting away with demanding what others EARNED and not being called out using the precise word “greedy.”
Let’s change that. No matter what demand they make or what they blather on about our collective chant back at them needs to be “Greedy! Greedy! Greedy!”
2. WE WILL NOT BE THEIR SLAVES.
This is another precise idea that needs to be said over and over again in response to the Occupy Wall Street “demands.”
Clearly, they are demanding that we work to satisfy their wants and needs. That is slavery and we need to call it such.
And we need to call them out as supporting slavery.
And we need to loudly and repeatedly let them know that we refuse to be enslaved by them (and, as the author points out, Socialism in general).
These words, greed and slavery, need to be used against OWS at every turn.
What’s sad is that I had always looked forward to my golden years, knowing that the great bulge of aging hippies who immediately preceded me would have gone off to that great Woodstock in the sky. I thought I would have been living in a decent country again. But it appears the Educrats doubled-down after Reagan.
selfish people do not make good warriors.
The last ten years or so, whenever someone I know or have heard of dies of “old age”, I always think, “They got out in time”. Like a Jew in Germany who died of old age just before Hitler came to power. Not that anybody’s killing people because of their religion, income etc. Yet. Evil is like a dandilion. It takes over the soil, grows bigger and bigger at the cost of the “legitimate” plants around it, finally produces a pretty flower, and then goes quickly to seed.
That describes Nazi Germany and a host of other despotic political systems. Hopefully it doesnt describe what is happening in our western culture today, but those who die just as the flower is blossoming are blessed.
—Fortunately WWI and later WWII put these hate America bastards into near irrelevance. After WWII, they dropped the Progressive label and became democrats.—
I’m wondering if, 50 years from now, someone will be typing, “Fortunately WWI, WWII and, later, WWIII put these hate America bastards into near irrelevance.
They wouldn’t allow a split in 1861 and they won’t allow one now.
They can make good mercenaries.
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