SHOWING SOLIDARITY with Hugo Chavez, the authoritarian leaders of Iran and China, and the state-run press of totalitarian North Korea, with Noam Chomsky, Cornell West, Michael Moore, and Al Sharpton, with MSNBC and the Nation, with the Communist Party U.S.A., the U.S. Socialist Alternative, LaRouche Political Action Committee, and the American Nazi Party, with anarchists, freeloaders, anti-capitalists, faculty loungers, and college sophomores everywhere, the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle has endorsed, without reservation . . .
. . . Occupy Wall Street.
The Occupy Wall Street protests are resonating nationwide as more Americans join in to vent their frustration and disgust at the financial industry and its flagrant abuses, record profits, obscene salaries and bonuses; at politicians in thrall to those interests, and at the growing gap between the haves and have-nots.
(Editorial, "Occupy America: Wall Street protests strike a chord," Houston Chronicle, October 13, 2011)
Don't look for this sterling (not to mention startling) prose online. The Chronicle has not posted it. One can only hope the motive for keeping this nonsense between itself and the readers of its dead-tree edition -- a small and dwindling cohort indeed -- is simple shame. But probably not.
The figures support [the protestors'] sentiments: About 14 million Americans are unemployed, millions more are underemployed, and a new report shows household incomes are down almost 10 percent since the recession began.
Remind me who is president of the United States. Remind me what party controlled Congress for two wild and crazy years. Remind me what laws and regulations were put in place during that orgastic period. Remind me what newspaper supported this president, this Congress, and these laws and policies. Then explain again why things are so gloomy.
As for that 10 percent drop in real median household income from December 2007 through June 2011, most of it has occurred since the recession officially ended in June 2009, which is to say that it has occurred during the era of Obamanomics.
Critics take the protestors to task for not having a cohesive platform, or a remedy for all our ills, or suggest they're just not trying hard enough to find work. We don't think so. They are completely free to speak out, as were Vietnam War protestors, civil rights marchers and Boston Colonists [read colonists]. For that matter, as are today's tea party adherents. And it's not up to them to correct these ills. That's why we have elections.
Here's a good paragraph next time you teach a course on using strawmen to hide bad arguments. Let's start with "not having a cohesive [by which the editors presumably meant coherent] platform." The rejoinder: Protestors "are completely free to speak out."
No one debates the poor dears' right to speak, which the Chronicle so thunderously defends. What matters is whether their ideas, such as they are, make even the remotest kind of sense. The Chronicle has no wish to defend the indefensible -- the protestors' incoherence -- so the editors defend instead the First Amendment.
Bravo. Point to the critics.
As for not offering "a remedy for all our ills," how about a remedy for "any ill" whatsoever? The Chronicle's defense of the hapless protestors: "[It's] not up to them to correct these ills."
Indeed it's not. But this, again, is hardly the issue. The point of protest is not to correct ills but to diagnose them and prescribe (not administer) remedies. The Chronicle again defends protestors against an imaginary slander.
Score another ace for the critics.
Finally, deliciously, critics "suggest [protestors are] just not trying hard enough to find work." The Chronicle answers thusly:
As for not trying hard enough to find a job, that's exactly why they are protesting: They want to work. Most of them have worked hard and played by the rules. Now they see doors closing, instead of opening.
This is not a strawman defense; it is the "just because" defense, beloved of children everywhere. The Chronicle asserts a proposition without offering a shred, a scintilla, an iota, a jot, or a tittle of evidence. Who has researched the job histories of these protestors, not to mention their abidance by rule? Certainly not the Chronicle. The editors believe in the virtue of the protestors' cause, so it follows, does it not, that the protestors are virtuous.
This is not sour grapes because some folks have it better than they do. Too many people, through no fault of their own, continue to lose ground, while the fortunate few prosper. It's a matter of fairness.
The first sentence denies the very thing the second and third sentences do, which is to express disdain for those who prosper -- the "fortunate few." They're just lucky. Hard work and enterprise had nothing to do with it. Their prosperity is morally wrong: unfair.
If these grapes were any sourer, they would be poisonous.
This last paragraph is, at heart, a condemnation of capitalism and a plea for good old Greek-style redistributionism -- taking money from producers (the few or, as the protestors have it, the 1 percent) and giving it to bureaucrats and other takers (the protestors' victimized 99 percent).
Other than facts and logic, what is missing from the editorial?
Well, for starters, any mention of the uncivil, lawless, anarchic, even barbaric conduct of many protestors -- all of which the Chronicle ignores and thereby implicitly excuses.
The manner in which the protestors are occupying the park violates the law, violates the rules of the park, deprives the community of its rights of quiet enjoyment to the park, and creates health and public safety issues that need to be addressed immediately.
Complaints range from outrage over numerous laws being broken including but not limited to lewdness, groping, drinking and drug use to the lack of safe access to and usage to the park, to the ongoing noise at all hours, to unsanitary conditions and to offensive odors.
(Letter from Brookfield Properties, owner of New York's Zuccotti Park, seeking police help in clearing the space appropriated by the screamers, shouters, and drum-beaters.)
Let's not even mention the proud anti-Semites, racists, and 9/11 truthers, and the guy in the Stasi uniform.
Wiser liberals -- adults -- know better than to cast their lot with the intellectually unfit and morally unclean protestors. Editors of the New Republic, for instance.
One of the core differences between liberals and radicals is that liberals are capitalists. They believe in capitalism that is democratically regulated -- that seeks to level an unfair economic playing field so that all citizens have to make what they want of their lives. But these are not the principles we are hearing from the protestors. Instead, we are hearing calls for the upending of capitalism entirely. American capitalism may be flawed, but it is not, as Slavoj Zizek implied in a speech to the protestors, the equivalent of Chinese suppression. . . .
Zizek is not alone. His statement is typical of the anti-capitalist, almost utopian arguments that one hears coming from these protestors. A recent debate about whether to allow Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights icon, to speak to Occupy Atlanta was captured on video and ended up on YouTube. . . .
And it is not just the protestors' apparent allergy to capitalism and suspicion of normal democratic politics that should raise concerns. It is also their temperament. The protests have made a big deal of the fact that they arrive at their decisions through a deliberative process. But all their talk of "general assemblies" and "communiques" and "consensus" has an air of group-think about it that is, or should be, troubling to liberals. . . . .
. . . .
In the face of the current challenge from Tea Party conservatism, it is more important than ever that liberals make a compelling case for our vision of America. But we will not make this case stronger by allying with a movement that is out of sync with our values. And so, on the question of how liberals should feel [read think] about Occupy Wall Street, count us as deeply skeptical.
(Editors, "Protests and Power: Should liberals support Occupy Wall Street?" New Republic, October 12, 2011)
Three conservative commentators respond to Occupy Wall Street, appropriately, with derision and mockery.
The Tea Party's spendid successes, which have altered the nation's political vocabulary and agenda, have inspired a countermovement -- Occupy Wall Street. Conservatives should rejoice and wish for it a long life, abundant publicity and sufficient organization to endorse congressional candidates deemed worthy. All Democrats eager for OWS' [read OWS's] imprimatur, step forward.
In scale, OWS' [OWS's] demonstrations-cum-encampments are to Tea Party events as Pittsburg, Kan., is to Pittsburgh, Pa. So far, probably fewer people have participated in all of them combined than attended just one Tea Party rally, that of Sept. 12, 2009, on the Washington Mall. . . .
Still, OWS' [OWS's] defenders correctly say it represents progressivisms's spirit and intellect. Because it embraces sponteneity and deplores elitism, it eschews deliberation and leadership. Hence its agenda, beyond eliminating one of the seven deadly sins (avarice), is opaque. It's meta-theory is, however, clear: Washington is grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful.
. . . .
Demands posted in OWS' [OWS's] name include a "guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment"; a $20-an-hour minimum wage (above the $16 entry wage the United Auto Workers just negotiated with GM); ending "the fossil fuel economy"; "open borders" so "anyone can travel anywhere to work and live"; $1 trillion for infrastructure; $1 trillion for "ecological restoration" (e.g., re-establishing "the natural flow of river systems"); "free college education."
And forgiveness of "all debt on the entire planet period." Progressivism's battle cry is: "Mulligan!" It demands the ultimate entitlement -- emancipation from the ruinous results of all prior claims of entitlement.
(George F. Will, "Here's to a long life for Occupy Wall Street," Washington Post, October 13, 2011)
Underneath the familiar props of radical chic that hasn't been either radical or chic in half a century, the zombie youth of the Big Sloth movement are a paradox to ludicrous even for the malign alumni of a desultory half-decade of Complacency Studies: They're anachists for Big Government.
(Mark Steyn, "American Autumn," National Review Online, October 8, 2011)
The tea party is a middle-class movement of people who want limited government, less spending, less debt, low taxes, and the repeal of ObamaCare. Occupy Wall Street isn't a movement. It's a series of events populated by a weird cast of disaffected characters, ranging from anarchists and anti-Semites to socialists and LaRouchies. What they have in common is an amorphous anger aimed at banks, investors, rich people and bourgeois values.
. . . .
Before they go much further with this courtship, the president and other Democrats need to remember it's always dangerous to associate with people who are just plain kooky.
(Karl Rove, "Democrats Court the Wall Street Protestors," Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2011)
The Houston Chronicle needs to remember the same thing.
The Chronicle's editorial board pretends at times to be something other than what it really is. The national debt and deficits, for instance, are quite serious and we should think really hard about them. Then the mask slips -- as here -- revealing the face of true radicalism, a bitter sneer. This is the face of editors who identify sincerely and unreservedly with the haters and loons at Occupy Wall Street. Of editors who, by disclosing what they admire, signal just as clearly what they detest -- the conservative ideas and values, political, economic, cultural, and religious, of the places they find themselves so unhappily nested. Houston. Texas. The United States. They don't understand or respect any of us. None of us measure up.
The editorial board of the Houston Chronicle is a detestable bunch. They bring shame on their newspaper and on our city.
UPDATE: Thanks for the links from Harris County Almanac, Texas Watchdog, BlogHouston, and Texas Iconoclast. And take note of this description of Occupy Wall Street by Kevin Williamson:
Almost every organization present at OWS is explicitly communist or socialist. Almost every piece of literature being handed out is explicitly communist or socialist. I don’t mean half, and I don’t mean the overwhelming majority — I mean almost all of it. Yes, there are the usual union goons trying to figure out how to get OWS to do the bidding of the AFL-CIO and the Democratic party, and the usual smattering of New Age goo (the “Free Empathy” table) and po-mo Left wackiness (animal-rights nuts), the inevitable Let’s-Eradicate-Israel crowd (“Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!”). But, that being said, almost every organized enterprise and piece of printed material I have encountered has been socialist or communist. It’s been a long time since I saw anybody peddling books by Lenin. It’s been a long time since anybody told me the Ukrainians had it coming.
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