Tuesday, November 8, 2011

THE REVOLT OF THE SPOILED BRATS

by Bob Ward

The gatherings of malcontents in cities across the nation have been called “protests” by the participants and by the media.  A more accurate term would be “tantrums.”


These so-called “protesters” have been vague about what they want but the main complaint seems to be that some people are wealthy and others – specifically, them – are not.  They claim that this is somehow “not fair.” They resemble a three year old who cries, kicks the chair and holds his breath because he thinks his brother’s piece of pie is bigger than his. The main difference is that the Occupiers don’t hold their breath.

The image fits because of the infantilism revealed by their complaints and their stated objectives.  Frequently their statements reveal a failure to understand what they are saying. For example, a Pasadena City College student was quoted in the Austin American Statesman. “The banks,”  he complained, “are here to steal from us. Everybody is in debt, whether it’s medical bills, or school or loans.”

This guy considers it stealing if someone who lends you money expects you to pay it back, when, in reality, to borrow money and not pay it back would be stealing. But apparently they don’t consider it  stealing because, they are entitled to whatever they want and the rest of us have a duty to supply it. 

Accordingly, among their “demands” is the abolition of all debt – worldwide. We can only wonder if the people making that demand realize that every individual, business or institution that has lent money would simply lose the amount of the loan. That loss would include the money belonging to the bank’s depositors who are not the much-maligned one percent but are ordinary working people trying to build a nest egg by saving something out of their paychecks.

And we have to wonder if they realize it would put an end to the business of lending money thereby making  it nearly impossible for anyone to buy a home or a car or to attend a college unless he first saves up the money himself. To be fair, they did anticipate that last item by demanding free college so borrowing money to go to college would not be necessary – someone else would pay for it.

It would be a lot easier to save the kind of money that would make borrowing unnecessary if another of the demands on “The Collective” website were granted: a $20 an hour minimum wage and guaranteeing everyone a “living wage” employed or not.  Of course there is the problem of where a business would get the money it takes to pay such a wage and the answer comes immediately – it would have to raise the price of the goods or services it sells so high that $20 an hour wage would not be enough to live on.

But then, we already knew that consequences are not the protesters’ long suit.

And they want an end to immigration controls so that anyone can go anywhere “to work and live.”   This would certainly result in most people – from all over the world – going to places where the demand for a living wage – whether employed or not – has been satisfied.

What all this comes down to is a desire – backed up by threats and sometimes the fact of destructive  behavior – to have every need, desire and whim be accommodated while assuming no responsibility and contributing nothing. In other words, they want everything to be as it was when they were three years old and nothing was demanded of them beyond basic toilet training. In fact, there are indications they are now rejecting even that responsibility.

Some people may wonder where such unreal attitudes come from and how anyone could live in the real world for 20 years or more and not realize how wrong, unfair and unworkable such demands are. One answer is the welfare state we have cultivated for several decades. The historic link between work and reward has been severed by governmental policies as well as the popular culture. 

And we should not overlook President Obama’s contribution to this culture of entitlement, this attitude that if somebody won’t give me what I want, they are evil. The fact is that generating this kind of hostility toward anyone who is wealthy is the only thing Obama did professionally before being elected to the Illinois legislature.  His only real job was that of “community organizer” which is a euphemism for rabble rouser.

Nurturing resentment is the only thing he knows how to do and he hasn’t stopped doing it just because he’s in the White House.

And as long as he holds that office we can expect more of this kind of infantile outbursts.  

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Remembering Arsenalna and the "Progressive" Rule of Man


I’d like to commend my friend Martha for the remarkable feat of managing to keep far left and far right people on the same e-mail list you regularly post to!
Most of my friends manage to keep only one or the other.

As for the question of trusting Obama (and government force in general) to defy the Constitutional rule of law to “create jobs”, achieve economic stability, provide “free” education, health care, retirement pension, and any other conceivable cradle-to-grave benefit, I’d like to point you back in history to the Soviet Communist “paradise”, and to the idiocy there which survives (to a limited extent) to this day.

When I lived in the former soviet Ukraine for some time back in the 90s, on occasion you would see a small but noisy protest of gray hairs waving photos of Joseph Stalin, waving signs with old communist slogans, and yelling chants along the lines of going back to the “good ole days” of Stalin’s tyrannical communist regime.  Their favorite protest site was Arsenalna, near the Kiev city center where the corrupt Bolsheviks took an early military stand against the corrupt Kiev government (imagine, looking at the photo below, a small group  gathered in the middle of it).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenalna_%28Kiev_Metro%29
 
 
THE POINT IS, “progressives” and other believers in expanding government  power (and force) as a solution to humanity's problems, have irrational faith in government power – irrational because over thousands of years, history has always shown that consolidating power in the hands of one, or a few – be it Obama, Stalin, the Pope, whomever, always leads to oppression, tyranny and poverty.

Like the Bolsheviks and Communists, America has a noisy Progressive leadership which ridicules the Constitution and the rule of law, favoring the arbitrary rule of king, prince, pope, or (in this case) president.  Certainly Mr. Dilworth and his old friends in Kiev will always, religiously and irrational – always demand more power and authority and obedience to the chief tyrant in charge, irrespective of the destruction to prosperous civilization such action causes.

The Progressive Wall Street "occupiers" have brothers and sisters at Arsenalna yearning for the arbitrary rule of man.