My dittohead stepfather sent me a forwarded email from an article by former Reagan lackey Marybeth Hicks about the #OWS protests. Since I was at the protest in Santa Rosa, I had to respond. He also made the mistake of not hiding the other people he sent the email to. As always, I replied all. Below the fold is the article and my response is after that.
A great article by Marybeth Hicks.
Call it an occupational hazard, but I can't look at the Occupy Wall Street protesters without thinking, "Who parented these people?"
As a culture columnist, I've commented on the social and political ramifications of the "movement" - now known as "OWS" - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: "Everything for everybody."
Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it's clear there are people with serious designs on "transformational" change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.
Yet it's not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting question, but rather the fact that I'm the mother of four teens and young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters' moms clearly have not passed along.
Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters' mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn't, so I will:
* Life isn't fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what you want."
No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.
* Nothing is "free." Protesting with signs that seek "free" college degrees and "free" health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don't operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and "slow paths" to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.
While I'm pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.
* Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don't require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It's a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.
* A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn't evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don't dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don't seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.
* There are reasons you haven't found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It's not them. It's you.
Marybeth Hicks is the author of "Don't Let the Kids Drink the
Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith and Freedom."
My response:
Who parented them? You did.
This moron worked hard NOT to understand anything about these people. We don't want "everything for everybody," we want the people who blew up the economy to be held accountable.
Let's look at those five points for a minute.
"Life isn't fair." Oh. Well, then we should just give up then, shouldn't we? No, life is not fair, but if we get ripped off by someone we shouldn't seek redress? Then why does merchandise have warranties? Why are there laws against fraud and robbery? This is patently ridiculous.
"Nothing is free." Not for us, no. If you're JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs, then there are a lot of free things. You can borrow billions from the Federal Reserve at 0%, use it for mortgages at 4% or credit cards at 25% and sell the money you made from that back to the government at market rates.
"Your word is your bond." Hoo boy. The "too big to fail" banks wrote loans that they KNEW were bad and got bailed out by the taxpayers. If I embezzle my company's money, I go to jail. If I default on my mortgage, I lose my house. The bank executives who perpetrated this fraud received no punishment and their bonuses are as big as ever.
"A protest is not a party." Thank you, Martha Stewart. That's a lot of description from a "mad dash to avoid." I was at the protest in Santa Rosa, which was the 6th biggest in the country. What I saw were earnest, sober people attempting to bring about the justice that our legislators, especially the Republicans, refuse to enact. Yes, we were doing this for attention. That's the point of protesting.
"There are reasons you haven't found jobs." So if I'm a good worker, do my job well, my boss is happy with me and my company goes belly-up anyway and nobody else is hiring that's my fault? How? FYI I have no tattoos or ear gauges and I don't have enough hair for dreadlocks. What about soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan? Unemployment for them is at 11.7%. They're just a bunch of slackers, I guess.
There were families at the protest in Santa Rosa. There were old and young people, gay and straight, representing a variety of ethnic groups. This is in stark contrast to the tea party, who originated from CNBC corespondent and former Wall Street trader Rick Santelli complaining about helping homeowners, and has been heavily funded by the Koch brothers and co-opted by Dick Armey's FreedomWorks.
Who are we #OWS protesters trying to benefit? Look in the mirror, it's you.