If you haven’t heard about the Occupy Wall Street Movement you haven’t been listening. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of protestors took to the streets in New York earlier this week and the movement is spreading across the nation. The movement is the Left’s answer to the Tea Party. According to occupywallstreet.org “The American Dream has been stolen from the world. Workers are told that they aren’t allowed health care, shelter, food. Students are told that they aren’t allowed jobs, and that they will be in debt for the rest of their lives, unable to declare bankruptcy. The 1% has destroyed this nation and its values through their greed. The 1% has stolen this world.”
The country the Occupy Wall Street protestors want to live in was never contemplated by the Constitution. The government’s role is to provide for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is not to provide health care, shelter, food and jobs. For the Occupy Wall Street movement to be successful the government will have to take the property of those who have succeeded and redistribute it to those who have yet to succeed. The Occupy Wall Street movement seems to be arguing for ‘equality of outcomes’. In the most myopic sense equality of outcome seems fair, but it will be devastating to our way of life. In America we have fought for ‘equality of opportunity’ but never ‘equality of outcomes’. From the first settlers who fled Old Europe to the civil rights leaders in the 60′s – each fought for a better way of life, a chance to succeed. Our system only works if ANYONE/EVERYONE has the chance to succeed.
The life of Steve Jobs is in stark contrast to the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Steve began life the unwanted child of an unwed mother. He was adopted by working class parents and had to drop out of college for financial reasons. Of course the one thing going for him was that he was born in the United States where our founding fathers sought to create an ‘equality of opportunity’. Had he been born in a nation focused on an ‘equality of outcome’ I dare say we would have never seen the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone or iPad – thank God for Steve Jobs and this great country.
The Occupy Wall Street protestors have already given up. They believe the American Dream is dead. But it is not dead. It is alive, but we must fight to keep it alive. The Tea Party movement was started specifically to ensure the American Dream’s survival. We must not let our leaders, our government create a system that precludes success. The Tea Party began simply because our leaders forgot what made America great. Our leaders – Democratic and Republican have set us on a unsustainable course. Medicare and Social Security set our country on a course for bankruptcy for decades, but with the addition of ObamaCare our fiscal demise was assured. The Tea Party began to fight ObamaCare and the underlying borrowing and deficit spending our leaders (both Democratic and Republican) have become addicted to.
The White House and Democrats in Congress as well as Big Labor have aligned themselves with this new movement they see as an answer to the Tea Party. Any movement based on a theory that we have already lost – i.e. the American Dream is dead and we need to take it from those who have already realized that dream – is doomed for failure. The British tried to take our liberty and property a couple of hundred years ago and it didn’t go well for them. Americans will fight to preserve their liberty and opportunity. I am not sure they will fight to take away liberty and opportunity simply to provide what they were not able to achieve on their own.
