Act Don't Occupy

Today is Occupy Wall Street’s one-year anniversary. There are some protests in cities around the country today but it’s obvious this movement has died.

I think it failed because OWS became all about people camping out in city squares and fighting for the right to squat on public property. It looked like the activists just wanted to bring the country and the economy to a standstill. It appeared to promise only chaos and anarchy and destruction. No wonder most people rejected it.

What we need is for the people of this country to wake up and remake our political system with a new consciousness. And at the same time bring this new consciousness into our local business community, town by town. I feel like that is what many people are doing in many cities around the nation, including where I live (Asheville, NC).

I marked OWS’s anniversary by contributing to a local group who are acting, not occupying: an anarchist collective that runs a café called Firestorm Café and Books. They are financing a renovation by putting out “bonds” that will return 10% on your investment in a couple of months (in the form of a gift certificate).

Anarchist Wing of the Republican Party

Ann Coulter and Chris Hayes, editor of the Nation magazine, were guests on “Real Time with Bill Maher” last week. Hayes mentioned that his mother was a government employee, and Coulter said, “She’s a drain on society.” Coulter and fellow guest and British author Amanda Foreman went on to say that government employees contribute nothing to society and in fact just suck from those who do:

MAHER: We want you to know that. Your mother is a drain on…

COULTER: Well, you asked.

HAYES: Ann Coulter thinks you’re a drain on society.

FOREMAN: What Ann means, she’s not a revenue producer. She’s not a revenue producer.

COULTER: Right. She’s a revenue taker.

FOREMAN: No, she’s gainfully employed, but she’s not a revenue producer.

COULTER: No, it's worse than not having a job, having a government job, because you have somebody doing something nobody wants, taxpayers pay for it, and they can never get rid of them.

Amazingly, (and typically for a liberal) Hayes just sat there and allowed this slander of government (and his mother) to stand.

[Transcript is from a conservative blog, you can see his take on this exchange here.]

The rejection of large government is perhaps the most defining element of the right-wing, but pre-Ronald Reagan Republicans were moderate, even liberal by today’s standards, in their approach to governing. For example, during Eisenhower’s administration the U.S. built the interstate highway system, and Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency.

Then came Reagan and his famous anti-government aphorisms, for example, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language? I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” In the last thirty years we’ve seen an acceleration of this anti-government attitude, and it seems to have gone into overdrive since Barack Obama’s election as president.