Liberals throw their own Tea Party

If you’ve been wondering when American liberals would come up with their answer to the conservative Tea Party movement, then you need wonder no longer. What started as a barely noticed and loosely organized protest in New York City three weeks ago is turning into an international phenomenon. Say hello to Occupy Wall Street.

The movement has no leader and no well-defined agenda, but ongoing demonstrations in New York and several other major cities seem to be feeding off the frustration that people are feeling because of our continuing economic crisis. And they are directing that frustration towards the people that President Obama is trying (unsuccessfully so far) to get to “pay their fair share” – rich folks.

That explains the other name being associated with the protests - We Are The 99%. That is, apparently, a reference to the idea that there is an upper class in our society (the lucky 1%) that controls most of the wealth while the rest of us struggle just to get by. So I guess these people are out there agitating for me and probably for you too, even though we didn’t ask them to. Very thoughtful of them, don’t you think?

Exactly what the Occupiers are protesting is hard to pin down. The fact that some people are fabulously wealthy while so many are pinching pennies obviously sticks in their craw. They have also thrown out some strong words about things like pollution, police brutality, animal rights, and inadequate health care.

A statement by the movement’s participants in Seattle said that "the one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.” And the motto scrawled across the website of the Los Angeles version of the group states “The revolution is happening…it’s not just in the news.”

So they are definitely fired up, and they are claiming to take inspiration from the “Arab Spring” protests in the Middle East. But the parallel to those demonstrations seems shaky at best. The people in those cases were protesting totalitarian governments in which they had no voice. But we live in a country where we elect our leaders.

Do they want to bring down and replace our government, as the Middle Eastern protestors did? It would seem not, as the Occupiers’ protests don’t seem to be aimed at the government at all, likely because there is a liberal President who is sympathetic to their cause currently residing in the White House.

Instead, their demonstrations seem to be directed at the fat cat industrialists who they believe control most of the nation’s wealth. But, again, it is not at all clear what exactly they think should be done about the situation.

In every society throughout the history of mankind there have always been the have’s and the have-not’s. There have been attempts to force economic and social equality on societies in the past, but they haven’t worked very well.

The Communist Revolution in the early 20th century was all about bringing down that fortunate 1% and spreading the wealth to all the repressed workers of the world. It was not very successful. Not only did the governments that sprouted from the Communist Revolution not make people very happy, they didn’t even do a good job of redistributing wealth. The people who had power also seemed to have the best of everything. Such is human nature.

But maybe the Occupiers have some brilliant plan they are sitting on that will allow everyone to enjoy the finer things in life that doesn’t involve the kind of heavy-handed government regulation of private industry that has proven to be a disastrous folly every time it has been attempted. I’ll be waiting patiently for them to come up with an economic model that works better in practice (and not just in theory) than free-market capitalism. But I’m not holding my breath.