Monday, October 17, 2011

Centrally Planned Leftist Protests Fizzle


Centrally Planned Leftist Protests Fizzle
by Mark Luedtke

The leftists are desperate, angry and jealous. The 20th century will go down in history as the century in which socialism produced the most war casualties and mass murder in human history. The Marxists, socialists and hardcore leftists were forced into the closet. They’ve been planning and organizing behind the scenes, quietly infecting the environmentalist movement and our health care system as well as every other sector of our economy. They control both political parties. By printing money, raising taxes, increasing spending, increasing debt, increasing regulations and fighting never-ending wars, they’ve driven our economy into a new depression, but they haven’t been able to come out of the closet and make their socialist demands in protests like they did last century.

When the tea party exploded on the scene after the TARP bailouts, the leftists were shocked and angered. It was practically unheard of for people to protest for smaller government. For the entire 20th century, the leftists had the protest scene all to themselves. That’s because people who wanted smaller government had jobs. They couldn’t protest because they had to work. But the people on welfare had plenty of time on their hands to protest for bigger handouts. The welfare state, by design, produces ready-made protesters for bigger government. But after the economic collapse in 2008, lots of newly unemployed people had time to protest for smaller government.

The grass roots Tea Party movement adopted the protest tactic and did it better than the leftists. They gained press coverage and political power then used that power at the ballot box to thwart the leftist agenda.

That isn’t what the leftist central planners had planned. They had been following the playbooks of Marxist agitators Saul Alinsky and Cloward and Piven. These Marxists developed plans for collapsing a capitalist economy under the burden of government. The 2008 election cycle was supposed to be the culmination of all their efforts. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were Alinsky disciples. Obama had learned, taught and implemented Alinsky’s tactics his entire adult life working for ACORN. Clinton had written her senior thesis praising Alinsky. Regardless of who won the primary, because George Bush was so unpopular and John McCain was such a terrible candidate, leftist leaders were assured of putting one of their own in the White House.

And President Obama has done his part. He hired a bunch of leftist czars to amass as much power in the White House as possible. He dramatically increased the burden of government on Americans, ensuring our economy continues to go downhill. He increased spending from 20 percent of GDP to 25 percent. He exploded government debt. He piled on dozens of major, expensive regulations, to further cripple our economy. He escalated our wars. He worked with union leaders to organize unemployed youths for protests.

But despite the best efforts of the leftist central planners, no leftists protested. In frustration, President Obama finally instructed his supporters to quit whining and march when he spoke to the Congressional Black Caucus a couple weeks ago.

So they did, and the Occupy Wall Street movement was born. It’s terrifying that Republicans, Democrats and the people who vote for them, working together using a divide and conquer strategy to grow the size and scope of government year after year, have dragged America so far toward Marxism that we now have Marxist president directing Marxist protests from the White House.

The most surprising aspect of the Occupy protests is how anemic they are compared to the muscular Tea Parties. When I attended the first the Dayton Tea Party on Courthouse Square a couple of years ago, the Square was packed. I estimated 3,000 people attended. Saturday around 100 people reportedly attended the Occupy Dayton event. Organizers in DC have to pay protesters. Also the Occupy Wall Street protests have been marred by typical leftist violence and racism in stark contrast to the Tea Parties. Another interesting aspect is the blatant hypocrisy of protesters wearing Nike shoes, Levi’s jeans, Gap shirts and Proctor & Gamble makeup, carrying Apple iPhones and Eddie Bauer bags and taking pictures with Canon cameras protesting corporations.

Some criticize the protesters for lack of a coherent message or demands. That’s because they can’t say what they really want. If they say they support Marxism or want more government handouts, they lose all credibility. So they make vague demands for a living wage and social justice. Ultimately these protests will remind the great mainstream of American people of the moral bankruptcy of leftists.

The saddest part is the protesters are right to be angry that government bailed out Wall Street. That’s what galvanized the Tea Party. But these protesters draw the wrong conclusions. The corporations didn’t steal our money for the bailouts. The government did. If a dad took the piggy bank from one child and gave it to another, nobody would blame the child. We’d blame the dad because he had all the power, and he stole the money. In our case, the government has all the power, it stole our money, and we should blame it.

What these leftists don’t understand is that corporate power comes from the government. Corporations have no ability to rob us on their own. The bigger the government gets, the more wealth it funnels into the hands of the few. The bigger government advocated by the Occupy protesters would make the wealth disparity worse, not better, because the bigger the government grows, the bigger and wealthier corporations and special interests grow. The solution is to dramatically reduce the size and scope of government so wealth will flow back to the people.

No comments:

Post a Comment