Mark America

Can You Tell The Difference?

The left wing media is doing its level best to portray the Occupy Wall Street movement as being the younger version of the Tea Party.  Their assertion rests on the notion that the OWS folk are “really all about the same things.”  This is a lie.  The two groups have nothing in common; not in tactics, conduct, mindset or intentions.  The truth is revealed by the fact that the Democrat Party couldn’t wait to denounce the Tea Party, but they can’t wait to embrace the Occupiers.  Had even a handful of Tea Party folks behaved in a manner akin to what we’ve seen from the Occupiers, the media would have spent even more time defaming them.  Remember the lies: “The Tea Party is a bunch of angry, old white people motivated by racism who hate the government.”   These had been the basic talking points in media.  Oddly, there is no media caricature of the Occupiers, although one has developed among Americans without media assistance: “Occupy Wall Street is a bunch of anti-capitalist ne’er-do-wells, revolutionaries, and they are dominated by antisemitic and leftist thugs.”  The American people see the difference even if the media deny it.

The Tea Party arose out of a frustration with runaway government spending under the one-party domination of the Democrats, who in 2009 found themselves in control of all branches of government.  The Tea Party consists of people from all walks of life who are indeed a bit more mature on average than the Occupiers.  It shows in their conduct as well as in their stated goals.  Their intention has been to elect people who will respect the constitution and its limitations on government.  Their rallies have been entirely peaceful, and police have never had to arrest them.  They filed for and received permits, they observed local ordinances, and they otherwise conducted themselves in a manner aimed at avoiding becoming an inconvenience to the communities in which they were protesting.  When their events completed, they picked up the grounds, and they left every venue cleaner than they found it.  Their organizers generally had made accommodations for sanitary purposes available, and there was no trail of filth left in their wake.  When their protests and rallies were concluded, they went peacefully back to their lives as Americans.  While many of them have serious disagreements with the cronyism in Washington DC that spreads its tentacles into the private sector, they nevertheless believe in the American Republic as established, and the great boon to humanity that is capitalism.  They have been self-funded, self-organized, and self-directed.  Let’s be clear:  The Tea Party is a real political organization, if a bit diffuse, but nevertheless aimed at actual political change, and they’ve had some substantial success.

Contrast this with the Occupiers who are younger on average, have no electoral goals to speak of, and instead seem to be vague in their ideas about what it is they are after.  There is a mix of ideologies present, but the main body is decidedly leftist, and decidedly anti-capitalist.  The only part of the constitution they seem to value is the First Amendment’s protections of free speech and peaceful assembly, while they test the legal limits of those rights at every turn.  They seem not to have noticed that somebody is funding their activities, and that those food deliveries are coming from somewhere.  They seem not to realize that they’re being directed and organized by people who aren’t present, and never will be.  In their encampments, there have been rapes, beatings, stabbings, shootings, widespread drug use, every possible form of public lewdness, and a general disrespect for law, private property, and the communities in which they have taken up their occupations.

Their ideology is so vague on its surface that all you can discern is that they’re unhappy about something, and it seems to arise from a sort of general hatred of big businesses, banks, and their executives, but they can’t tell you anything about which they’re upset in concrete terms.  Instead, they whine about millionaires and billionaires while some people of that precise description send them lunch.   They don’t have a goal, but their leadership is going to give them one:  Anarchy and revolution.  The Occupy Wall Street movement has been nothing but a sham and a front for anti-American, anti-Capitalist, anti-freedom Marxists, and these poor dolts, most of them educated since the fall of the Soviet Union, don’t have any clue what that really means.  If they have any interest in elections, they haven’t indicated it.  I have seen no talk of electing “Occupiers to Congress.”  They’re not capable of that.

The glib leftists in the media now tell us: “Well, both groups are anti-establishment.”  Really?  Which establishment?  The Tea Party is against the political establishment in Washington DC, the unofficial institution that has corrupted the US Constitution.  They’re against a DC establishment that spends their money like water.  They’re against the Republican establishment, that too often dominates that party with its interests.  The Occupiers oppose a different establishment:  The establishments of private property as expressed in corporations, profits, earnings, and business.  In short, the establishment that the Occupiers oppose is the establishment created by the US Constitution.  Neither can they redistribute wealth nearly so well as they would like, nor can they steal by law so easily as long as the establishment of the civil society and the rule of law remain in place.  The establishment their leadership hopes to undo is the that bulwark of law that our founders erected.  The establishment the Tea Party opposes is the corruption of government and capitalism intended to destroy the Constitution.

Following the aims of the Occupiers would lead us to overthrow the US Constitution.  Following the goals of the Tea Party would permit us to uphold and defend it and even to restore it.  This is no small distinction, and it’s key to the left’s endless propaganda in favor of the Occupiers:  They want an end to this country as you have known it, and they are working diligently to bring it about.  The Occupiers have almost nothing in common with the Tea Party except in the most superficial sense:  They’re both protest movements, and they both oppose some establishment, but the character of their protests and the nature of the establishments against which they rally are very nearly perfectly and diametrically opposed.  They couldn’t be more different.  After spending the last three years hammering the Tea Party, you might now ask why the media is trying to link the Occupiers to them.  The answer is simple: They’ve done their polling research and found that the American people have more positive regard for the Tea Party, but have very rapidly realized the Occupy Wall Street movement is nonsense.  They’re also trying to create a false equivalence for another purpose:  To make the two interchangeable in the minds of Americans.  Thankfully, the vast bulk of the American people are not that stupid, and that notion simply will not sell.  The American people have seen the difference.  It’s too late to pretend otherwise.