The Occupy Wall Street movement appears to be growing.\u00a0 And it is growing ever more disruptive.<\/p>\n
From the losses suffered by many a small business to the desecration of property, from the destabilization of communities to violent clashes with law enforcement officers, the phenomenon simply known as \u201cOccupy Wall Street\u201d (OWS) is becoming a force to be reckoned with in cities across America\u2014and beyond.<\/p>\n
As it turns out, there is no small measure of self-identified \u201clibertarians\u201d who populate the ranks of the Wall Street \u201coccupiers.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
For instance, the libertarian-friendly website, lewrockwell.com, features a couple of youtube videos of a \u201cCaptain Midnight,\u201d a self-declared Ron Paul supporter currently \u201coccupying\u201d Wall Street.\u00a0 The well known site lavishes praise upon this young man for the eloquence with which he articulates his case for abolishing the Federal Reserve as well as his familiarity with such libertarian figures as Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard, and Lew Rockwell himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are still other sympathetic postings regarding OWS to be found at lewrockwell.com.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In \u201cWhat OWS is all about, Herman,\u201d Michael S. Rozeff blasts Herman Cain for disparaging the \u201coccupiers\u201d of Wall Street while aligning himself with \u201cthe establishment\u201d and opposing \u201cchange.\u201d\u00a0 In \u201cLet Them Eat Keller,\u201d Michael Scheer takes New York Times <\/em>Executive Editor Bill Keller to task for being critical of OWS.\u00a0 Scheer charges Keller with being consumed by \u201cthe arrogance of disoriented royal privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n Over at the Raleigh Libertarian Examiner, <\/em>in \u201cDefining the Occupy Wall Street Movement,\u201d Brian Irving likens OWS to the Tea Party movement inasmuch as it is supposedly comprised mainly of folks who have, justifiably, lost faith in their government.\u00a0 He notes differences\u2014namely, the Tea Partiers attribute blame to \u201ccorrupt politicians and an overbearing government\u201d while Wall Street \u201coccupiers,\u201d though disgusted with politicians, hold as well \u201ccorporations\u201d responsible for our ills.\u00a0 Still,Irving tries to reveal the ideological diversity of OWS by pointing out that among its constituents are unabashed Ron Paul supporters parading signs that read \u201cEnd the Fed\u201d and \u201cRon Paul for President.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And libertarian Jesse Ventura has recently made an appearance at OWS.<\/p>\n Speaking as a certain kind of libertarian, albeit, a conservative <\/em>libertarian, I find all of this more than a bit disturbing.<\/p>\n Unlike their leftist comrades-in-arms, the dragon upon which the aforementioned libertarians set their sights is not \u201ccapitalism\u201d per se, but \u201ccrony capitalism.\u201d\u00a0 It isn\u2019t the lack <\/em>of regulation and the allegedly laissez faire <\/em>manner in which Wall Street bankers pursue their \u201cobscene\u201d profits that arouse their anger but, rather, the fact that these bankers are in cahoots with a corrupt government that continued propping them up with tax payers\u2019 dollars long after they should have folded.<\/p>\n The libertarian\u2019s anger is warranted, for sure.\u00a0 Corporate welfare is as immoral an enterprise for the government of a civil association to embark upon as is taxpayer-subsidized welfare of any sort.\u00a0 And it isn\u2019t just immoral but unconstitutional <\/em>for the federal <\/em>government of the United States of America to do such a thing.\u00a0 But this being so, it seems obvious that libertarians\u2014and, for that matter, every member of the movement in question\u2014have selected for themselves the wrong stage on which to enact their displays of outrage: if territory must be \u201coccupied,\u201d it is not the financial capital of the world that should be seized, but the capital of the nation.<\/p>\n In short, it is the government that makes corporate welfare and \u201ccrony capitalism\u201d possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n So, the first error on the part of these libertarians is one that they share with the leftists of their movement.\u00a0 If we had to give it a name, we may call it \u201csymbolic confusion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Regrettably, this is far from the only intellectual transgression of which the libertarians of OWS are culpable, and perhaps the least serious.<\/p>\n Leftists despise the system of private property that America\u2019s Founding Fathers bequeathed to their posterity\u2014what they crudely call \u201ccapitalism.\u201d\u00a0 Thus, it is eminently sensible that they should throw such intellectual virtues as honesty and consistency to the wind in ignoring the principle role played by government in bringing about the economic collapse of 2008 and the exorbitant bailouts that ensued in order to target Wall Street.\u00a0<\/p>\n But libertarians are champions of free markets.\u00a0 Libertarians know that America has been able to emerge as the preeminent economic super power of the world for the same exact reason that it has been able to emerge as \u201cthe <\/em>land of the free\u201d: its severely limited <\/em>government.\u00a0 It is the liberty thatAmerica\u2019s constitutional arrangements secure for her citizens that gives rise to its standing as an economic powerhouse, and it is Wall Street that has been about as glaring a signifier of this as anything else.<\/p>\n What this implies is that in participating in OWS, libertarians actually undercut their own deepest convictions.\u00a0 It has been said that a picture is worth more than a thousand words.\u00a0 In politics, even if in few precincts beyond that, this is actually an understatement, for there, a single picture is worth more than thousands and thousands and thousands of words.\u00a0 By openly railing against America\u2019s financial institutions, libertarians, then, reveal themselves to the world to be of one mind with socialists and communists\u2014i.e. their mortal nemeses.\u00a0 Like leftists, they appear to be saying that the pursuit of one\u2019s material self-interests and the freedom from an intrusive government that renders this pursuit possible are the enemies of all that is True, Good, and Beautiful.<\/p>\n Again, a lover of liberty need not be a fan of the banking class in order for this point to resonate with him.\u00a0 Nor must he regard Wall Street as the only, or even the most accurate, symbol of American economic liberty.\u00a0 The point, simply, is that from the perspective of the rest of the planet, the streets ofAmericamay not literally be paved with gold, but they are worth an awful lot\u2014a fact owing to their proximity to the Mother of all streets: Wall Street.\u00a0 Furthermore, even in reality, the staggering affluence that Wall Street emblematizes is the product, not of the federal government, but of entrepreneurs and other laborious enterprisers.<\/p>\n In \u201coccupying\u201d Wall Street along with hordes of the despisers of liberty, the libertarian, ironically, sweeps his own legs out from under himself.\u00a0 His actions invite\u2014no, demand\u2014greater concentrations of government to deal with \u201cthe greed\u201d and \u201ccorruption\u201d of bankers.\u00a0 In so doing, he calls for an even greater diminution of individual liberty.\u00a0<\/p>\n The leftist may be intellectually and morally bankrupt, but at least he knows what he wants and doesn\u2019t hesitate to pursue it\u2014by whichever means necessary.\u00a0 On the other hand, the libertarian of OWS has proven himself to be the most useful of idiots.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at American Thinker<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Occupy Wall Street movement appears to be growing.\u00a0 And it is growing ever more disruptive. From the losses suffered by many a small business to the desecration of property, from the destabilization of communities to violent clashes with law enforcement officers, the phenomenon simply known as \u201cOccupy Wall Street\u201d (OWS) is becoming a force…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n