America Occupy Wall Street has been celebrated by many in the media and the Democratic party as a legitimate counter to the tea party. All of the accusations that were wrongfully hurled at the tea party—from bigotry to violent tendencies—now seem to be occurring regularly at OWS protests. Yet they are ignored in deference to the supposed morally superiority of this new movement. Van Jones, formerly an environmental advisor to President Barack Obama, says we should ignore OWS defects because "they've got moral clarity." Even Mr. Obama has said that "the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works."
Who knows, maybe cognitive dissonance is a good political strategy for the left. Can the king of crony capitalism win reelection having codified "too big to fail" into law? Can Congressional Democrats, having spent the past two years attaching Republicans to so-called "tea party extremism," now embrace without consequence the radical demands, blatant anti-Semitism, violence and property damage of OWS?
Progressives' burning desire to create a tea party of the left may be clouding their judgment. Even Mr. Jones has grudgingly conceded that tea partiers have out-crowd-sourced, out-organized, and out-performed the most sophisticated community organizers on the left. "Here's the irony," he said back in July. "They talk rugged individualist, but they act collectively." He and his colleagues don't seem to understand that communities can't exist without respect for individual freedom. They can't imagine how it is that millions of people located in disparate places with unique knowledge of their communities and circumstances can voluntarily cooperate and coordinate, creating something far greater and more valuable than any one individual could have done alone.
In the world of the contemporary Western left, someone needs to be in charge—a benevolent bureaucrat who knows better than you do. They can't help but build hierarchical structures—a General Assembly perhaps—because they don't understand how freedom works.
The Link
Who knows, maybe cognitive dissonance is a good political strategy for the left. Can the king of crony capitalism win reelection having codified "too big to fail" into law? Can Congressional Democrats, having spent the past two years attaching Republicans to so-called "tea party extremism," now embrace without consequence the radical demands, blatant anti-Semitism, violence and property damage of OWS?
Progressives' burning desire to create a tea party of the left may be clouding their judgment. Even Mr. Jones has grudgingly conceded that tea partiers have out-crowd-sourced, out-organized, and out-performed the most sophisticated community organizers on the left. "Here's the irony," he said back in July. "They talk rugged individualist, but they act collectively." He and his colleagues don't seem to understand that communities can't exist without respect for individual freedom. They can't imagine how it is that millions of people located in disparate places with unique knowledge of their communities and circumstances can voluntarily cooperate and coordinate, creating something far greater and more valuable than any one individual could have done alone.
In the world of the contemporary Western left, someone needs to be in charge—a benevolent bureaucrat who knows better than you do. They can't help but build hierarchical structures—a General Assembly perhaps—because they don't understand how freedom works.
The Link
