OWS Just Gets Better and Better

I wasn't going to do another piece on the "Occupy Wall Street" (OWS) crowd, because I believe it is a disgusting temper tantrum put on by children who don't have to gumption to get a degree in mathematics, physics, chemistry, or engineering. They didn't have the gumption to go to trade school and become a machinist, a carpenter, a brick layer, or one of thousands of jobs that need doing. No, instead we have a bunch of kids who major in some sort of "studies" like transgendered studies, womyn studies, or black studies, or, well, pick an irrelevant topic. Or they go to film school. How many film school graduates do we need? Hasn't anyone noticed that the most successful films were done before there were film schools? Has anyone noticed that today the movies consist of a lot of remakes of older classic films? I refer to such wastes of time and money as getting a degree in basket weaving.

Mark Steyn, writing at the National Review Online has a piece, American Autumn written in his usual pithy style with all the irony and sarcasm he is noted for when commenting on the cultural scene. Mark Steyn:

Who was Steve Jobs? Well, he was a guy who founded a corporation and spent his life as a corporate executive manufacturing corporate products. So he wouldn’t have endeared himself to the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd, even though, underneath the patchouli and lentils, most of them are abundantly accessorized with iPhones and iPads and iPods loaded with iTunes, if only for when the drum circle goes for a bathroom break.


The above is a somewhat obvious point, although the fact that it’s not obvious even to protesters with an industrial-strength lack of self-awareness is a big part of the problem. But it goes beyond that: If you don’t like to think of Jobs as a corporate exec (and a famously demanding one at that), think of him as a guy who went to work, and worked hard. There’s no appetite for that among those “occupying” Zuccotti Park. In the old days, the tribunes of the masses demanded an honest wage for honest work. Today, the tribunes of America’s leisured varsity class demand a world that puts “people before profits.” If the specifics of their “program” are somewhat contradictory, the general vibe is consistent: They wish to enjoy an advanced Western lifestyle without earning an advanced Western living. The pampered, elderly children of a fin de civilisation overdeveloped world, they appear to regard life as an unending vacation whose bill never comes due.

The problem is that too many people see nothing wrong with mooching off the "system," indeed, demanding more. But the "system" consists of you and me. If you take, it necessarily comes out of my pocket. That is theft, pure and simple. Oh, and by the way, I include corporate welfare and subsides in my condemnation. The "too big to fail" banks and auto companies, the Solyndras, Big Oil, the sugar growers, the corn growers, and on, and on, and on. What is wrong with America is not "the corporations" per se, but the fact that governments have insisted on picking winners and losers. Nobody needs to pick a winner in the case of iPad; the market picks it for you. To the degree that some bankers have committed crimes, I believe some of them should be serving time. But I also believe there are a few Congressmen who also should be serving time with them. Just sayin'.

Now, it appears that at least some of the protesters at OWS maybe paid to protest by a political party. Ms. Pelosi, call your office...

Update:  Francis Porretto, over at Eternity Road has more on the evil being paraded before the American public at The Writing on the Wall. Porretto paints a picture of the United States once again returning to a pre-industrial age. Romantics think that such a way of life would be peachy. In reality, it would be quite horrific. In the pre-industrial period, and indeed right up to the closing years of the 19th Century, most children did not live to the age of three. Those that survived that long could look forward to a hard scrabble life in which most people were used up by age 35. Girls as young as 10-12 had babies (because they if they didn't, they probably wouldn't live long enough to raise them), and huge numbers of women died in child birth. Boys of 15 years a age were already working and had little time for an education. Just think of Afghanistan, only worse. To give you a standard by which to measure, consider that today, the poorest American lives a materially better life than George Washington or Thomas Jefferson did. Now consider what it will be like if these cretins have their way.