The first casualty of âfairnessâ is the truth
Posted at 10:00 AM ET, 01/31/2012
By Jennifer Rubin
You know what you donât see much of these days? Those moist-eyed bloggersâ odes to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Gosh, remember the columns telling us these people had a noble political agenda? Seems like just yesterday the lefty bloggers were picking through polls, telling us the American people embraced the OWS gang. But then protest turned to filth, and high-mindedness turned out to be just plain-old stench.
To write such loving tributes to OWS took extraordinary discipline, I suppose. Not to actually look (or smell) and determine who the real Occupiers (as opposed to the Occupiers refashioned for the readers of the New York Times and the Nation) were must have taken real will-power, especially since the encampments in major cities (as in the District) were only a few blocks from the journalistsâ offices. Had they taken a peek or inhaled on the way to work they would have discovered the real Occupy movement.
Zack Munson reports: âThere are lots of bearded folks (male and female), lots of dirty tents, some college students, the unemployed, the career homeless, some white people dancing out of rhythm to rock music played over a loudspeaker. The âmovementâ itself is still a jumble of anti-capitalist/police/government rhetoric and pointless noise and pungent smells.â Oh, well, who wants to write about that?
Now the movement is increasingly violent and destructive (shocking, I know, for people who decry private property and want to confiscate wealth and outlaw corporations). The Los Angeles Times reports on the latest in Oakland, Calif.:
So much for the movement for the 99 percent. So much for the idea that this was the leftâs answer to the peaceful, law-abiding Tea Party movement.
Where now are the liberal elites who cooed and cheered the mobs? Why, they are silent. Theyâve moved on. They always do. And down the memory hole goes the fawning and the pretending that OWS was something other than what it is â violent rabble.
The left has now gone on to greener pastures, fanning the flames of class envy and trying to convince us that the wealthy donât pay more than the rest of us in taxes (they do, by a lot) and that if we tax Warren Buffett weâll have enough to keep spending away on social programs (it wouldnât make a dent in the debt, actually). You see, when youâre in search of âfairness,â facts are a nuisance. If youâre after âfairnessâ (to get their money do we have to work as hard as the people who earned the money?), OWS rabble are the âoppressed middle class,â and the rich make the rest of us poor, pay less in taxes than the middle class and could, if they didnât keep so much of their own money (or give it away to charity) solve our fiscal problems in a flash.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-is-the-truth/2012/01/30/gIQA2VYneQ_blog.html
Posted at 10:00 AM ET, 01/31/2012
By Jennifer Rubin
You know what you donât see much of these days? Those moist-eyed bloggersâ odes to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Gosh, remember the columns telling us these people had a noble political agenda? Seems like just yesterday the lefty bloggers were picking through polls, telling us the American people embraced the OWS gang. But then protest turned to filth, and high-mindedness turned out to be just plain-old stench.
To write such loving tributes to OWS took extraordinary discipline, I suppose. Not to actually look (or smell) and determine who the real Occupiers (as opposed to the Occupiers refashioned for the readers of the New York Times and the Nation) were must have taken real will-power, especially since the encampments in major cities (as in the District) were only a few blocks from the journalistsâ offices. Had they taken a peek or inhaled on the way to work they would have discovered the real Occupy movement.
Zack Munson reports: âThere are lots of bearded folks (male and female), lots of dirty tents, some college students, the unemployed, the career homeless, some white people dancing out of rhythm to rock music played over a loudspeaker. The âmovementâ itself is still a jumble of anti-capitalist/police/government rhetoric and pointless noise and pungent smells.â Oh, well, who wants to write about that?
Now the movement is increasingly violent and destructive (shocking, I know, for people who decry private property and want to confiscate wealth and outlaw corporations). The Los Angeles Times reports on the latest in Oakland, Calif.:
Officials surveyed damage Sunday from a volatile Occupy protest that resulted in hundreds of arrests the day before and left the historic City Hall vandalized after demonstrators broke into the building, smashed display cases, cut electrical wires and burned an American flag.
Police placed the number of arrests at about 400 from Saturdayâs daylong protest â the most contentious since authorities dismantled the Occupy Oakland encampment late last year.
Mayor Jean Quan condemned the local movementâs tactics as âa constant provocation of the police with a lot of violence toward themâ and said the demonstrations were draining scarce resources from an already strapped city. Damage to the City Hall plaza alone has cost $2 million since October, she said, about as much as police overtime and mutual aid.
So much for the movement for the 99 percent. So much for the idea that this was the leftâs answer to the peaceful, law-abiding Tea Party movement.
Where now are the liberal elites who cooed and cheered the mobs? Why, they are silent. Theyâve moved on. They always do. And down the memory hole goes the fawning and the pretending that OWS was something other than what it is â violent rabble.
The left has now gone on to greener pastures, fanning the flames of class envy and trying to convince us that the wealthy donât pay more than the rest of us in taxes (they do, by a lot) and that if we tax Warren Buffett weâll have enough to keep spending away on social programs (it wouldnât make a dent in the debt, actually). You see, when youâre in search of âfairness,â facts are a nuisance. If youâre after âfairnessâ (to get their money do we have to work as hard as the people who earned the money?), OWS rabble are the âoppressed middle class,â and the rich make the rest of us poor, pay less in taxes than the middle class and could, if they didnât keep so much of their own money (or give it away to charity) solve our fiscal problems in a flash.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-is-the-truth/2012/01/30/gIQA2VYneQ_blog.html