Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Wall Street Occupiers Party Like It's 1789



Anyone who has watched the videos of the Wall Street Occupiers has to ask themselves why they didn’t employ a decent sound system. Instead, the leaders shout from a platform and the sheep bleat thrice. I don’t know if this is some sort of psychological tactic to endear the mob. I guess the “leaders” want the protestors to believe they’re participants in the democratic process.

But what can’t be mistaken is their message of class warfare and sense of entitlement. Earlier today, they marched on millionaires’ row demanding more money through taxation:

Occupy Wall Street protesters are heading uptown Tuesday to get in the face of some of New York's richest tycoons.

A "Millionaires March" will visit the homes - or, more realistically, the gleaming marble lobbies - of five of the city's wealthiest residents, including News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and conservative billionaire David Koch.

Marchers want to present the moguls with oversize checks to dramatize how much less they will pay when New York State's 2% tax on millionaires expires in December.

"Ninety-nine percent of the residents of New York are going to suffer from this tax giveaway so the 1% who already live in absolute luxury can put more money in their pockets," said Doug Forand, one of the march organizers.

"This is fiscally, economically and morally wrong."

The Wall Street Occupiers remind me a lot of the mobs during the French Revolution, and not just because of their rabid hatred of the bourgeoisie, but because of their style of governance, which is by general assembly or committee. History has shown us that this veneer of democracy can quickly degenerate into a horror.

It was the Committee of Public Safety that brought about the Reign of Terror, ending with the beheadings of their leaders: Danton and Robespierre. France was drenched in blood and it didn’t stop until the mobs lust for vengeance was satiated.

Here is an excerpt from Citizens a Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama. You decide if the Occupiers have the same mentality as their French counterparts of 1788 & 1789:

Many of those whose violence in 1788 and 1789 had made Paris ungovernable, and thus allowed the Revolution to succeed, had never been much enamored of economic liberalism or individualism. Much of their anger had been a reaction against the unpredictable and impersonal operation of the market. They had clung to the traditional mind-set which saw in price rises and shortages the operation of a “famine plot” and, so far from wanting the state to dismantle all customary protection, wanted more interventionist policy.

And as for personal property rights:

Robespierre’s speech the previous autumn, suggesting that property rights were not absolute but limited by a responsibility not to hurt the subsistence of others, opened the way for a serious change of heart among a section of the Jacobins themselves. Attacks on “riches egoistes” and “bloodsuckers,” and proposals for progressive taxes and forced levies on the rich to subsidize public-relief works and the price ceilings became commonplace.

I’m just waiting for an Occupier to display someone’s head on pike. Oh wait a second:



Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/10/10/2011-10-10_occupy_wall_street_protesters_can_stay_in_zuccotti_park_indefinitely_says_mayor_.html

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