Saturday, November 5, 2011

"For What It's Worth", cont.

The indispensable Mark Steyn reports on the, uh, progress of "Occupy place city name here".

A few weeks back, to the tune of that old Buffalo Springfield song, I blogged that this spasm ("movement" implies a direction, a goal) could only help conservatives and the GOP win back the government.  My worry was that as a spasm--maybe tic is better--it would run too quickly out of energy.

Well, it hasn't, and, as Steyn points out in this paragraph, its spread has actually been quite useful.
I don’t “stand with the 99%,” and certainly not downwind of them. But I’m all for their “occupation” continuing on its merry way. It usefully clarifies the stakes. At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement’s aims: They’re anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life — just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth. What’s happening in Oakland is a logical exercise in class solidarity: The government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class, and the criminal class in order to stick it to what’s left of the beleaguered productive class. It’s a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. Only the criminal class is reasonably upfront about this. The rest — the lifetime legislators, the unions defending lavish and unsustainable benefits, the “scholars” whiling away a somnolent half decade at Complacency U — are obliged to dress it up a little with some hooey about “social justice” and whatnot. (my emphasis)

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