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Dear Mr. Rutherford
I'm a recent subscriber to your email list, and although I am not in 100% agreement with you on everything, I am impressed that there are “conservatives” out there who remember what the term is supposed to mean.
I do wish to take issue with one statement in today’s (31/10/11) email, however. You state that
“… what the Occupy movement's "We are the 99%" motto fails to recognize is that the problems we face have to do with much more than economic inequality between the haves and the have nots. Similarly, the Tea Party, which started off with similar zeal, failed to recognize that the problem was not merely Big Government but, rather, the merger of Big Government with Big Business.” http://www.rutherford.org/articles_db/commentary.asp?record_id=738
Whilst I agree that the slogan itself creates this impression, it is by no means true of the OWS’s core activists. I have followed this process closely since day one, and I can tell you that the core demand of the OWS is to break up the corporate state you describe so well. The “99% vs. 1%” slogan is intended to appeal to the folks out there, like the Tea Partiers, who really don’t understand how the interpenetration of Big Money and Big State has brought us to this pass. But I can assure you, there is a very keen recognition within OWS that no single demand will make a difference, because the only demand that matters is that the way decisions are made in this country needs to change.
I encourage you to read some of the links below to see for yourself that consciousness that the Corporate State is the #1 problem is well-developed in the OWS.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/david-graeber-on-playing-by-the-rules-%E2%80%93-the-strange-success-of-occupy-wall-street.html
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/first_official_statement_from_the_occupy_wall_street_movement/
http://coupmedia.org/occupywallstreet/occupy-wall-street-official-demands-2009
sincerely,
Ted
John Whitehead,
It sounds like we need to quit asking government to provide food, clothing, housing, good jobs, and anything else except national security and then take upon ourselves all of the things we ought be providing ourselves. If we want even one thing beyond the most bare minimum from the government, it will cost the government money. And that's where the government gets its power: in the name of saving money to do the most good, it can control every aspect of every life. Only when what we want doesn't require government money, when government is not at all in the business of any kind of charity whatsoever, will we escape its grip.
However, the message I hear from others is two fold: why is the government wasting money when it could be helping the poor AND government is controlling us too much. It doesn't make any sense to me that government would be criticized for spending billions on a war except in the context that it robs the people of their personal resources they would otherwise have to take on poverty and health care on their own. Instead, however, the very criticisms of government spending on wars or bail outs are not aimed to get the government out of charity but to actually just redirect itself more to hand outs than war clubs. But this misses the point.
I don't know that I even get from your writing the clarity that government has no business being the individual, acting moral on our behalf. I think the message is that we the people need to take on all the stuff ourselves, and do so privately. And for those who say, "yes, but government is more predictable and can ensure everything equally for all", we have to come back to "only by controlling everything for all". Why do I not hear this message coming clearly from your writings. I've only heard the misdirection of spending, and about American complacency. Where is the clarion call regarding America's relying on themselves, and how the only way to get government out of our lives is to quit relying on and asking them for "stuff", no matter how good it is.
I see no other alternative than that as long as people want their benefits, then the mob, the masses, will attempt to support government efforts to "make em", to force corporations to behave in such a way as to provide what people want, whether it be taxing the rich, penalizing overweight people, you name it. It is our own greed that is killing us.
To make matters worse, in our arrogance, we talk only of our own nation's health care and what ought to be basic rights. However, you hear no one saying, "We are taking the whole boat up, everyone in the world up, at the same time." No, we want rich benefits because we're arrogantly America's and deserve it and them rich people owe us. However, to the rest of the third world, we are the rich and if the rich owe the poor, where are the mirrors we should be seeing ourselves in as someone else's rich.
Mainly, where is the message that we need to immediately stop trying to get social security, education, grants, and everything else from government and do it ourselves at the most local level. You need some things done by government, but not by coercion. People are just not content. Sometimes, it is the do-gooders that do the most dictatorial thing. The "make-em" mentally is hard to bear any longer. If it is the fact that the government, in the interest of efficiency with resources, has the moral imperfection to reduce costs and thus control everything, that is causing our problems.
When will we wake up to our own greed and say We the People are the problem. Just like a store whose prices we don't like, or like high-paid athletes or entertainers: when you don't want them to be paid that, quit feeding the systems that create those pay scales. Quit asking the government for anything, take care of all social issues privately. To do otherwise gives the government fiat power to control everything in the name of money otherwise. Efficiency and promised benefits, therefore, becomes the Trojan Horse of Plenty offered to all the masses, whereby we invite more "make-em" style dictating to "others" not realizing it is actually and always "us".
Bill
while your commentary talks about a police state, which would normally mean a highly centralized state, what is disturbing in these actions is the actions describe are done by local law enforcement and it is now common for policemen to refer to fellow citizens as civilians.
John Whitehead, you are way off base on this subject. The OWS are anarchists without any solutions to the capitalism system that is sorely in need of repair.
The socialist ideas, where in GOVERNMENT is in control and has the right answers for all the people, is wrong. It can only lead to tyranny, without the benefits
we now enjoy. No one has yet has suggested;, buy one share of corporate stock, go to stockholders meeting and ask for a "better dividend", controls on executive pay, when profits arise from foreign manufacture, then restrict executive pay to the foreign pay scales.
you write about the most interesting stuff. as a community development specialist, i have been addressing, researching, analyzing components ot education, employment, housing, healthcare services within framework of economic sustainability in these federated republican states of this us of a.
i support the democratic peoples' efforts to control more greatly the intergovernmental process over which they exercise the popular vote.
not surprisingly, i consider the registered voter the benchmark of this process, without which input none of the occupying forces currently sitting as representatives can claim no right to exist.
i think the time for evolving our democracy beyond supporting the oligarchy, plutocracy that has become the working government/business agenda and evidenced to be in effect since the nation itself was formed predating the disaster of the great depression and subsequent contrivances by these two entities to 'get the money'.
as one who supports participatory democracy, i advocate that all elective, appointive, political civil service positions on all levels of government-local/regional/state/federal-keeping the salaries in place be filled with registered voters whose names are selected at random to serve two year terms, non-recurrent, non-concurrent in all such government positions.
i believe its time to occupy government for its own good and ours.
Mr. Whitehead,
I couldn't agree more that the melding of of government and corporations into an increasingly fascist state is not only dangerous, but unchecked will surely be the end of America.
Yet, the particular #Occupy protests of which you are speaking, I can hardly see as "encouraging'. When one considers the backers, supporter, financiers of this so-called "movement", it is highly suspect. When one considers the apparent motivations of greed, of slackards, of those who want to blame someone else and assume no personal reponsibility, who want both 'freedom' and for 'stuff to be free for all', it's hard to see much to truly like and support. And it would seem to me that much of their anger and directed frustrations, resentments, and protest is aimed at the wrong targets.
The cronyism of Obama and Wall Street, the bail-outs, the favoritism, the marriage of the high rolling financial world with the administration and with many in Congress is where the rage needs to be directed. Really, Wall Street and business does what business does. The problem is what our elected representatives are doing with them and giving to them. That, to me, is what needs "occupying".
Mr. Whitehead, I like your "contrarian" columns. But please do not romanticize "Occupy America" It at times is showing itself to be a bunch of thugs, disrespectful of neutral laws, democracy and good order. When it shuts down a port, it keeps many of the 99% from earning their daily bread. Such conduct deserves firm response that is not necessarily "fascist."
Tuesday night local activists shut down the City Council meeting in Long Beach, CA—the democratically elected local body—by using 1960's-style anachronistic, disruptive, threatening language and actions. This group claims to use "civil disobedience" in order to break city ordinances preventing all-night camping in local parks—rules that apply to everyone and serve public health and good order. Thus, they show ignorance of classic civil disobedience. What "unjust laws" are they breaking that deny natural rights to some while showing favoritism to others?
When they block legal freedom of movement they are a form of kidnappers. When they prevent legitimate earning, they are robbers. When they stop democratic, civil discourse they are storm troopers.
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