Less corruption, or more access?

There is an old joke which says “I either want less corruption or more access to it.” I see that as the main difference between Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and the Tea Party. The Tea Party wants less corruption, and OWS wants more access to it. OWS folks don’t think of it in such direct terms though. They just see the government handing out money to the big banks and the insiders, and they want their handouts, too.

The problem is that the government does not really create wealth, it just redistributes it. That means the money they are handing out has to be taken from somebody else. The Tea Party represents a lot of the middle class who suspect that the “somebody” who is going to be asked to pay all of the bills is them and their children. They wouldlike the government to leave more money in the hands of the people who earned it. So that’s our debate, should we try to end the looting, or should we try to use the government to loot each other?

Let’s have no more chatter about only wanting to tax “the rich.” The rich have the means to avoidconfiscatory taxes, including leaving the country.

Demagogues elected to loot “the rich” invariably wind up turning their gun on the middle class, simply because they are much easier to pillage.

I am not one of those to think that the young people at OWS events are some sort of nefarious enemy.

They are mostly confused young people who are angry about some of the same things I am angry about, but do not understand what to do about it. Some will be conservatives after 10 years working a steady job and having two kids anyway, so maybe talking to them now would speed up the process.

As a former public school teacher though, one aspect of this does seem familiar. Public schools have lost all sense of moral principle. Whoever makes the most noise, whoever complains the loudest and shows themselves able to cause the administration the most hassle, is “right”under our current system.

They are the ones that are appeased. They are the ones that the system accommodates. I believe that the young people out making noise and trying to hassle the government into giving them other people’s money have picked up on the feckless nature of our current public school system and are simply trying to stir up a stink in order to be the ones that are appeased.

The unwritten rules of the current government school model are that there are no fixed moral principles. Thus, there is little accountability for defiance and disrespect (and why should a young person respect such a system?).

Administrators mostly do what is easiest for them, and that’s accommodation of the trouble-makers at the expense of the rule-abiding. But the young people have been misled by their public school experience. The youth of OWS are currently learning the hard way that those rules do not apply to citizens who make trouble for the real source of power in this country. That would be the multi-national banks and the global corporations that have grown up aroundthem. The jack-boot of government force is truly reserved for citizens who challenge that power.

Whilst the government may coddle and accommodate ordinary criminals who only victimize ordinary citizens, they will use all means at their disposal to prevent citizens from taking action against the super-criminals who have set up our fraudulent financial system. As Cecily Barber has said, we are working harder and harder, when we can still find work, yet we are being systematically stripped of our wealth by a financial system which has been designed for that purpose.

The young protesters will find that while challenging your teachers brought no real consequences, challenging the real authorities will result in a night-stick in the face.

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Editor’s note: Mark Moore is the lead writer for an Internet blog on matters pertaining to Arkansas culture and government, Arkansas Watch, and on Tuesday nights is the host of an Internet-based radio program, Patriots on Watch. He can be reached through The Times at [email protected].