OWS (A good debate coming up)

[Judy Harder]

  A great article by Marybeth Hicks. ... SHE SURE MAKES SENSE.

Call it an occupational hazard, but I can't look at the Occupy Wall
Street protesters without thinking, "Who parented these people?"

As a culture columnist, I've commented on the social and political
ramifications of the "movement" - now known as "OWS" - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by one of their placards: "Everything for everybody."

Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it's clear there are people with serious designs on "transformational" change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.

Yet it's not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting
question, but rather the fact that I'm the mother of four teens and
young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters' moms clearly have not passed along.

Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters' mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn't, so I will:

* Life isn't fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be
treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what you want."

No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but squander them, others play the modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference in hard work and perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid question.

* Nothing is "free." Protesting with signs that seek "free" college
degrees and "free" health care make you look like idiots, because
colleges and hospitals don't operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to tap for your meandering educational careers and "slow paths" to adulthood, and the 53 percent of taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I'm pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms, Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.

* Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that don't require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of victimization. It's a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for - literally.

* A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn't evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations: Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social and political change don't dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival. You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don't seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

* There are reasons you haven't found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4 percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It's not them. It's you.


Marybeth Hicks is the author of "Don't Let the Kids Drink the
Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith and Freedom." Find her on the Web at www.marybethhicks.com.
 

[Ross]

There is more than one side to a story.

I don't personally agree with everything OWS stands for and there are a lot of issues out there.
Should they be forced to just a few issues, I think that should be their choice. Or is that the choice of our elected officials.

However, I believe the local authorities could have put out port-a-potties and trash dumpsters a lot cheaper then using that as an excuse to pay all that overtime money for police brutality.

An old lady pepper sprayed, a young pregnant woman punched, a 70 year old college professor beaten and ribs broken, a female college professor draged by her hair all by the police.

Newspaper and news media forced back out of range of seeing what is happening, by the police to protect them. Even arressting news people for teying to cover the news. Really.

They bring up the criminal element as an excuse to shut them down, isn't there criminal activity in every city every day?
Or, is it something new since OWS came along.

People of authority don't like to be questioned, so the everyday citizen has no right to question them, they should not be heard or seen, so call the cops.

Sure, there are a few scum bags in the crowds but you find that everywhere, should OWS be totally discredited because of a few. Then what should be done about the Senate and Congress and all their well dressed scumbags? They have been voted out and new ones voted in and still no changes in attitude.

I don't think this protest movement is going to go away anytime soon, and I think it is better to understand a little about it.

Check out the videos on this web sites to learn more.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-kornbluth/the-police-riot-at-berkel_b_1091208.html