Lens of Liberty

The Occupy Wall Street protest has been ongoing for a month now and I’m still trying to get a handle on it. Here are some random thoughts.

Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.

There’s much in common between these two movements, though they are commonly painted as opposites. The general thrust of their anger is the recognition that the system is broken, that those that have been given power have used it for personal gain. The government bailouts of political connected companies were a flagrant slap in the face to the majority of Americans from across the ideological spectrum who opposed them.

While the Tea Party focused on the government side of the crony capitalism coin, the Occupiers have focused on the corporations. Both have been maligned by the press who love to focus on the outlandish fringe.

Since the Occupy movement has yet to announce any formal positions, it’s difficult to make an honest judgement on how realistic any forthcoming proposal might be. Though I must say, the ideas that have floated up out of the sea of sparkle fingers, such as eliminating all debt or maximum salaries aren’t encouraging.

The Protesters

If you watch enough footage and interviews from the protests, you will see some amazing things. The complexity of the tiny society that has sprung up in Zucotti Park is simply incredible. Even the decision making process, an easy target for ridicule, is in it’s own way admirable if for no other reason than they’ve managed to get hundreds of opinionated young people to abide by it.

This video filmed by the American Enterprise Institute gives you a good look at what I’m talking about.

The Police

While recognizing that the shaky videos filmed under chaotic conditions mostly by the protesters (or those sympathetic to them) are not necessarily giving us a complete picture of the actions of the NYPD, what they do show is damning. There is far too much violence from the police for what has thus far been a fairly passive protest.

Looking ahead

I hope that the protesters realize that their audience is not Barack Obama, it is not Congress, it is the American people. A thousand or even ten thousand people in the streets is an impressive visual, but it will not mean a thing if they are unable to win over a large percentage of Americans. They need to be aware of how they are being perceived and counfound the agenda driven dismissals of the MSM.

I expect that when Occupy WallStreet announces their one demand, or whatever comes out of this, I won’t agree with much of it, but I hold out hope that I’m wrong. Regardless, like the Tea Party, the Occupy movement is good for America. We have been complacent too long.  A real debate over the direction we are heading, our problems and their possible solutions is long overdue.

Hoping to recapture the grassroots energy of last month’s “tea parties,” Republican Govs. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Rick Perry of Texas will host a tele-town hall Thursday that’s being dubbed “Tea Party 2.0.”

Danger! Danger!

It is a bad idea to allow politicians, no matter who they are, to co-opt the Tea Party idea. The GOP was as much a target of scorn as President Obama and the Democrats on April 15, and rightly so. Just because Gov. Perry and Gov. Sanford enjoy some popularity within those who attended the protests doesn’t mean that they get to be a part of it. They certainly should not be using the name for an event of their own.

I stated earlier that I was concerned that the tea party movement would be largely ineffective if it focused too much on phone calls and letters to representatives to achieve it’s goals. I still think that danger exists, but having now spent more time with one of the groups involved with our local tea party, I’m more optimistic. For that reason I want to spend some more time thinking through where the movement should go from here. The two cornerstones moving forward need to be education and outreach.

A sober appraisal of the state of economic knowledge, or lack there of, among voters is needed. Those of us who wish to see free markets instead of government control must be cautious when using the words ‘common sense’. Many of the ideas we support should indeed be common sense, but not all of them. Some ideas require basic economic knowledge many do not possess while others are simply counter-intuitive. How lower tax rates can increase revenue, why fiat money is dangerous, why we should allow weak businesses to fail, these are all ideas we can not assume are obvious to everyone. This is why one of the primary functions must be education. Sharing books, magazine articles, interviews and the like with friends and coworkers as well as countering the many fallacies we hear everyday is every bit as important as protests, letter writing, and phone calls. A small group of dedicated individuals may be able to make an impact on how our representatives vote from time to time, but what is really needed is an electorate that is better informed so that the rhetorical games currently played by candidates are replaced by real debate over the role government should play in our lives.

Since April 15, the day I attended my first political protest, I have been trying to come to grips with what the Tea Party movement means and what it can accomplish. The best case scenario is that they will serve as a first step to building a new political movement, separate from the failed two party system. The worst outcome would be the movement completely co-opted by either the GOP or the fringe, tin-foil hat community, which would destroy any chance for a viable, relevant, movement. Seeing the discussions taking place on email lists and websites with some of the people that attended our local Tea Party has me concerned that the movement may grow into a large political movement with virtually no political influence. Emails abound with requests to contact representatives in Congress about some awful piece of legislation or to sign an online petition for one cause or another. All of which is fine, of course, but has virtually no shot of impacting the direction of the country.

The concerns expressed by these groups, as legitimate and urgent as they may be, will not be addressed with petitions and phone calls to congress. The problems facing the nation are many and grave but they are only symptoms. Any expectation that elected officials will be swayed to fiscal sanity by a petition is folly and phone calls are not going to reacquaint them with Constitution. To elected officials in Washington, the desires of the constituents matter significantly less than their own, most importantly to stay in office. You may be tempted to say that acting on the will of the people is the best way to assure reelection, but you would be wise to reconsider. Congress’s approval rating in Oct 2008 was somewhere around 10%, yet 94% of House incumbents and 86% of Senate incumbents were reelected. The problem you see, is with your Senator, not mine.

What do you think you would do at work all day if you were virtually assured that you would not be fired? Now consider if you had a say in how trillions of dollars would be spent. And the power to dictate the rules that govern billion dollar industries. And the laws that effect every American in all aspects of life from what happens in schools to what cars they drive. If you take a step back, our shock at government inefficiency and malfeasance makes us look pretty naive. Is it any wonder that Tim Geitner and Charlie Rangle don’t think they need to pay their taxes? Are you really surprised that the Republican controlled congress spent like drunken sailors?

Back to the tea parties, the focus of the movement can not be to stop congress from passing one bill or another, it must be to address the single greatest threat to liberty in America today, which is of course, the federal government. We must push for systematic changes in how Washington operates. We must find a way to end elected politics as a career and that means removing the incentives that keep people in Washington their entire professional lives. I’m very leary of term limits, myself, but it’s an idea worth discussing. Reducing compensation and eliminating pensions for congress is another. In the Bible, Jesus said that it is easier for a for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Maybe so, but that will likely prove trivial compared to getting congress to implement this level of change. Can such reforms be implemented from within the current two party system, I doubt it. So how do you get candidates elected? The current system is set with the two parties holding all the cards as anyone who has worked with third party candidates can tell you. So how do you change it?

These are the questions that must be answered. This is where the focus needs to be if there is to be any hope of ending any of the abuses we gathered to protest on Tax Day.