Five Ways Occupy Protesters are Either Morons or Monsters

There are five ideas underlying the claims of Occupy protesters, all of which are profoundly false.

1. The cause of one person's poverty is another person's wealth.

Good dancers might make the rest of us look bad. Pretty people might make the rest of us feel less attractive. But the idea that they are the cause of our suffering is juvenile. Who exactly has Oprah robbed to be in the 1%? Whose billions did she steal? And who can morally justify the idea that she should be punished, instead of imitated?

2. Wealth is a limited resource that should be forcibly shared.

If wealth were a limited resource, then we would all be a lot poorer today than when there were only 6 billion people on the planet. There are only so many dollars, right? Obviously this is wrong. Wealth is created. And it is created in collaboration with others. The lifespan and quality of life of every person who lives in a society where people are free to create (and keep) as much wealth as they can imagine has steadily and drastically improved for the last 500-700 years. We can't really say about before then because freedom to create and keep your wealth is a relatively new invention - one that our "noble heroes" would happily destroy.

3. Protestors are the sincere and noble heroes of the people. 

The fact that those who believe the wealthy should be forced to share - which is the opposite of encouraged to share - has caused over 100 million violent deaths in the last century. This doesn't count the untold suffering of people in every place the idea has been applied. That Occupy protestors are not considered morally linked to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge or the Soviets or Che Guevara the same way that neo-Nazis are linked to the Holocaust is quite curious. Considering they are attempting to link the suffering of the poor to the existence of the wealthy, this would only seem fair.

4. Protesters are driven by compassion rather than ego and repressed ambition.

To appoint yourself as a sincere but noble hero of the oppressed is the oldest and most obvious power grab - and substitute for creating true self-worth - in history. And those who do so either remain irrelevant (since they are not creating), or gain political power and then reveal the monstrosity of their ideas.

Demonizing, rather than imitating, those who have created wealth has a long history - and it's not a pretty one. In contrast, innovating and creating wealth for others and yourself is the most amazing fact of human history. Thomas Edison and Sam Walton have done more to improve the lives of the poor than every “noble hero of the people” who has ever claimed to care - ever so deeply, with the sincerest of tears in his eyes - for those who suffer.

5. This is just about money and who has it.

There is another dark shadow lurking in the Occupy movement's psychology, and the most interesting thing is how genuinely ignorant the American protesters are about it. For the last several hundred years, "Wealthy International Bankers Who Won't Share And Are Destroying the Common Man" has always been code for "Jews." In Europe, most protesters know exactly what this means. The Occupy Protesters of the last century certainly knew what it meant. I'm not sure which is more disturbing - that this dark and evil caricature is resurfacing yet again, or that the participants in the American version are so clueless about history that they don't even realize what they're saying.

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