The People Who Don’t See It My Way Are Greedy! And Other Examples of Leftist Myopia

In the last few weeks, we have been assaulted with images of the “Occupy Wall Street” protests.

Together with the misnamed “I am the 99%” persons, these people, and those supporting them have mounted a rhetorical full-court press on Capitalism, and those who defend it as being “greedy” and “immoral”. This is one more chapter in a battle that has been playing itself out for a few years now, starting with the lead up to Obamacare.

In a nutshell, the deep-thinking intellectuals of the Left, and their cousins, the Feelerati, decided that since those running the evil medical system believe that they should be paid for the knowledge and their services, and that because not everyone could afford the cutting edge treatments available to some, that this was somehow an affront to the very notion of being American, and extrapolated this dubious thinking into a narrative that had people literally “dying in the streets” for want of treatment (a blatant falsehood as anyone who has EVER been in that special purgatory known as a hospital emergency room can tell you) and that if you opposed a government “solution” to this “crisis” whereby the federal government makes sure that everyone is insured, no matter how much it will cost the rest of us, you didn’t really have “American” values and you also hated Jesus. No Constitutional argument against this spectacular bit of wrong thinking was valid. You don’t think the government has the authority to do it? What about the general welfare clause, you greedy hater? (And aside from the fact that the Congress itself didn’t bother to even go to this degree to justify this action, choosing instead to take the position it could do whatever it wanted, this argument was never even considered as a defense in the various court cases where the law has come under fire, it was a great argument in favor of this power grab.) Then came the self-righteous and the sanctimonious. I call them the hand-wringers. They are the ones who care so much it hurts. Just ask them. While some of them are sincere enough to actually donate their own time and money to the causes that move them, many more are the ones who make a great show of their concern for others, and therefore just know that the only way to address these “problems” is to allow them to use everyone else’s earnings to deal with it, and the power of a bloated and corrupt government to inefficiently deliver this assistance to those who are never allowed to forget who is “aiding” them. No legal or Constitutional impediment will stand in the way of these people when it comes to this “right”. They want what they want. The force of their want gives them moral authority, and if you doubt it, they are only too happy to inform you that Jesus would be all for Obamacare, so if you oppose it, you really are evil. Never mind that the same Jesus who displayed an affinity for and warned against the harming of children wouldn’t support the “right” to murder children in the womb with the sanction of privacy, and that no other policy of government must breach the impenetrable “wall of separation between church and state” that Justice Hugo Black, channeling Thomas Jefferson, had “discovered” in the late 1940s, thus proving that everyone in the Federal Government, including Jefferson himself, who used to attend Sunday services in the capitol building, had fundamentally misunderstood. This was different, because they were certain that Jesus, who never commanded his followers to aid each other through the auspices of government, was on their side. This was about charity, which everyone knows starts with government.

Flash forward to Occupy Wall Street and I Am The 99%. Now we have the crusade against “greed” and the finger wagging that insists that people like me can’t possibly be Christians when we support those greedy banks and bankers, because that’s just “immoral”. Yet when I look into the motives of the occupiers and the 99%s, I find these claims less than compelling. Take the poster above.  “We are getting nothing while the other 1% are getting everything.”  Now many people know that life is work, and that nothing comes for free.  But not these people, who have fallen under the sway of greed’s ugly and slightly retarded sister, envy.  The problem with envy is that you get so busy counting the other guy’s money and good fortune that you lose sight of your own.  Before you know it, a great black beast is digging its spurs deep into your back, and no amount of what you can take from others will be enough.  But envy isn’t the only thing clouding the judgement of these crusaders. 

The Occupy Wall Street website also lists demands.  A quick perusal of this list reveals that Envy’s big sister is right at home with those who would condemn her.  How else do you classify those who want debt forgiveness and student loans for all?  This says nothing of the other demands, all of which can be boiled down to this phrase: We want government to GIVE us everything worth having.  Forgive my student loans.  Give me a college education.  Give me a job and healthcare. 

These demands are made without regard for the cost, because it is presumed that someone else will bear the burden of paying for it…a presumption that is silly on its face.  Even if they are correct about being the 99%, the 1% cannot possibly have the wherewithal to pay for these “demands”.  And these “demands” are the epitome of greed.  “Screw the law.  Screw predictability.  Screw what others worked for.  I want what I want.  And I want it NOW!”

I want you to get your wagging finger out of my face, and for you to stop promoting your envy and your greed as “American Values”. 

Get a shower.  Stop whining and work the job that is “below” you if that is all that’s available.  Don’t take out $100,000 student loans for Masters of Fine Arts unless Mommy and Daddy are paying the bill, or your rich Aunt is going to leave a chunk of change and be courteous enough to drop dead at the same time you graduate.

And stop crapping in the parks and on cop cars, unless you don’t mind the rest of us seeing how far we can drive our feet up your butts.