[Traced this back – credit (I think) to Marybeth Hicks of the Washington
Times]
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:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. THERE ARE REASONS YOU HAVEN’T FOUND JOBS. The truth? Your tattooed necks,
gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting.
Non-conformity 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.
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
[email protected] www.grif.net
“Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!”