Conservatives Should Hope OWS Endures

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

The Tea Party's splendid successes, which have altered the nation's political vocabulary and agenda, have inspired a countermovement — Occupy Wall Street. Conservatives should rejoice and wish for it long life, abundant publicity and sufficient organization to endorse congressional candidates deemed worthy. All Democrats eager for OWS' imprimatur, step forward.

In scale, OWS' demonstrations-cum-encampments are to Tea Party events as Pittsburg, Kan., is to Pittsburgh, Pa. So far, probably fewer people have participated in all of them combined than attended just one Tea Party rally, that of Sept. 12, 2009, on the Mall in Washington. In comportment, OWS is to the Tea Party as Lady Gaga is to Lord Chesterfield: Blocking the Brooklyn Bridge was not persuasion modeled on Tea Party tactics.

Still, OWS' defenders correctly say it represents progressivism's spirit and intellect. Because it embraces spontaneity and deplores elitism, it eschews deliberation and leadership. Hence its agenda, beyond eliminating one of the seven deadly sins (avarice), is opaque. Its meta-theory is, however, clear:

Washington is grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful.

Unfortunately for OWS, big government's scandal du jour, the administration's Solyndra episode of crony capitalism, does not validate progressivism's indignation, it refutes progressivism's aspiration, which is for more minute government supervision of society.

Solyndra found the federal trough with the help of a former bundler of Obama campaign contributions who was an Energy Department bureaucrat helping to dispense taxpayers' money to politically favored companies. His wife's law firm represented Solyndra.

But then government of the sort progressives demand — alleged "experts," wiser than the market, allocating wealth and opportunity by supposedly disinterested decisions — is not just susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Demands posted in OWS' name include a "guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment"; a $20-an-hour minimum wage (above the $16 entry wage the United Auto Workers just negotiated with GM); ending "the fossil fuel economy"; "open borders" so "anyone can travel anywhere to work and live"; $1 trillion for infrastructure; $1 trillion for "ecological restoration" (e.g., re-establishing "the natural flow of river systems"); "free college education."

And forgiveness of "all debt on the entire planet period." Progressivism's battle cry is: "Mulligan!" It demands the ultimate entitlement — emancipation from the ruinous results of all prior claims of entitlement.

Imitation is the sincerest form of progressivism because nostalgia motivates progressives, not conservatives. Tea Party Envy is leavened by Woodstock Envy, which is a facet of '60s Envy. Hence conservatives should be happy.