Sarah Palin has penned an Op-ed calling for reform of Congressional privileges, and exemptions from the law, that enable politicians to arrive in DC as people of modest means and leave--assuming they ever do--as millionaires.
Palin is following up on the release of Peter Schweizer's new book, "Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison."
If it's anything like his last one, "Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy--And How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them," it promises to be a very good read.
In her piece, Palin refers to one of many things that Noman liked about her from reading her first biography, "Going Rogue: An American Life."
Specifically, she was never embraced by Alaska's Republican Party establishment, and protested its cozy arrangements with the big oil companies--the corporations that play the dominant role in Alaska that financial corporations play nationally. She won the nomination and governorship despite the Party's resistance, and punished it for its corruption when she got the chance.
Not bad for a politician. Pity that there aren't more like her.
None of this surprises me. I've been fighting this type of corruption and cronyism my entire political career. For years Alaskans suspected that our lawmakers and state administrators were in the pockets of the big oil companies to the detriment of ordinary Alaskans. We knew we were being taken for a ride, but it took FBI wiretaps to finally capture lawmakers in the act of selling their votes. In the wake of politicos being carted off to prison, my administration enacted reforms based on transparency and accountability to prevent this from happening again.
Perhaps Occupy Wall Street has more in common with the Tea Party than it realizes. That assumes, however, that one can take the movement at its word, and believe its purported raison d'etre--to bring Wall Street to heel.
Naturally, if its true purpose is simply to give Democrats the appearance of popular, grass-roots support for its spend-borrow-and-tax governance, and an antidote to the Tea Parties, we can forget such hopes for common ground, or change towards that which unites rather than separates us.
We were successful because we had the righteous indignation of Alaskan citizens on our side. Our good ol' boy political class in Juneau was definitely not with us. Business was good for them, so why would they want to end "business as usual"?
The moment you threaten to strip politicians of their legal graft, they'll moan that they can't govern effectively without it. Perhaps they'll gravitate toward reform, but often their idea of reform is to limit the right of "We the people" to exercise our freedom of speech in the political process.
I've learned from local, state and national political experience that the only solution to entrenched corruption is sudden and relentless reform. Sudden because our permanent political class is adept at changing the subject to divert the public's attention—and we can no longer afford to be indifferent to this system of graft when our country is going bankrupt. Reform must be relentless because fighting corruption is like a game of whack-a-mole. You knock it down in one area only to see it pop up in another.
To the best of Noman's knowledge, her pejorative reference to reform that limits the right of the people to speak is her first open criticism of the man who brought her to national attention: 2008 Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, co-author of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.
Noman's personal opinion is that she'd be a good person for the incoming Republican Administration to appoint to an investigative committee reviewing the previous six years of government transactions (including the Federal Reserve's) with banks, Wall Street firms, venture capitalists (especially green ones) and Fortune 500 corporations.
With respect to the subject of her piece and Schweizer's book, Noman thinks that there is plenty to be upset about these days, and that ire over government would be better focused on governance than on politicians.
For instance, he'd like a complete accounting of where the first trillion dollars of stimulus was spent by the organizations receiving it; and official actions taken by the President's unofficial Czar's, e.g., Kevin Jennings at Education.
He'd also like a thorough public airing of all the opportunistic legislation and regulation that Democrats unilaterally imposed on the country when its hegemony was unchecked by opposition votes.
In any event, Noman is happy to see that Sarah Palin has not left the public square. She strikes him as an honorable and decent woman whose convictions are genuine rather than expedient, and whose love for her country is palpable rather than affected.
There is much concern about the filth and disease, e.g., Zuccotti Lung, infesting various Occupy Wall Street sites around the country. Repeated incidents of personal waste elimination in public has Noman wondering if a new illness doesn't afflict protestors, Zuccotti Intestine.
Occupy Wall Street is compiling quite a rap sheet. In a couple of months, this phenomenon has generated 248 "incidents of sexual assault, violence, vandalism, anti-Semitism, extortion, perversion and lawlessness."
Skipping over the headlines concerning run-of-the-mill predation, indecent exposure and exhortations to bestiality, it is the recurring reports of scatological incidents at protest sites that especially tie OWS to the godfather of community organizing, Saul Alinsky.
Yesterday's incident was captured by neighbors on video taken in Washington, D.C. This protestor curbed himself, or nearly did, beside a garbage can. So, Noman will assume that he was raised badly, but nevertheless tried to answer nature's call responsibly.
Not so with the protestor who relieved himself on the American flag. The intent there was definitely to engage in Constitutionally protected speech.
Americans can thank five Liberal-thinking Justices on the Supreme Court in 1989-1990 for establishing this precious right of flag desecration in Texas v. Johnson and U.S. v. Eichman.
The first excrementous OWS incident reported also evinced an intent to communicate. There is definitely a message for police and society here. But, what is it?
Thankfully, we have a a brief disquisition on this form of community-organized protest in Alinsky's magisterial tome on the subject, "Rules for Radicals."
In his chapter on Communication, Alinsky writes:
Every now and then I have been accused of being crude and vulgar because I have used analogies of sex or the toilet. I do not do this because I want to shock, particularly, but because there are certain experiences common to all, and sex and toilet are two of them. Furthermore, everyone is interested in those two--which can't be said of every common experience.
His recounting of community action in Rochester, NY--the home of Eastman Kodak, a then-great (but now bankrupt) company that was in Alinsky's crosshairs--is instructive. Noman quotes at length from the chapter on Tactics.
It should be remembered that you can threaten the enemy and get away with it. You can insult and annoy him, but the one thing that is unforgivable and that is certain to get him to react is to laugh at him. this causes an irrational anger.
The resources of the Have-Nots are (1) no money and (2) lots of people. All right, let's start from there. People ... have physical bodies. How can they use them? Now a melange of ideas begins to appear. Use the power of the law by making the establishment obey its own rules. Go outside the experience of the enemy, stay inside the experience of your people. Emphasize tactics that your people will enjoy. The threat is usually more terrifying than the tactic itself. Once all these rules and principles are festering in our imagination they grow into a synthesis.
I suggested that we might buy one hundred seats for one of Rochester's symphony concerts. We would select a concert in which the music was relatively quiet. The hundred blacks who would be given the tickets would first be treated to a three-hour pre-concert dinner in the community, in which they would be fed nothing but baked beans, and lots of them; then the people would go to the symphony hall--with obvious consequences. Imagine the scene when the action began! The concert would be over before the first movement! (If this be a Freudian slip--so be it!)
First, the disturbance would be utterly outside the experience of the establishment... Not in their wildest fears would they expect an attack on their prize cultural jewel, their famed symphony orchestra. Second, all of the action would ridicule and make a farce of the law for there is no law, and there probably never will be, banning natural physical functions. Here you would have a combination not only of noise but also of odor, what you might call natural stink bombs... The law would be completely paralyzed.
People would recount what had happened in the symphony hall and the reaction of the listener would be to crack up in laughter. It would make the Rochester Symphony and the establishment look utterly ridiculous. There would be no way for the authorities to cope with any future attacks of a similar character... Such talk would destroy the future of the symphony season. Imagine the tension at the opening of any concert! Imagine the feeling of the conductor as he raised his baton!
To start with, the tactic is within the experience of the local people; it also satisfies another rule--that the people must enjoy the tactic... The reaction of the blacks in the ghetto--their laughter when the tactic was proposed--made it clear that the tactic, at least in fantasy, was within their experience. It connected with their hatred of Whitey. The one thing that all oppressed people want to do to their oppressors is shit on them. Here was an approximate way to do this (emphasis added).
Noman bets that you never knew that about oppressed people. Doesn't it make you wonder whether, and how many, disciples of the master in Zuccotti Park and the White House share Alinsky's sentiment and feel that way towards "the enemy"?
I must emphasize that tactics like this are not just cute; any organizer knows, as a particular tactic grows out of the rules and principles of revolution, that he must always analyze the merit of the tactic and determine its strengths and weaknesses in terms of these same rules.
Alinsky goes on to discuss the possible affects of similar bodily-function tactics in diverse fora such as the Chicago Seven's federal trial court, and Chicago's O'Hare Airport.
Given Alinsky's stress on black hatred toward Whitey as a psychological laxative, Noman notes that the incidents referred to above involve young, white men. That's to be expected, as OWS is decidedly a white-bread affair.
Beyond that, Noman supposes that everybody hates somebody, or something. And, these incidents are that: an expression of the utmost contempt.
America and capitalism have always served as especially reviled objects of Leftist hatred. Why should that change now just because the White House and the Democratic Party have underwritten, praised and encouraged the movement?
With respect to the overall rap sheet, you certainly cannot accuse community organizers of not trying to provoke violence, arrests, and altercations with the police.
Anything to help the President.
And, those are just the reported incidents. Occupy Portland organizers recently encouraged victims of sexual violence to keep the assault confidential and to report it internally rather than to the police.
Such is the character of OWS, which has paid agitators to thank for tactics regarding how best to manifest contempt, provoke reaction, and shock the populace into capitulation.
Ironically, the more outlandish OWS gets, the more boring it gets. These tactics are old hat.
Protestors represent the status quo rather than the Have-Nots.
Their leading lights already control the White House, Senate, the Courts, academe, media and, ironically, Wall Street. These institutions have already colluded to set the country on the fast track to bankruptcy and decline.
Protesters represent the past fifty years, when Alinsky's antics were startling and risque. They were always an outsider's tactics, and never intended for one entrusted with the responsibility to lead the nation.
Community organizing is only good for tearing things down, taking things from others and pitting people against each other in crude dichotomies, e.g., The Haves. v. The Have Nots. It is useless for building up things like an economy, nation or people's spirit.
America needs elected officials who can govern in reality, and not just plot tactics on blackboards and in back rooms; who know better than to publicly cheerlead for people that defecate in public.
The electorate will definitively pass judgement on OWS and all that preceded it in November of 2012. At that time, fear of reaping what one sows might well provoke a resurgence of Zuccotti Intestine at the White House, and on Capitol Hill.
An earlier post on Occupy Wall Street (See "Occupy America's Wallet," 10/13/11) attempted to describe what the movement is by identifying its causes. This post seeks to discern where OSW comes from by identifying its roots.
By doing so, it aims to distinguish OSW from other movements seeking social justice, fairness and other moral themes that resonate broadly among the public, especially religious believers.
The key distinction is to be found in the notion of hope that animates protestors, sympathizers, religious believers or others.
In what does OWS hope? Of what does its better world consist? How does that compare to the hope animating others?
Pope Benedict XVI's Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope: 2007) is helpful in this regard. Though addressed to Catholics, the letter is of interest to any religious believer, or non-believer who merely wishes to know in what Christian hope--the second of three theological virtues--generally consists.
Benedict teaches that Christian hope is grounded in faith (the first theological virtue). It is something received in the process of coming to know God, the one true God.
Believers come to know him through an encounter with the Lord of all lords, the living God. Jesus Christ shows us the way to salvation, to eternal life. In this, we have faith, the substance of Christian hope.
Those who have hope live differently, as if the anticipation of what is hoped for reaches into the present life with a foretaste of what is to come if we but persevere in our goal. Through faith, the whole, true life that is hoped for is already present 'in embryo' in this life.
Hope makes even pain bearable, as it did for Saint Josephine Bakhita, a slave who came to know through faith in Jesus that she was loved by the supreme master. "I am definitely loved and whatever happens to me--I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good." Her hope had redeemed her.
Through hope, the believer knows that ultimately, a personal God who in Jesus has revealed himself as Love (the third theological virtue) will have the final say over life, not elemental spirits of the universe, material laws, evolution or what-have-you. Man is not the plaything of impersonal forces.
"The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his 'rod and his staff comforts me,' so that 'I fear no evil'--this was the new 'hope' that arose over the life of believers."
Hope is a social reality, something apostolic, rather than an individual phenomenon. Pope Benedict's historical exegesis of how the modern, individualistic notion of hope in personal salvation developed is particularly illuminating for our purpose, which is to discern whether that which is on offer at Zuccotti Park bears any resemblance to a hope that others, especially religious believers, can embrace.
He identifies the foundation of the modern age in the correlation of experiment and method, science and praxis. These led to the discovery of America and to heady technical achievements that promised to finally usher in 'the triumph of art over nature.'
The theological application of this development, personified in Francis Bacon, was that science and praxis would reestablish the dominion over creation lost through original sin.
Redemption was no longer to be expected through faith in Jesus Christ. Rather, the restoration of paradise was henceforth to be expected from science and technology.
Faith became displaced into the purely private, other-worldly realm. Hope was now transformed into faith in progress.
'Reason' and 'freedom' became two categories central to the idea of progress. "The kingdom of reason...is expected as the new condition of the human race once it has attained total freedom."
This interpretation pitted reason and freedom politically against the perceived shackles of faith, the Church and political structures of the period.
The eighteenth century's French Revolution was an attempt to establish the rule of reason and freedom as a political reality. Kant at first believed that "The gradual transition of ecclesiastical faith to the exclusive sovereignty of pure religious faith [i.e., simple rational faith] is the coming of the Kingdom of God."
In a short while, however, he came to fear that "If Christianity should one day cease to be worthy of love...then the prevailing mode in human thought would be rejection and opposition to it; and the Antichrist..would begin his--albeit short--regime (presumably based on fear and self-interest)..."
The technology-driven emergence, and squalor, of the industrial proletariate in the nineteenth century moved Friedrich Engels to describe its dreadful living conditions, and Karl Marx to call for a proletariate revolution in bourgeois society.
Faith in progress was still the new form of human hope, whose guiding stars remained reason and freedom. The decisive step towards salvation after Marx, however, would henceforth come from politics, and revolution.
Once the truth of the hereafter had been rejected, it would then be a question of establishing the truth of the here and now. the critique of Heaven is transformed into the critique of earth, the critique of theology into the critique of politics. Progress toward the better, toward the definitively good world, no longer comes simply from science but from politics--from a scientifically conceived politics that recognizes the structure of history and society and thus points out the road toward revolution, toward all-encompassing change.
[Marx] simply presumed that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem would be realized. Then, indeed, all contradictions would be resolved, man and the world would finally sort themselves out. Then everything would be able to proceed by itself along the right path, because everything would belong to everyone and all would desire the best for one another.
Things didn't work out that way as Marx's interim phase, his 'dictatorship of the proletariat,' ushered in a trail of appalling destruction rather than a perfect world.
Benedict identifies materialism as Marx's error, the mistaken belief that man is merely the product of his economic conditions and that it is possible to redeem him externally by creating ideal economic conditions.
Man always remains man, with freedom, which always remains freedom for evil as well as for good. Fixing the economy through expropriation, redistribution and control--even if the right steps--would be insufficient to save man and to anchor his hope.
Technical progress opens possibilities for the good, but for evil as well if not matched by a corresponding moral growth at the personal level.
The imbalance between man's material capacity and the reasoned judgments in his heart can only be rectified if human freedom converges at the foundation and goal of our freedom.
"Let us put it very simply: man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope."
Christian hope is substantially different than political hope in progress, or science-based hope.
In the moral--as opposed to the material--sphere, freedom is always expressed anew through personal ethical awareness and decision-making.
Incremental ethical progress is not directly possible as "[t]he moral treasury of humanity is not readily at hand like tools that we use; it is present as an appeal to freedom and a possibility for it."
This means that the world's moral well-being cannot be guaranteed by structures alone, as even the best structures "function only when the community is animated by convictions capable of motivating people to assent freely to the social order."
Moreover, it means that the kingdom of good cannot be definitively established in this world.
Freedom must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined--good-state of the world, man's freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.
Every generation leaves structures to guide ensuing generations in the proper use of human freedom. But, redemption comes neither through science nor politics. Rather, man is redeemed by love.
Only an absolute certainty provided by an absolute love--God--can redeem man "whatever should happen to him in his particular circumstances."
"Our relationship with God is established through communion with Jesus--we cannot achieve it alone or from our own resources alone."
Our communion with Jesus draws us into his 'being for all' and makes us live for others.
Love of God leads to participation in the justice and generosity of God toward others. Loving God requires an interior freedom from all possessions and all material goods: the love of God is revealed in responsibility for others.
The Pope summarizes, and for our purposes concludes, that the greater and lesser hopes of day-to-day life are necessary but insufficient to satisfy man's yearning for a whole that goes further, that leaves no room for further yearning.
In this regard our contemporary age has developed the hope of creating a perfect world that, thanks to scientific knowledge and to scientifically based politics, seemed to be achievable. Thus Biblical hope in the Kingdom of God has been displaced by hope in the kingdom of man, the hope of a better world which would be the real "kingdom of God." This seemed at last to be the great and realistic hope that man needs. It was capable of galvanizing--for a time--all man's energies. The great objective seemed worthy of full commitment. In the course of time, however, it has become clear that this hope is constantly receding...
God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is 'truly' life" (emphasis added).
These sublime reflections are far removed from the reality unfolding in Zuccotti Park and elsewhere, which seems wholly rooted in the political conception of hope. The instigations of our Potemkin messiah serve only to confirm Noman's assessment.
OWS's hope is to tax whoever can bear the burden, and redistribute the takings through the welfare state.
For the time being, recipients are apparently to include federal, state and municipal employees, college students, universities, unions, green entrepreneurs, political confederates, community organizers, abortion providers, and other Democratic Party constituents.
Protestors neither consist of nor represent the downtrodden proletariate. They alternatively appear to be scions of privilege, union enforcers, well-funded organizers, rabble rousers, or adventure seekers.
Noman is tempted to classify them into two groups: youthful free-loaders, and professional grievance mongers. They are bound by a common sense of entitlement.
They are also bound by anger that someone would dare deny them while the resources to placate them still exist, somewhere, anywhere.
Ironically, protesters bristle at the presence of actual homeless people, and decry their sponging on resources intended for protestors. (From where? By whom?)
They tellingly bemoan the theft of laptops and other expensive items foolishly brought to the demonstrations, as if misinformed that only the best people would take part.
Their political idea of social justice is the right to easy living for little-to-no effort. Oh, and an end to all injustice, generally.
Moreover, they expect government to ensure this right.
This is a twist on Marx's notion that peace would ensue from shared ownership. Protestors believe that peace will follow the provision of everyone's desires--at least Leftist's--at the rich's expense: rich being defined as $250,000 of income.
Christian hope does not look to government to supply the person with every desire. Rather, its object is something beyond this life's ability to provide, whose possession through faith makes life's burdens and struggles tolerable, even lovable.
We know a tree by its fruit. What, then, is the person of religious belief, or simply of good will, to make of OWS's lawlessness, confrontation, discord, violence, predation and the like? What is one to make of the apparatchiks on the sidelines urging more contention, even to the point of Kent-State-like martyrdom?
In a word, Noman finds OWS to be manipulative. As Saul Alinsky taught, "Revolution by the Have-Nots has a way of inducing a moral revelation among the Haves."
OWS is trying to stir a moral revelation in Noman's breast not only by appealing to hope and his sense of justice, but by threatening him with revolution.
Unfortunately for OWS and its prime movers, Noman's hope lies in faith, not politics. His sense of justice lies in truth, not grievance. And, the revolution has already begun, peacefully at the ballot box.
The truly spontaneous revolution in America is that to reduce the size and scope of government, and hence the domain of political opportunism and opportunists. OWS is but a reaction to it.
Thus, while Noman recognizes a moral duty to pursue social justice, despite the fact that he is upset with self-serving investment bankers, and despite the fact that his life's circumstances are uncertain--as befits a contingent being--he does not see much in Occupy Wall Street to recommend it.
It offers false hope. It panders to grievance. It menaces rather than consoles. It's not for Noman.
He will be happy to see it play itself out, and dissipate its energies. But, he expects it to persist as long as stimulus funding for it does, or until the present Administration collapses.
The continued threat of bankruptcy playing itself out in Europe, the home of the social welfare state, will serve to fuel the ongoing revolution in America.
As Jesus did not say, the agitators and utopians you have always with you.
Once they relinquish their hold on government and the public purse, Americans will be freer, wealthier and abler to alleviate real suffering, and to ease the plight of the poor through personal initiative, intermediate associations and the subjectivity of society.
There is new demigoddess in the pantheon of Liberal activists who advanced political objectives while earning their daily bread pretending to journalistic objectivity, and subsequently lost their jobs when outed: Natasha Lennard.
Lennard is a British free-lancer who blogged for the New York Times and contributed to its coverage of the dramatic October 1st Brooklyn Bridge arrests of 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters.
OWS seems to be elevating a number of these Leftist heroes and heroines to the highest altars.
The police said it was the marchers’ choice that led to the enforcement action.
“Protesters who used the Brooklyn Bridge walkway were not arrested,” Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, said. “Those who took over the Brooklyn-bound roadway, and impeded vehicle traffic, were arrested.”
But many protesters said they believed the police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered.
“The cops watched and did nothing, indeed, seemed to guide us onto the roadway,” said Jesse A. Myerson, a media coordinator for Occupy Wall Street who marched but was not arrested.
Those tricky police--duping those poor, trusting, law abiding protestors into actions they didn't want to engage in, and receiving all that world-wide puclicity. Police brutality!
As a reporter covering the march, conducted by the Occupy Wall Street protesters, I was in position to get a close view of some events on the bridge as the arrests began. But as one of those arrested, I was also well-positioned to describe what happened next, at least for a number of those detained.
She subsequently contributed eye-witness accounts to other articles for the paper.
Her troubles (which will likely prove to be a huge boon to her career in a Leftist industry) began when video of Lennard surfaced on BigGovernment.com showing her playing a more strategic, advisory role at a confab of OWS organizers.
A newly-discovered video–filmed by Occupy Wall Street supporters themselves–reveals that New York Times reporter Natasha Lennard is not merely covering the protests, but is also apparently taking part in planning and executing them.
In the video, Lennard is seen participating as a featured speaker in a discussion among anarchists, communists, and other radicals as they examine the theory, strategy and tactics of the Occupy protests.
The discussion was held at the left-wing Bluestockings book store in New York on Friday, Oct. 14, and filmed and promoted by the radical magazine Jacobin. The audience included participants in, and apparent organizers of, the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in lower Manhattan.
Lennard, who has also written for Politico and Salon, is identified in the video by the panel’s moderator as a freelancer for the Times, and also as the Times reporter who was arrested along with seven hundred activists on the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1.
When Lennard reported on her arrest at the time, she appears to have concealed her own apparent role in the Occupy protests, implying that her arrest was an abuse of press freedom. She used her affiliation with the Times to win her early release.
The reader can judge for his- or herself as video of the meeting and Lennard's relatively small part in it are embedded in the BigGovernment link.
The Times stands by her reports, which are not in question, and indicates that it has no plans to use her for future coverage of OSW.
This freelancer, Natasha Lennard, has not been involved in our coverage of Occupy Wall Street in recent days, and we have no plans to use her for future coverage. We have reviewed the past stories to which she contributed and have not found any reasons for concern over that reporting.
All our journalists, staff or freelance, are expected to adhere to our ethical rules and journalistic standards, and to avoid doing anything that could call into question the impartiality of their work for The Times.
The point is simply that Natasha Lennard helped to get the snowball rolling, which has now taken on a life of its own. Her reportorial efforts are no longer necessary. The narrative has been established. She contributed significantly by shaping sympathetic coverage at the outset.
The point of underscoring dual roles played by media types is not to prove that OWS is an all media fabrication or a top-down manipulation. It is partly both, but certainly not exclusively. The point is simply to highlight a phenomenon at work in all political and social coverage, not just OWS news.
People in the mainstream media are not simply objective reporters of what is happening. They are increasingly active protagonists shaping events like OWS for media consumption in order to serve Left-wing interests.
Media bias is not exclusively a Leftist phenomena, just predominantly, because media, being dominated by Leftists, is predominantly Leftist.
With the advent of alternative media, like Andrew Breitbart's various Big- websites, the tables are turning. The Left doesn't like it as evidenced by the initial, Politico link to this post.
We're still a long way from unmolested history. But, at least the Fourth Estate now has a watchdog. And it must periodically sacrifice its own on the altar of impartiality in order to maintain its pretensions.
Perhaps the unfolding landscape will confirm Mill's hypothesis, at least in the information-industry context, that truth (small "t") is more likely to emerge from a multiplicity of voices than from the imposition of a unitary one.
Noman had not heard of Donny Deutsch before Friday: a Gucci-goo, Bruce Willis look-alike and advertising executive who sidelines as a talking head on MSNBC.
That station is NBCUniversal's (formerly General Electric's, now Comcast's) everyday advertisement for all things Left. On "Morning Joe," with Joe Scarborough, Donny said something that made him famous even among people who would rather gargle with castor oil than be subjected to MSNBC's programming.
Donny opined that what Occupy Wall Street needed was a Kent State incident, "a climax moment of class warfare somehow played out on screen." Power on the people rather than to them. It's just what a "visual society" needs.
He offered this Alinskyite sagacity without a hint of irony while donning a $5,000 suit, sporting a $500 coiffure, flashing $10,000 worth of orthodontia, and looking like a million bucks. Class warfare, indeed.
Noman has heard tell about sex in the city among those struggling in Zuccotti Park's cafes. So, "climax moment" might be an apposite choice of terms.
But, the "class warfare" description really puzzles Noman. Just what classes are clashing in cities around the country?
Protesters are demanding that investment bankers pay for everything from their educations to their lattes. That pampered sense of entitlement used to signify being in the 1%, but hasn't for decades in America. It just signifies a Liberal chip on a 99% shoulder.
The police that protesters are trying to goad into behavior that might plausibly be broadcast around the world as brutality want the same as they do: for the federal government to bail out their positions, pensions and perks.
If anything, the much-commented-upon trust fund scions of equality (Bill Ayers types) are the bad guys of their own protest rhetoric. The police are the good guys deeply ensconced among the middle class.
It's not that Deutsch wants anyone to die, mind you, though that certainly couldn't hurt ratings. It's just that the movement needs a PR shot in the arm, so to speak.
Noman remembers Kent State well. It's something that only a political animal, someone who had lost all human perspective, would evoke with hope.
It was a watershed moment for the counter culture, when the status quo decided that it simply wasn't worth killing the children in order to get them to behave, or love their country, or go to class.
There was a passion in the air that revolutionaries--the Alinskyites driving the Have-Some-Want-Mores to clamor for change--are always seeking to replicate in order to further their cause du jour. This is what it looks like when it comes from the heart. It doesn't need to be ginned up with sideline advocacy for climax moments.
"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."(Mario Savio)
Stirring stuff, that. Has the "operation of the machine become so odious" because 50% of the people--the taxpayers--are terrified by the nation's skyrocketing debt burden, disgusted with government's never-ending appetite, and simply tired of carrying the other, growing half in perpetuity?
Is it so odious that citizens might want to fund more of their own spending priorities through private channels rather than those of protestors, public unions, green hucksters, the President and his corporatist cronies through public ones?
The Tea Party, not Occupy Wall Street, is demanding freedom: from federal control at the threat of preventing the machine from working at all. It is putting its protestors bodies "upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus" in order to make it stop.
Donny Deustch holds them in contempt. He's advocating a Kent State moment to make it look like Occupy Wall Street is the good guy when it's just agitprop, a Statist tool.
The federal government spends $1.5 trillion more than it takes in on all sorts of government giveaways that didn't exist in the 1964-1970 period. Federal outlays didn't even exceed $1 trillion until 1987. (See Table 1.1) They are presently at $3.5 trillion, and projected to reach $4.5 trillion by 2016. Enough is enough.
Since George Bush left office, nobody is fulminating about military incursions, even in Libya and Africa, which were entered into without debate solely at the flick of the Presidential pinky--the Democratic President's pinky, which evidently makes the critical difference.
OWS protestors feel so free that not only are they unburdened by taxes, they are unencumbered by a sense of responsibility to support themselves, and untroubled by the tug of conscience at obliging others to pick up the tab for their unboundedness.
In May 1970, demonstrations broke out across the nation's campuses to protest President Nixon's expansion of the Vietnam War into the Cambodian theater. The Ohio National Guard was dispatched to quell dissent at Kent State. Tempers flared. Cooler heads snapped. Bullets flew. Some strayed. Bodies fell.
Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, William Shroeder, Sandra Scheuer: four dead in Ohio. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Ohio. Donny Deutsche wants to resurrect and relive this history in order to score PR points for higher taxes and more federal spending.
Protesters in New York are trying to comply with his request. They marched on the houses of billionaire Republicans but had to pass those of billionaire Democrats like John Paulson and Jamie Dimon along the way. Nevertheless, they're doing their best to provoke the police, who prove their human frailty by taking the bait every now and then.
The fat hag in the video screaming "fascists" at the police got dragged off by her hair. She got what she was there for: to provoke an incident.
The stimulus funded photographers were there to capture the moment, and professionalize it in the following video for the gaping masses. Saul Alinsky would be proud of the community organization.
The chicks in skimpy tops went hysterical. Some short-on-patience cop with frayed nerves pepper sprayed their evocative faces. Bummer. Now, they're committed Leftists whereas before they were just self-righteous white brats seeking cheap thrills by feigning grievance.
With just a little more egging, we might get a visual spectacle worthy of Donny Deutsche, and Nero.
For his part, Noman wonders if President Obama is capable of feeling guilt over setting this impending bloodshed into motion with his fiery, class-warfare rhetoric. His guess is that Barack's ACORN training and Harvard Law education honed his social conscience at the expense of his moral one.
Exhibit C. To the villainy-of-the-rich theme emanating from Washington, a child is born: Occupy Wall Street. Starbucks-sipping, Levi’s-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters denounce corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over.
These indignant indolents saddled with their $50,000 student loans and English degrees have decided that their lack of gainful employment is rooted in the malice of the millionaires on whose homes they are now marching — to the applause of Democrats suffering acute Tea Party envy and now salivating at the energy these big-government anarchists will presumably give their cause.
Except that the real Tea Party actually had a program — less government, less regulation, less taxation, less debt. What’s the Occupy Wall Street program? Eat the rich.
And then what? Haven’t gotten that far.
No postprandial plans. But no matter. After all, this is not about programs or policies. This is about scapegoating, a failed administration trying to save itself by blaming our troubles — and its failures — on class enemies, turning general discontent into rage against a malign few.
From the Senate to the streets, it’s working. Obama is too intelligent not to know what he started. But so long as it gives him a shot at reelection, he shows no sign of caring.
Noman has a half-facetious suggestion for the New York City police and denizens of occupied neighborhoods. Leave before you get cast as the bad guys in Donny Deutsche's morality play, or become collateral damage in some community organizer's scenario planning.
Do yourself and the taxpayers of the nation a favor by letting Occupy Wall Street have the place. Make the insurance claims once they leave after trashing your neighborhoods, homes and lives.
They are on the Left. Even though you might be, too, they are on the moveon.org Left. They have PC priority because they are helping the President. They are entitled. It's fair. Give up. Resistance is futile. You are out-organized.
They will never be blamed or held to account for anything they do, think or say. You will be blamed for anything and everything that happens. The blood will be on your hands even if it's your own blood.
After the inconvenience and trauma passes, the social engineers who opened Pandora's box will probably leave you alone. Without hope of a teachable moment to flay the electorate with, they'll be onto the next grievance.
With luck, the Big Government avarice occupying our nation will leave the land like Sauron's spirit fleeing the evil eye. You might even follow David Mamet's lead and convert to conservatism after some painful soul searching.
Regardless, you'll have more money left after taxes to support people and causes important to you, rather than those important to your political betters.
There is entirely too much to say about the phenomena of Wall Street protesters springing up across the land claiming to speak for 99% of the population. Noman imagines that his first reply should be, please don't.
Though belonging to the 99%, he has nothing else in common with Occupy Wall Street. He pays taxes; they don't. He works in the private sector; they don't. He thinks America is just great; they don't. He bathes...
Unlike the various students demanding subsidized education, and others insisting on free whatever-they-think-they-are-entitled-to, Noman doesn't believe that anyone owes him anything more than common courtesy, and space within the confines of common decency to be who he is.
The one constant in this metastasizing phenomenon has been the futile search for a causal nexus between the protester's actions, aims and the various injustices they point to in order to explain themselves.
One young woman on the radio was willing to risk her scholarship to medical school in order to protest 1.5 million homeless children living in America. Granting the number, ad arguendo, Noman scratched his head trying to connect her risking her scholarship, going to New York to protest Wall Street, desire for higher taxes and more spending, and how any of it would address the problem of homeless children--or even had anything to do with it.
It was classic Liberal: clutch onto a tear-jerking problem and cite it righteously to demand the policies you favor. If the reader, for instance, is against the policies, it is because you want the problem to fester. You probably profit from it, too.
Add Saul Alinsky to this mix and hopeless polarization ensues. You are a "Have" trying to keep power away from the "Have-Nots." Moreover, you are "the enemy."
In any event, and at all costs, ignore the obvious causes of the problem, which would recommend policies that Liberals oppose and spent decades deconstructing.
For example, the primary causes of child poverty in the US are the breakdown of the family, especially in black, single-parent families, and the breakdown of traditional sexual morality. Policies addressing these root causes would undoubtedly spur Occupy Maternity Ward protests, chants of "get your rosaries off my ovaries," and invocation of child poverty as the raison d'être for their outbreak.
Noman might focus with justice on the rank hypocrisy angle. For instance, Nancy Pelosi--The Speaker of the House who shepherded Hank Paulson and Ben Bernnanke's bailout of Wall Street through Congress over the objections of House Republicans (who voted it down the first time, and took a beating from the media and a Republican Administration for torpedoing the stock market)--is magically the scourge of Wall Street.
She called down God's blessings on the protestors saying: “The message of the American people is that no longer . . . will the recklessness of some on Wall Street cause massive joblessness on Main Street.” Really? Who will prevent it? Government? Her?
Perhaps Nancy forgot her role in the January 24, 2010 deal to increase Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's loan limits in high-cost areas from $417,000 to $729,750.
Packing in that last trillion-dollars-plus of sub-prime, Alt-A mortgage-backed debt before the system froze up from cascading defaults didn't work out too well for Main Street. But, Wall Street and the GSE's sub-prime confederates loved it. [n.b. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are "government sponsored entities," or GSE's.]
She also colluded with Chris Dodd and Barney Frank to omit the GSE's from Dodd-Frank's ambit. Another big win for big finance at the expense of the 50%-of-the-99% who continue to pick up the tab for the 49%-Party's formerly government-subsidized, now government-owned, cash cows.
Noman supposes that it is Minority Leader Pelosi's theatrical outbursts, not governing actions--what she says, not what she does --that count. Like her oft-repeated, yet never-substantiated (nor questioned by the mainstream media) accusation that tea party protesters spit on members of Congress, it is her words, not reality, that matter. (They presumably did so as they picked up garbage leaving Washington, DC cleaner than when they arrived en masse.)
There is also President Obama himself, who despite talking protesters onto the streets and winking at them for encouragement is the leading recipient of Wall Street contributions among all politicians in the 1989-2010 period. That's impressive, especially considering that he's been a candidate for less than a decade. Nevertheless, he leads the pack of pols with decades more campaign experience, and expenses, reaping $16 million of Wall Street lucre into his coffers.
Then there is a matter that George Soros complained about recently. The Government--President Obama's government, and before that Senator Obama's government with House Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid running it--injected capital into banks, effectively relieving them of their bad assets and allowing them to earn their way out of a hole. This allowed banks to earn bumper profits, and pay bumper bonuses once they had paid off their TARP loans.
Banks have earned these profits on President Obama's watch in relatively risk-free fashion courtesy of access to Fed money at record low interest rates held down for a record long period, and capturing the generous spread on tight-money loans in the marketplace even while dragging their feet on lending to small businesses and to the middle class.
Noman doesn't want to dwell on any of that, however. For now, he's happy just to sit back and enjoy the spectacle.
Taking the longer view, some kind of taxonomy would help to put the disparate pieces of this puzzle together, and describe it. Aristotelian causation provides one; Michael Novak's tripartite components of modern political economy provide another. A hybrid of the two ordering devices provides us with a map to survey the scene.
Aristotlte's four causes are the material (that out of which a thing is); formal (that into which a thing becomes); efficient (that by which a thing becomes); and final (that for the sake of which a thing exists). While they apply specifically to physical objects, e.g., tables, they are useful, though less definitive, for analyzing non-physical phenomena.
Novak's three elements of the American political economy are the political system (which is liberal), the economic system (which is market driven), and the cultural-moral system (which is pluralistic). Putting the two together, one gets the following matrix:
Cause/System
Political (liberal)
Economic (market driven)
Cultural-Moral (pluralistic)
Material
(that out of which)
Formal
(that into which)
Efficient
(that by which)
Final
(that for the sake of which)
Political:
Materially, these protests are a legitimate expression of 1st Amendment rights. This is the way we do things in America, and it is to be welcomed, even if not appreciated.
That said, there is a question about whether conduct is law-abiding. If not--and, let's be real--then the right is conditioned, curtailed by arrests, etc.
Additionally, the movement has caught on. We can expect some manifestation of it to be with us throughout the election season.
The interesting, and troubling, prospect is of what will happen when opposing Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party throngs encounter each other in earnest on the streets.
Formally, these political phenomena are being shaped by narrators, talking heads like Barbara Walters who exalted that "it has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries," despite there being only 195 nation states in the world.
It bears mentioning that the mainstream chattering class, people like Barbara Walters, works for big media corporations.
Also worth mentioning is media's importance to Saul Alinsky's first rule of power tactics: "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." As Walter's cheer-leading indicates, there is no force comparable to media for creating illusions.
Otherwise, there is no unified narrative, as protesters clamor for everything from egalitarian utopia, to gay rights, to the freeing of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Occupy Wall Street is decidedly a left-fest. Its general message is "I want. Gimme. I'm entitled. It's fair. Tear something down."
Just as the Musllim brotherhood will shape the outcome of the Arab Spring despite the participation of idealistic protesters, Occupy Wall Street is already being shaped by the professional community organizers from SEIU, ACORN's successors, and others operating according to Alinsky's rules.
On this latter point, a look at Chapter 7 of "Rules For Radicals," provides an illuminating glimpse into tactics: e.g., "The real action is the enemy's reaction"; "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength"; "Tactics, like organization, like life, require that you move with the action."
Recall that ACORN received access to $5 billion of community stabilization funds in the first stimulus bill, though its leader disclaimed any intention of availing himself or the organization of it; AmeriCorps received $6 billion; state employees unions received hundreds of billions of dollars in redistributed loot, as did recipients of transfer payments.
Despite high-brow protestations to the contrary, it stretches credulity--all but Liberals'--to maintain that none of this money is finding its way back into organized initiatives supportive of federal redistribution.
The trigger was President Obama's fiery oratory in support of a jobs bill that was legislatively dead on arrival but rhetorically alive with populist bombast to fuel combustable dispositions.
His speeches to the joint session of Congress and the Congressional Black Caucus bear special mention, though his every utterance since his return from Martha's Vineyard has defiantly fanned the flames of class warfare. He is even proud of it.
Nor is the President alone. Today, Vice-president Biden blamed an increase in the number of murders and rapes in Flint, Michigan--the communist city that drove GM away to its own detriment, and nurtured the chip on Michael More's shoulder as well as the scars in his soul--on Republican obstructionism.
Despite the VP's failure to establish causation (as opposed to correlation), and to explain when, how and why local police became the financial responsibility of every US citizen including those in law-abiding communities (as opposed to local citizens who generally pay for local police), the red meat will undoubtedly feed an Occupy Flint movement, and encourage escalating tensions elsewhere.
Finally, Occupy Wall Street is dedicated to greater federal spending and higher taxes. It is a protest geared towards stimulating Congressional action along Democrats preferred lines, and establishing its fiscal (and social) priorities into law.
Note this contrast with the Tea Party movement. Occupy Wall Street is dedicated to the use of government power to confiscate wealth from others in order to redistribute it to protesters and their preferred recipients. The Tea Party is dedicated to the abstention of government power so that those who earn or have wealth can put it to their own preferred uses rather than surrender it to the uses preferred by government-favored third parties.
With respect to those who create wealth, their uses are far more likely to prosper society than the uses of politically connected cronies, e.g., Solyndra.
It takes a peculiar outlook, the Alinsky perspective for instance--i.e., "How can the Have-Nots take power away from the Haves"?--to consider Occupy Wall Street claims sympathetic, or to call a Tea Party leader a nazi for upholding the rule of law.
Economic:
Populist rage is the matter from which this movement springs. It is easy to despise Wall Streeters (if one lets oneself, which is never advisable) who profited wildly from participating in schemes that nearly bankrupted the global economy.
One problem with Alinsky's tactics is that goading enemies into impolitic reactions can be done by anybody, not just the politically correct, which is already bad enough.
It was primarily the government's housing policies, specifically Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's engineering of the sub-prime bubble that bears the blame for our financial misery. Wall Street was merely a willing accomplice, not its principle architect.
Research by Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer of Fannie Mae (now a colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute) has shown that 27 million loans—half of all mortgages in the U.S.—were subprime or otherwise weak by 2008. That is, the loans were made to borrowers with blemished credit, or were loans with no or low down payments, no documentation, or required only interest payments.
Of these, over 70% were held or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie or some other government agency or government-regulated institution. Thus it is clear where the demand for these deficient mortgages came from.
The huge government investment in subprime mortgages achieved its purpose. Home ownership in the U.S. increased to 69% from 65% (where it had been for 30 years). But it also led to the biggest housing bubble in American history. This bubble, which lasted from 1997 to 2007, also created a huge private market for mortgage-backed securities (MBS) based on pools of subprime loans.
Naturally, when one is trying to "pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it" ("all issues must be polarized if action is to follow"--a teaching whose classical expression Alinsky finds in Christ's dictum that "He who is not with me is against me"), nuance gets in the way.
Formally, the idea of a planned, targeted and government-directed economy drives this movement. Command and control is its essence.
Noman finds this curious as the notion has been thoroughly discredited in management and organizational behavior literature, even in the military, for its suppression of private initiative, reduction of personal responsibility and dependence on centralized actors who cannot possess the omniscience required to make the system work efficaciously.
Ironically, protesters favoring government power over private initiative operate under the cloak of speech and assembly freedoms granted by the same constitution that protects commerce, in its body, not in an added amendment.
The economic trigger was the badly sagging fortunes of the command and control idea. Despite Newsweek's famous 2009 cover declaring that "We Are All Socialists Now," we are not.
And with persistently high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits and debt, an impending double-dip recession and a proliferation of crony corporatism and corruption, there are daily fewer voices that confidently advocate for top-down economic power.
The discrediting of this economic panacea is all the more alarming to the President's Party as it is accompanied by the President's sinking poll numbers, doubts about his re-election, and concomitant fears of losing Congressional power, which was so opposrtunistically deployed against popular majorities, e.g., ObamaCare. There is fear of payback, and even of merely justifiable roll back
The momentum to cut spending and lower taxes--a trajectory diametrically opposed to the Democrat's thrust--is on the ascent. Repeated legislative and budgetary confrontations have only served to raise the profiles of smaller-government proponents such as John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan.
The final cause of Occupy Wall Street's economic thrust is Statism. Under present conditions, this requires utilizing corporatist intermediaries such as General Electric, Dow Chemical, Pfizer and Walmart: public-private partners that, unlike Chamber of Commerce members, have grown comfortable in bed with the federal government.
Notably, these companies are not the target of protestors' rage. That could change quickly should the government decide to dispense with their services.
There is nothing in the rhetoric or actions of Occupy Wall Street to indicate where, to protestors' minds, the limits to collectivism, if any, reside.
Cultural-Moral
Materially, the movement's moral impulse is grievance at perceived unfairness. Income disparities are unseemly to many, and Wall Street is a haven for the exorbitantly paid and lavishly pampered.
Noman does not share Occupy Wall Street's aversion to economic difference, or think that there is no economically meaningful distinction to be drawn between an investment banker and a shoe-shiner. So, he is not convinced that both should earn roughly the same pay for their efforts--something sundry protestors have suggested, and that he has heard from undergraduates for years.
This implicates at least a touch of self-interest--convenient moralizing, say, or easy virtue--given that protesters, unlike Warren Buffet, are not clamoring to pay more taxes. Rather, they are demanding more benefits paid for by other's taxes.
The conflicts of interest inherent in the frustrated sentiments expressed have largely escaped protestors' self-examination, which does not excuse public sympathizers from Fed Chairmen Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to short seller George Soros for failing to recognize and acknowledge them.
Formally, the tendency is towards an equal distribution of resources. It is an article of faith for some that equality of outcome will end injustice and suffering, and usher in heaven on earth. The pedigree for this notion runs from Rousseau through Marx to Lenin.
But, will redistribution ever achieve its lofty aims? Noman thinks not given the evidence of history, which leads to the opposite conclusion.
No system geared towards equality could ever ensure that everybody had something because it could never guarantee supply under demotivating conditions. It could only ensure that nobody (besides the rulers) had anything.
Do you remember Liberals waxing eloquent about Cuba? The Soviet Union? Nicaragua? How has the equal distribution of resources worked in those worker's paradises?
Naturally, perfect equality proves elusive because those who effectuate the balancing, the Party, always reserves the lion's share for itself and its members.
What would be different should Occupy Wall Street and the Democratic Party have its way with the people's morals, and wallets?
The efficient cause of this movement is opportunity, specifically opportunism provided by our proximity to the financial crisis. The relevance of occupying Wall Street as opposed to Beverly Hills, where arguably more millionaires and sub-prime/Alt-A mortgages might be found, is the financial capitol's psychological connection to the still-profusing economic wound.
Moreover, Liberals are so close, yet so far from consolidating massive gains. The Wall Street Journal editorialized in January of 2009 about Democrats' 40 year wish list. Today, this article serves primarily as a grim testament to Democrat's faulty prognosticative powers, and untrustworthiness to manage the nation's finances and affairs.
The adoption of the 40 year wish list in the first stimulus bill was followed by countless Liberal conquests including most notably, ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank. All that remains to accomplish--besides establishing a blue state entitlement to red state taxes--is to pay for these spend-and-tax victories before capital markets definitively protest, and credit default swaps on the nation's debt render them Pyrrhic.
To Occupy Wall Street, these legislative triumphs make America more fair. They redistribute money and power from the Haves to the Have-Nots. The Have-Nots are entitled. Consequently, taxes must be raised now, regardless of the consequences, or all will be lost. Carpe diem.
Resentment, unemployment and malaise also trigger this moral response. Things are not going well economically. As it sounds less-and-less credible to blame the mess on the other guys the further they recede from memory, it must be the fault of systemic injustices.
When the going gets tough, the Left capitalizes on its opportunity for big change, even when its policies are the cause of the tough sledding. Perhaps especially then.
Finally, the cause is the demand for social justice. Who doesn't want that, you ask? But, along whose, and what lines are we talking?
Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre highlighted the problems besetting contemporary moral discourse and suggested means to surmount them in a landmark series of books commencing with "After Virtue" (1981) and ending with "Dependent Rational Animals" (1999). The second of four books, entitled "Whose Justice? Which Rationality?" highlighted the incommensurability of moral positions predicated on disparate foundations, each rooted in separate and distinct historical epochs.
To the extent that mere words such as "social justice" and "fairness" bind listeners in their spells, it behoove us to discern the roots of their varying articulations.
Noman will attempt to ground those roots in varying conceptions of "Hope" in a subsequent post on the topic.
