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Sign at a local church: “For real change, occupy church”.

Kim, for me the most striking feature of the Occupy movement is its hypocrisy. Supporters of the movement want us to condemn the bad behavior in some (such as bankers and politicians) yet ignore the bad behavior in others (the Occupiers). They seek to claim the moral high ground by focusing our attention in one direction only - what the movement "is about" - while avoiding any discussion of the results of occupation. It relies principally on "shame on them - those guys, over there" arguments, and refuses to discuss anything else. The idea is to force others into doing what's right, without being so forced yourself (either by another, or by a commitment to personal integrity).

Another striking feature is that the movement is classically Alinskyite. It uses disruptive and even destructive theatrics to gain attention. It refuses real discussion and rational debate, instead preferring to force others to assent. It manipulates the media, and switches seamlessly from aggression and violence (when the cameras aren't around so much) to victimhood (when they are).

It's also clear that it's all about power. The supporters perceive any interaction with them as a legitimization of their perspective, and any reasonable assent to their requests as them gaining power over someone. (And I thank you, Kim, for the opportunity to demonstrate this.) The goal is the ability to manipulate others to your own personal benefit, which is quite the opposite of washing the feet of one's disciples. And getting a reaction from someone is perceived as a great victory. My reaction, however, is boredom.

As I indicated earlier, those who support such movements often discover as did the supporters of the pigs in Orwell's "Animal Farm" that their leaders are not just gaining power over some target such as Wall Street. Those leaders are also gaining power over their followers. And with a highly flexible moral framework, if any, the leaders are quite willing (as Stalin was) to exercise their power over even highly loyal followers in an extremely brutal manner. "Hey, watch this - with one poster and a few messages in social media network, a handful of us can make hundreds if not thousands of young people do our bidding! We can force them into unpleasant conditions and violent confrontations, and we can remain safely above the fray, like puppeteers. This is manipulation on a massive scale!! And who really cares if we are able to use them to manipulate the financiers and politicians - the important thing is that we'll have an army of volunteers who look only where we tell them to look, and who will not hesitate to act even in an immoral way if we frame the debate for them such that they don't have to think."

So what is it all about? As Rolley might say, in needed comic relief but with compatible irony, it's all about whatever Alfie says it's about.

So the wisest course is to not take Alfie seriously. Sometimes it's very instructive to follow an unwise course so that others can learn from your example. But sit-ins in the 1960s went away when the public started to ignore them.

Sic semper tyrannis.

I look forward to hearing Kim's more considered response.

For anyone interested in sampling the conversation about OWS occurring outside the conservative echo chamber:

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.6/occupy_movement_forum.php

Kevin V. - thanks for your input.

I was going to respond at length now, but it will have to be later--I've got a deadline to meet. However, here's something short but relevant that I thought everyone might find interesting. It's titled "Ending Income Inequality?" http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/11/EndingIncomeInequality

...but not from an atheist one. In an atheist worldview, the wealth and power of the 1% is simply survival of the fittest. It's neither moral nor immoral; it just is.

All this talk of "justice" and "problems" and "grievances" makes an appeal to a standard of right and wrong that would need to transcend any individual's opinion, and any group's opinion, for it to have any meaning. If there is no absolute moral reference, then OWS is merely expressing a preference which others would be free to accept or reject, without shame. If on the other hand there is in fact an absolute moral reference, then it must exist apart from any and all people. And it must be imposed upon people by an absolute moral lawgiver - a transcendent and immortal judge who is the embodiment of all that is good.

So without a theistic and particularly a Judeo-Christian foundation, the Occupy movement and its defenders, including Kostya, are simply making much ado about nothing - which isn't worth taking seriously, or supporting with a even "a minimal amount of independent and fair-minded research".

With such a foundation, it's possible to discern between people who sacrifice their own lives for the good of others, and people who want to sacrifice someone else (whether rich or poor) for their own benefit. It's either YHWH, or Ba'al.

Kostya, I am a contributor to breakpoint and I freely acknowledge that I do lots of other things besides promoting a Christian Worldview.

In the OWS protests we see a broad range of people and a broad range of voices. You'll find Ron Paul libertarians within the crowd. You'll find anarchists of varied stripes. By and large, however, you mostly find peaceful protesters reacting to widely recognized problems with the status quo: injustices in the distributions of political representation, opportunities, and wealth. The dominant slogan ("we are the 99%") expresses these grievances by pointing to how these distributions grossly favor those at the top one percent of our society--in an alarming and increasing way. We see this recently, for example, in the Obama administration's failure stand up against the interests of Wall Street, in half of Congress's refusal to even consider raising taxes on the richest one percent to reduce budget deficits, and in the Court's decision to grant corporations the status of persons for purposes of political advertising.

It would be one thing to consider such grievances directly, to understand and to assess their best justifications, and then to reject them. What we find here at BreakPoint, however, is something entirely shameful. We find a consistent pattern of (1) an evident refusal to do a minimal amount of independent and fair-minded research into OWS (through an effort, I managed to get LeeQuod to read one brief section from the Wikipedia article on OWS, and it is rather obvious that he spent more time writing his last piece than heeding my modest suggestion in my second comment ("Meaning of OWS")); (2) an insistence upon representing OWS by its most fringe and unattractive elements; (3) a refusal to consider the reasons for, and the merits of, OWS's characteristic organizational structure (the criticisms of it and some of its consequences appear to be ignorant of the decision-making procedures at OWS protests), (4) the refusal to acknowledge that the contributors at BreakPoint are doing anything other than simply promoting the Christian worldview.

The record is public. I invite others to peruse BreakPoint's coverage of OWS and its commentary.

...I'm going to jump in here with a different perspective from the one you've been confronting. Let me explain where I'm coming from.

I was a Democrat for a long time. I left the party when I began to feel like an alien at meetings and caucuses due to my beliefs on abortion, gun rights, and patriotism, to name a few.

Did I become a Republican? Absolutely not. There are still many values I share with the Democratic Party. I'm pro-labor. I don't believe every person who needs help is a shiftless bum. I think our system of health care is shameful. I despise the corporate greed that has victimized people for too long. And when I spend most of my work day with Christian radio playing in my pickup, I am frequently bristling at how it has been turned into an arm of the GOP.

In other words, I am potentially the kind of person who should be quite sympathetic toward Occupy Wall Street. And yet,....

You argue that there has been some unfair coverage of OWS, and that is true. Some of the worst elements who show up there have been portrayed as being representative of the movement as a whole. Still, isn't anyone even remotely in charge, or at least responsible? The Tea Party was rightly criticized for the overt racism that was on display at some rallies. It is to the eternal shame of the Tea Party that none of the leaders stepped up and immediately removed the crazies. If that's a fair criticism of the Tea Partiers, doesn't the same thing apply to OWS?

(By the way, Chuck Colson was an early and ardent critic of the Tea Party, pointing out that anger is not a coherent political philosophy. Hmmm.)

What I'm seeing in OWS is the Tea Party of the left, and I have no time for that. I'm seeing some of my beliefs being represented in the worst way.

When people attack not just the bad things that have taken place under capitalism but rather capitalism itself; when they engage in screaming and yelling instead of presenting and promoting a sound set of beliefs and ideas; when they trash public spaces and private property; when they shut down traffic, thus hurting the working people they claim to support; when they clash with and disrespect the police; when all of the above is taking place, they cannot hope to garner support from the mainstream public. And they do not represent me.

Now, you can respond with another of your evade-and-attack posts. Just know that your continued refusal to engage in a serious discussion and provide a point-by-point argument in favor of OWS does not help your cause. Indeed, you, like Occupy Wall Street, would have been better off not starting this to begin with.

Kostya, I'm one of the unofficial (and some would say "self-appointed") leaders of Occupy Breakpoint. (Periodically we're forced to relocate, and clean up the mess we made, by a very nice but quite determined young lady who carries a large yardstick.) We're part of the greater Occupy Earth movement, which has an extremely explicit goal: going and making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded us.

I have been searching in vain for similar clarity of mission from OWS.

As to the "conservative echo chamber", I live in Portland, Oregon. All our nightly news, as well as our only major newspaper, are slanted about as far left as one can get. Even the local Fox News channel is liberal. So I think your criticism is incorrect.

Even the Wikipedia article has a quote about "the refusal of this movement to state its terms or set its goals in the traditional language of campaigns". If that's correct, then misunderstanding the movement would seem to be a natural consequence, rather than something for you to criticize.

A line at Wikipedia says "The Guardian interviewed OWS and found three main demands: get the money out of politics; reinstate the Glass-Steagall act; and draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors." The first, getting money out of politics, would seem to be a criticism of President Obama, who raised more money in his bid for election than any other candidate in history. Perhaps, though, it really means that corporations should be prevented from influencing Congress. That, like reinstating Glass-Steagall, has a straightforward process within Congress already - call your Senator and Congressman, or write letters. No sit-in is required. The last one is similar, with the one difference that it would be Congress regulating its own behavior, but in theory they already do that, and the same process could be used to convince them; if that fails, we elect new representatives. Simple. No need to sleep in a park.

Speaking of parks, Occupy Portland has a cost to the city government that's approaching $1 million. It's reasonable to ask what the benefit was that came from spending $1m. My daughters avoided downtown Portland until the occupiers were removed, so there was also a loss of business activity - which costs jobs, instead of creating them. So I'm really struggling to see how OWS in all its various cities actually achieved anything.

I brought up the Boston Tea Party as a comparison, because the British made similar complaints. I'm trying to be sympathetic toward the modern-day equivalent of the Colonists, but I'm having difficulty discerning a concrete proposal for change.

Worse, my requests for dialogue are usually met with derision and scorn. I put up strawmen because I'm not finding real men. One of my daughters is currently unemployed; I was hoping OWS would actually do something to help the economy rather than hurting it. I worry that over-regulated banks won't loan to the kinds of businesses that would hire my daughter, and that the cost of occupations has further slowed the economy, resulting in yet fewer jobs.

You say, Kostya, that my words are "telling". I find it "telling" that the occupations are a means of forcing someone else to do something. I wish that instead the occupiers had harnessed their energy and time to do something themselves. It could have been great. Alas.

(Aside to Rolley: I dropped my beloved little netbook that has been all around the world with me. I had to run out and buy a replacement prior to this latest business trip. It felt good, in a way, to contribute my own small economic stimulus. But it's a lengthy process getting my new system configured like the old one. Oh, and it's spelled "chives", with a "v" and a final "s", and I like them atop the sour cream on my baked potato. ;-) )

Let's take LeeQuod's comment for what it purports to be, an attempt at sincerity and reflection. As such, it is telling.

To begin with, it is difficult to believe that LeeQuod has made even the minimal effort recommended in my second comment ("Meaning of OWS"). Even a quick glance at the "goals" section of the Wikipedia article would provide a better target for LeeQuod's commentary. (A little more research should quickly raise the suspicion that his own characterizations of OWS are creatures of a conservative echo chamber, walled off from the relevant facts.)

LeeQuod criticizes the goal of "ending capitalism" and then (in an attempt at generosity?) the assertion that "banks are evil." Having tackled these strawmen, he takes himself to have shifted the burden of proof--which, rather bizarrely, he suggests is task of "tell[ing] us how OWS has achieved (or can achieve) something like the creation of a United States of America."

Is this what it means to be "willing to take OWS seriously"?

.
LeeQuod, I was going to chide you* for your inexcusably long absence, but you have more than justified it with your (typically) thoughtful, incisive, and well-balanced remarks.

I have a cigar waiting for you after the smoke clears. And, of course, before.

--

* My second biggest joke so far this year. I’m willing to tell you the first, but it will cost ya.

...because maybe Kostya's right; not just Kim but all of us have been treating OWS as a joke, and that's the wrong attitude for Christians.

So let's take OWS seriously.

Let's assume, then, that not all of them are anarchists who by definition do not have goals. (Lots of historical people groups had no goals. Most were conquered, and brutally subjugated. Only those who organized, like, say the Scots depicted in "Braveheart", stayed free. But there's no such thing as organized anarchy, is there...) Let's take one or two of the goals we've heard, and treat them with respect. In fact, let's compare it, mentally, with the "Occupy Boston Harbor" movement that began around 250 years ago.

I see that many Occupy folk want to end capitalism. And as Christians, we're not entirely against that; the early Christians kept all things in common. But I haven't so far heard that OWS is proposing a truly communal system - versus a communist or socialist one where someone ends up in charge of insuring that no one takes more than their fair share. Besides, such a truly communal system only works when people willingly admit their sinful tendencies and freely confess to one another. But the anti-Semitism and frequent profanity of Occupy people would make it seem that they are not in favor of an explicitly Judeo-Christian system anyway. Rather, it appears they believe in inherent human goodness - but as Gina notes (and Chesterton said long ago), the evidence is in favor of Original Sin. And it would hardly take someone of Jason's historical acumen to point out that various forms of non-religious communism have been tried, and George Orwell's critiques in "1984" and "Animal Farm" were the result every time.

So let's simplify and take the assertion that banks are evil and are the source of the current economic crisis. Well, that has a solution even within a capitalistic system: if everyone takes their money out of the banks, then soon there are no banks. The downside, of course, is that many bank employees become unemployed, which goes against another OWS goal of employment for all, but let's leave that aside. The bigger concern is that something would need to be done about all the outstanding loans that banks hold. Would they all simply be forgiven? Or would borrowers suddenly need to repay everything - from student loans to mortgages to money borrowed to start businesses (and thereby employ more people)? Christians are rather more ambivalent about charging interest than are Muslims, but we'd have no objection to elimination of banks - if we knew of a better way to pool money safely, lend it out, get it back, and allow everyone to be better off when the entire lending transaction is complete. But "It's A Wonderful Life" will be played repeatedly very soon on TV, and we can all hear Jimmy Stewart explain how the Building & Loan works while everyone wants their money. The banking system may have huge flaws (as may other businesses, and other systems), but it's all we have until a better replacement is created and tested in actual use. (I note that in the New Yorker article, "Sage" wrote his name on the brim of his cap. Why would he feel the need to mark it as uniquely his, rather than communally sharing his resources?)

So, Kostya, I hope you see that some of us who haun- ... uh, who *frequent* this blog are quite willing to take OWS seriously. We just run quickly into severe logical difficulties and deep emotional concerns whenever we do.

So to re-ask Kim's question, which I can assure you (since I know her) was completely sincere, can you point to an OWS proposal for the replacement of either capitalism as a whole or else just the banking system? We don't mind revolutions (since many of us see John Adams as our hero), but we want to know that the system that will be in place *after* the revolution is a system that can and will endure. So far we're not seeing anything like the American Revolution - rather, it seems more like the chaos of the French Revolution, or the descent into despotism of the Russian Revolution.

If you can tell us how OWS has achieved (or can achieve) something like the creation of a United States of America, then many of us Christians who study the Bible would be all for it. And I'd imagine that would include Chuck Colson himself, who's been around the world (visiting prisons, mostly) and has seen many forms of government and many financial systems. He's written his thoughts about them, which you're free to critique just as we all do.

So please, Kostya - help us out here. If you do, you'd be (as you yourself put it) "doing the right thing".

Borrowing the method of my interlocutors, I would simple say this: this thread, alongside BreakPoint's other coverage of OWS, is all one needs to know about the ministry of Charles Colson.

(And I expect this means very little to the blind.)

...a murder, also trashing buildings here in Oakland, also the HUGE extra expenditure of funds for police work.
And Jason's challenge, issued twice, remains: "tell me what it is that you see in them that justifies going to the barricades."
Do you intend to reply to that request, or dance around it?

That is the most important thing I can see in the OWS. When people pick up paving stones most of what they say usually goes out the window.

Now could you please stop repeatedly telling me about my blindness and tell me what it is that you see in them that justifies going to the barricades.

Well, no, it's not the *only* thing. We've also seen alleged sexual assault.

Bias becomes a deceptive method of a promoting one's agenda whenever it appears so egregiously (and yet so noticeably unannounced) on a website that purports to promote the Christian worldview.

There's no integrity in that. But perhaps there is rather simply insufficient self-awareness here at BreakPoint?

Again, your remarks are still misleading. No one is asking you to avoid writing off someone FOR talking about blood revolt etc. Is this really the only sort of thing you can see in the OWS protests? Really? If you or anyone else is really so blind, I can only diagnose the problem.

So that everyone understands my worldview: I'm a mere Christian. I believe in the orthodox Christian faith. Each week (and sometimes during the week), I recite the Nicene Creed. The Creed lists the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

Fact: OWS did and continue to give a platform to hate-filled people. OWSers didn't condemn the vitriol, but made some statements about the freedom to spew. Words matter.

Kostya, it's vital to understand that we must condemn evil because not to do so will allow it to flourish.

I would really like to hear the positive contributions of OWS.

Kostya, every site is biased. Big deal. Now why don't YOU tell us. Could you give a good reason why I should not write off people for talking about bloody revolt and ostentatiously picking up rocks to throw in front of news cameras.

The bias is not in New Yorker article or in reference to it. The bias, obviously, is in your own summary of what the article was about, what it is that Lasn and White accomplished, and, by extension, what OWS is doing: "hate-filled people have been given a platform in which to spew their vitriol." (Perhaps here you are not literally "damning some," but then who is?)