First Principles

Yeah, it was dorky. But it was fun, and I've never claimed to be cool. Besides, the store bought costumes we could afford in the 80s were so much worse...

My family and I love Halloween.  Every year we get bigger and better decorations for the house, and I’ve discovered that trick-or-treating is even more fun as an adult passing out candy or going around with a toddler than it ever was when I was a little Freddy Krueger or Orko.

Last night was the best ever, with my daughter old enough for the first time to really get into the spirit of things.  My little butterfly would toddle up to all the houses (after clutching my leg the first few times), yell “Trick or Treat!” (sometimes needing some prompting), and then (also with some prompting, but not always!) would be sure to say “Pleasethankyou!”  She lasted longer than I would have expected, and by the end of the night we were all worn out and happy.  If you would have told me as a child that the fun I was having was nothing compared to the fun my dad was having, I would have thought you were nuts, but there it is…

Of course, to take your own child out means you have to leave the homestead unattended, which made me a little sad that I couldn’t give out candy to all the other little Optimus Primes and Princesses and Iron Mans and Butterflies out there.  So we set out a bowl of candy with a little sign, asking people to just take one piece, in the hopes that most of the little kids would get some (and that enough parents would be around) before a few punk kids scooped it all up like selfish brats and then smashed our pumpkins and egged our house.  It was a risk, but one I thought OK to take in our neighborhood.

"Why me? I'm just a teeny tiny jack-o-lantern! Seriously - what's wrong with you people?"

Sadly, while we avoided the egging, when we got home, not only was all the candy gone, but someone had taken the whole bowl!  It was just a cheap plastic tub, only worth a couple of bucks, but still.  (I later found it tossed unceremoniously over our fence, so we got it back, but still.)

But the worst was that they’d taken our smallest jack-o-lantern, a little tiny guy I’d carved for who we describe to our daughter as “Little Brother or Sister” (who if you didn’t know will be here in April!).

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I’ve had a post about the Occupy Wall Street rapefest movement bouncing around in my head for a while now, and this little incident finally motivated me to move around the electrons.  Because when you think about it, the two things are at their fundamental core the same.

A person has something.  Someone else doesn’t, and wants it (without having to do the work to earn it).  So the someone else just takes it.

That’s it.  That’s OWS in a nutshell.

And this isn’t just conjecture – all you have to do is look at the movement’s name.  “Occupy.”  It is of course a military term, and used in a military context in an homage to the Sixties when filthy hippies were taking over college buildings and throwing molotov cocktails at ROTC facilities and recruiting offices.

In the military context, “Occupy” means to take and hold other people’s stuff whether they consent or not by force and violence.

They don’t want to do the work it takes to build electoral consensus or enact legitimate policy change.  Hell, they can’t even articulate their goals, or be bothered to learn any facts that might inform their complaints.

In their very name, they admit they are either thieves, or that they have taken up armed insurrection against the United States.  And I think it’s best to take thugs and self-entitled brats of that kind at their word when it comes to their motivations.  (Hey, Occupiers – when your groups keep using a clenched, raised Socialist fist as your logo, don’t be shocked when us non-crazies assume you intend to use force and violence to achieve your goals.)

(I’m really glad for guys like the one in this video, just because he’s too stupid to hide either his ignorance or his real motives, which is just to get free stuff from other people.)

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Right now these goons have taken over public spaces in cities all over the country.  Now, most of these parks are public spaces they certainly have a right to be there and to express themselves.  But they’re going beyond that.

They’re depriving everyone else of the use of those public spaces – people who probably paid far more in taxes than they did for the upkeep of those spaces.

They’re heaping additional costs on to various municipalities (which of course means the taxpayers of those municipalities) in terms of security, cleanup, and clogging court dockets (courts – you know, the place where grownups go to solve disputes peacefully).  That takes away resources from other neighborhoods as well, particularly in these tight budget times.

And because of slobbering politicians desperate to buy votes, they could stand to make everyone who ever paid off a student loan, worked their way through college, or gotten a job after graduation that might have been difficult or even dangerous (me!) look like a gigantic sucker.

Gimme gimme gimme!

The sad thing is this – once they’ve destroyed capitalism and taken down the “banksters,” who do they think is going to pay for their poo cleanup or their Grievance Group Studies Masters Degree loans?

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A lot of ink has been spilled contrasting these guys to the tea party movement, but I feel like most of those pieces miss the fundamental point.  At their respective cores, this is why the two movements are different:

The TPM is made up of people who have stuff, mostly that they themselves have earned, and on the whole is perfectly willing to share enough to have roads and schools and cops and a military and (unoccupied) parks.  But the movement balks when the forcible taking is for things like giveaways to unions, billions for failing but trendy companies who coincidentally happen to be tight with Important People, shoving increasingly unpopular health care bills down our collective throats, or handing out firearms like Halloween candy to foreign drug cartels.  They are not perfect, they are not perfectly informed, but on the whole they want to keep most of their own stuff and use legitimate, democratic, and peaceful means to achieve their goals.

The OWS isn’t even willing to share their own stuff, but demands – and then ultimately just takes – other people’s stuff.  And then they literally crap all over the stuff they took.

It’s the difference between producing and taking.

All of the blather about bankers and philosophical opposition to capitalism and “starting a conversation” and other college-know-it-all hippidom is just window dressing.  At the end of the day, OWS is just a lame excuse for out-and-out thievery and random acts of destruction.

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I’m already looking forward to taking my kids out trick-or-treating next year, but sadly, I won’t leave a bowl of candy for the other kids in the neighborhood any more.  It’s just not worth the frustration and aggravation, or the fear of having the sanctity of my home violated so senselessly, or the advertisement that our house is empty. I’m sad, because even though it’s a very little thing in the grand scheme of things, it’s just another dent out of our collective ability to feel like a community.

That’s what happens when you keep biting the hands that feed you, OWS.  They stop producing anything for you to consume.  They stop feeding you.  Multiply that a million times over, and it becomes hard to see how any economy can ever recover in a society with such attitudes.

And that should scare the hell out of all of us this Halloween season.