For the Happiness of The Party

Thanks to the website, Chicks on the Right, for revealing the Occupy Wall Street movement’s manifesto, what OWS calls “The American People’s New Economic Charter.”  The Charter Collaborative wrote back to The Chicks that their proposal, all very inclusive and based on some new scientific method they call “crowd-sourcing.”

Among their many interesting proposals is this one on education:

“Teach character-building classes from grade one, measure success based on drive/cooperation/interactions with others, not only final outcome.  Impose universal morality for parents who do not participate in raising their children. Remove children from households with parents who refuse to educate them properly.  Provide for re-education of parents in how to properly raise their children for the happiness of the Party.”

The whole conservative blogosphere is abuzz with their serious gibberish.  We should take it seriously.  Fifteen years ago, no one would have believed that we would really be forced into universal health care.  Forty years ago, Mom said there would be times like this.
Impose universal morality on parents who don’t participate in raising their own kids?  Remove kids whose parents refuse to educate them “properly” and re-educate those parents in the ways of proper child-rearing for the happiness of The Party.  The Party?!

Did we miss the news?  Did someone resurrect Josef Stalin from the dead?  The old hippies must have figured enough time has gone by that the current generation knows nothing about his re-education camps, or China’s, and that they won’t listen to the descendants of those who lived during those times.  They conveniently ignore the fact that it was the Liberal Feminist moved to encourage women, Soviet-style, to pursue careers rather than motherhood, allowing strangers to raise and educate their children, and to take the proper offensive if anyone challenged them.

Can these people get any more Anti-Family?

1. Financial institutions like Goldman Sachs will be required “to redirect funds from their profit sheets on a regular basis to community bank start-ups or credit unions to assure economic diversity within the nation to state and county regulations.”  Actually, banks are already required to contribute to the Community Reinvestment Act.

Here’s more on education:

2. “Education should be funded with some of the $2 billion/week that goes to war-funding. At least 50 percent  of it.  This will weaken our millitary (sic) by 50 percent at least, forcing the rest of the world to pick up the slack.  This will in turn cause their economies to tank, taking ours with it. But at least we’ll be highly educated.”  And the Progressives would have it that the Tea Parties want to take down their own country.  This is something with which Mom would agree (remember, she’s half-related to RJ Wagner).  “Why don’t those other countries pay their fair share?  Why is it always America?” 

This is an argument that’s big amongst Conservatives and Libertarians.  The problem is a particular quandary:  we can disband our standing Armed Forces, which are, indeed, almost ruinously expensive to keep.  But if we disband them, we won’t be prepared if we’re attacked.  During World War II, the U.S. Army had to be quickly (a mere three years before Pearl Harbor) trained on World War I equipment and according to Dad, WWI rations.  The cost of education has nothing to do with disbanding the Army.  We should be disbanding the federal Department of Education.  That, indeed, would make the world safer for federal republics.

The manifesto also suggests this: “Socialize undergraduate level college. Make failing impossible to assure that everyone has the same chance in the work place post-college.  Free education for all.  Use former war expenses and equitable taxation of the rich to develop free public schools, free text books, free higher education. Assure that every student educated in the United States has a guaranteed job or can perform service in some way that recompenses their education. Forgive all current student loans.”

In the really old Soviet Union, “socialized” children were taught to snitch on their parents.  If Mom and Dad didn’t reinforce the party line, little Ivan or little Ninotchka would rat the parents out at school the next day.  By the time the little dear got home, Mom and Dad were gone, shipped off to some “re-education camp” in Siberia, never to be seen again. Just read Alexander Sozhnitzyn.

Mom and Dad were also wary of franchised nursery schools (not that the private kind turned out any better; it was worse, in fact).  Mom listened as younger women dreamed of launching careers, and hiring someone else to change the dirty diapers and dole out the discipline.  Working was much easier than raising kids.  Like mowing the lawn, it’s much easier to pay someone else to do the dirty work.  Eventually, Mom predicted that parents wouldn’t even know their children (or care) and that at a tender age, the communists could begin indoctrinating the young.

We won’t get into the energy proposals.  We’re already sort of “hip” to that boondoggle.  Nikita Kruschev promised our young people would tear down our own flag – and apparently, our own Constitution.  Here’s what the Charter Collaborative says about the Constitution

“Extend constitutional rights to anyone taken into custody by American Officials. Always abide by Habius (sic) Corpus and such human rights treaties. Permanently shut down Guantanamo Bay. Give every prisoner, everywhere, a fair trial by Their Own Peers (not just randomly selected citizens or court marshals.)”

“To ensure that our government is addressing the needs of its tax paying citizens, it should be held accountable for achieving specific Gross National Happiness index target values.”

The OWS has thought of everything. They’ve created “New Salary Range Recommendations Based on Concepts of Economic Sustainability and Right Livelihood.”

“Bankers $20,000
Lawyers $27,500
Realtors $25,000
Doctors $28,000
Nurses $27,500
Teachers/Librarians/Train Engineers/Bridge Maintenance/Ship Pilots, etc. $35,000
Police $36,000
Public Servants $28,500
Laborers $20,000
Other public sector $30,000
Other private sector $29,000
Technical/Research/Academic $36,000
Entrepreneurs/Business Owners $10,000
Congress $30,000
President 40,000
Soldiers N/A
Defense workers $25,000

All jobs include full health benefit for worker and family, full retirement benefits, full free education for children.” ‘

Notice how teachers not only make more money than anyone else, but they list themselves twice.  Once under “Teachers” and again under “Academic Research.”  Soldiers are not applicable but Defense Workers are.  If we have no soldiers, what exactly will the Defense Workers be doing?

Meanwhile, business owners will only be allowed to keep up to $10,000 of their profits.  My community band, a non-profit organization, makes more money than that.  The listing of Realtors is rather amazing since the Communists admit they plan to do away with property rights.  What will we need realtors for if the government owns everything?  Clearly, they didn’t think everything through.

The collaborators admit their manifesto is still in its infancy – as are they.  This was their response to The Chicks on the Right:

1. The Charter Collaborative October 10, 2011 at 12:32 pm ·

Dear Chicks on the Right,

Thanks for the notoriety, and you’re welcome for the laughs at our expense.

Let’s get straight what the New Economic Charter is and what it isn’t.

Here’s the disclaimer we just posted at http://bit.ly/pg5PN7, in response to your skewering, below. Serious contributions are welcome. We admit that it’s “in its infancy, not yet ready for release” as you write. No kidding. It needs major work. What it will eventually be is an action plan supported by broad-based opinion – progressive, yes, but not the product of any think tank or well-financed, rich-guy supported PAC, and hopefully a balance of governmental and libertarian solutions to a serious national crisis that nobody at this point can deny.

DISCLAIMER

The contents of this document, “The American People’s New Economic Charter” (hereafter APNEC) and the statements, positions, arguments, etc. contained herein do not represent the views of any legal entity or registered organization.

At present, due to the crowd-sourcing nature of the drafting process so far, the contents of the APNEC reflect the direct input of a wide variety and large number of individuals, and can therefore be expected to be contradictory, of uneven editorial quality, ideologically diverse, academically more or less qualified, and of varying degrees of seriousness and commitment. Such characteristics are inherent to the process of crowd-sourcing at this stage.

In the spirit of democracy, inclusiveness, respect for our diversity, and our patriotic duty as Americans to advocate for what we individually believe will serve the common good of our nation, we will continue for a time to welcome input to the APNEC in the crowd-sourcing method described above, and will in a subsequent phase endeavor to collaboratively edit it so that a practical, responsible action plan emerges that fairly and reasonably reflects the hopes and needs of the 99%, responds to the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City, and charts a course for our nation away from its current crises and toward a better future.

- The Charter Collaborative, Monday, October 10, 2011

Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand philosophy holds that people work for their own interests, and in the great scheme of things, others ultimately benefit.  The only other way to compel them to meet society’s “needs” is through regulation, conscription, and punishment.  Violent punishment if they don’t comply with the rules for the Happy State.  In this, the religion of Islam is very much in agreement.  They are using class envy, warfare and psychology on an ignorant populace to herd them into the socialist pasture.

We cannot be timid in countering and denouncing their efforts, no matter how ridiculous they appear at the moment.  Remember:  there's nothing unconstitutional about criticizing what someone says or writes.  They can't, and shouldn't, be punished; but they can certainly be proven wrong.  During the Great Depression, when the demarcation line of poverty was much lower, accepting charity, even that given freely, was considered a dishonor.  Going on the dole lowered your status as a citizen; it was considered a disgrace.  You first went to your family if you were in trouble, then your church.  Then you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps.  Being on the dole was equivalent to being a ne’er-do-well, a thief.  Moral relativism and political correctness have banished individual responsibility to the dust bin.  Greed has ever been a villain; but so has envy, at least until modern times.

If only everybody had everything everybody else had.  The Socialists would have it that we would all be better off if everyone made the same salary and we all had the same possessions.  The Bible tells us that we’re better off being humble and not craving what everybody else has.  If our neighbor has more than we do, it should not be for us to curse them, or steal from them, but rather to content with whatever we have.  Those who do have are encouraged by the Bible to share what they have.  But it is for God, not the Government or other people, to judge what the wealthy do or do not share.  We think far too much of material wealth, none more so than the Socialists.  They use that wealth to cause more misery and dissension among people than any lack of wealth could ever do.  Their interference with the natural course of things could very well bring about the end of the world.