Tea party vs. Wall Street occupiers

There was a time when I was asked to write fairly regularly for the Los Angeles Times opinion page.

Every few weeks the paper would solicit a commentary from me, often in response to something one of their more "progressive" pundits had to say.

Then those solicitations stopped – about the time I began WND 14 years ago.

So it was a little surprising this week when I got an email from the opinion editor of the L.A. Times asking if I would sound off on the distinctions and similarities between the tea-party movement and the "Wall Street Occupiers."

Sure, I said.

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"Well, what would you say?" she asked.

"I would say they are polar opposites," I responded quickly. "Tea-party activists are salt-of-the-earth, hardworking Americans who, previous to their activism in 2009, had never marched with placards or attended rallies or town halls. Their rallying cry is the rule of law and getting government off their backs. On the other hand, the Wall Street Occupiers are jobless, directionless riff-raff who don't think government can ever be big enough if their every need is not being addressed."

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I guess that was not the answer she was looking for. She politely told me she had some other analysts she would be using for this one. After all, who am I? I'm just the author of "The Tea Party Manifesto."

My answer didn't quite fit the narrative the media are constructing, which comes down to this: Is the "Occupy Wall Street" movement the mirror image of the tea party?

That's the question being asked on talk shows and debated on cable TV day and night.

In a sense, it certainly is. Since a mirror image is backwards, one can think about what's happening in New York, Boston, Washington and other cities around the country as the very antithesis of the tea-party movement. It's the opposite of what we saw break out nearly spontaneously in 2009.

Let's compare the two movements:

• The tea-party movement is and was organized around clear and abiding political principles – the very principles that formed the basis for America's unique experiment in self-governance. They include constitutionally limited government, human rights that descend from our Creator rather than privileges bestowed by government and, more generally, a commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
• The occupiers apparently have no interest in self-governance. They seek to extend government control in the interest of forcible redistribution of wealth at the expense of individual liberty. They are not interested or concerned with the strict limits the Constitution places on the federal government. Rather, they seem to prefer a central government without any restrictions on its power. Human rights to the occupiers are really privileges from government that can be bargained for with loud voices and votes. Of course, privileges can be taken away by governments that grant them.

I suspect many in the media are loving the idea that thousands of Americans are getting out in the streets to promote an agenda quite at odds with the tea-party focus. For two years they saw a remarkable and, to them, inexplicable phenomenon – normal, hardworking, flag-waving Americans who had never before in their lives marched in a demonstration or carried placards in a rally mobilizing in the streets behind the idea of returning to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the glue that held the republic together for 230-plus years.

Where were the "change agents" the media had championed during the 1960s and 1970s and right through the beginning of the 21st century?

Well, they're back – in the form of "occupiers."

After the tea-party activists rallied on the Capitol Mall in Washington in record numbers, they left the ellipse cleaner and tidier than they found it. Can the same be said of the "occupiers"?

And who are the "occupiers"? Have you heard them interviewed? Do any of them sound like they know what they are talking about? Do they have a plan other than to agitate and make noise? Do they really not understand they are promoting a form of tyranny rather than liberty? Do they seem like people who understand the way the world works? Are they people of accomplishment? Do they have a work ethic? Are they the kind of salt-of-the-earth Americans you would like as neighbors?

Maybe it's just me, but that's not what I see.

These demonstrators sound like spoiled children.

I've yet to hear a cogent articulation of their grievances from any one of them.

It sounds like they hate free enterprise and blame capitalism for the economic crisis America is experiencing – when, in fact, what we are experiencing is a government-made economic mess that is getting worse with each new initiative from Washington.

But unlike the tea-party movement, whose astounding numbers were ignored and dismissed by the media for many months before they could no longer be denied, the "occupiers" represent a relatively small band of malcontents – and they are getting more than their "fair share" of media coverage.