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Mark Steyn posts on the “Occupy” group as the antithesis to the life of Steve Jobs.
… Who was Steve Jobs? Well, he was a guy who founded a corporation and spent his life as a corporate executive manufacturing corporate products. So he wouldn’t have endeared himself to the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd, even though, underneath the patchouli and lentils, most of them are abundantly accessorized with iPhones and iPads and iPods loaded with iTunes, if only for when the drum circle goes for a bathroom break.
The above is a somewhat obvious point, although the fact that it’s not obvious even to protesters with an industrial-strength lack of self-awareness is a big part of the problem. But it goes beyond that: If you don’t like to think of Jobs as a corporate exec (and a famously demanding one at that), think of him as a guy who went to work, and worked hard. There’s no appetite for that among those “occupying” Zuccotti Park. In the old days, the tribunes of the masses demanded an honest wage for honest work. Today, the tribunes of America’s leisured varsity class demand a world that puts “people before profits.” If the specifics of their “program” are somewhat contradictory, the general vibe is consistent: They wish to enjoy an advanced Western lifestyle without earning an advanced Western living. The pampered, elderly children of a fin de civilisation overdeveloped world, they appear to regard life as an unending vacation whose bill never comes due. …
… Why did Steve Jobs do so much of his innovating in computers? Well, obviously, because that’s what got his juices going. But it’s also the case that, because it was a virtually nonexistent industry until he came along, it’s about the one area of American life that hasn’t been regulated into sclerosis by the statist behemoth. So Apple and other companies were free to be as corporate as they wanted, and we’re the better off for it. The stunted, inarticulate spawn of America’s educrat monopoly want a world of fewer corporations and lots more government. If their “demands” for a $20 minimum wage and a trillion dollars of spending in “ecological restoration” and all the rest are ever met, there will be a massive expansion of state monopoly power. Would you like to get your iPhone from the DMV? That’s your “American Autumn”: an America that constrains the next Steve Jobs but bigs up Van Jones. Underneath the familiar props of radical chic that hasn’t been either radical or chic in half a century, the zombie youth of the Big Sloth movement are a paradox too ludicrous even for the malign alumni of a desultory half-decade of Complacency Studies: they’re anarchists for Big Government. Do it for the children, the Democrats like to say. They’re the children we did it for, and, if this is the best they can do, they’re done for.
Bill Kristol has more on Occupy.
… Occupy Wall Street may peter out and have no lasting significance whatsoever. And the respectful coverage by some in the media, the earnest attempts by bien-pensant commentators to guide the protesters to a coherent policy agenda, the evident nostalgia of Baby Boomers for the palmy days of their youth in the ’60s, the painful envy on the left of the success of the Tea Party?—?it’s all somewhat comical.
However: In politics, sometimes you have to take idiocy seriously. The complaints in the ’60s against life in oppressive Amerika were childish. The nuclear freeze movement of the early ’80s was foolish. The anti-Iraq war movement of a few years ago was both silly (“Bush lied, people died”) and disgraceful (“General Betray Us”). But movements can have political impact even if they aren’t worth much morally or intellectually or even numerically. And while one would hope the main effect of such flaky movements would be to discredit their allies, it doesn’t always work out that way. “General Betray Us” did not, for instance, prevent a big Democratic win in 2008. …
James Pethokoukis on the subject.
President Barack Obama’s amazing news conference yesterday made one thing abundantly clear: America’s #1 community organizer—in a switcheroo—has himself now been organized by a community, in particular those demonstrators up in New York and several other cities across America.
To the extent that the ideological circus of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) agrees on much, it’s that inequality is what really ails America—and more government is the solution. And Obama apparently couldn’t agree more. During the Q&A with reporters at the White House, Obama endorsed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s plan to pay for Obama’s jobs bill with a massive surtax on the rich, saying he was “comfortable” and “fine” with it. Obama then embarked upon a lengthy impression of consumer-teer Elizabeth Warren as he railed against banks trying to make big profits by tricking consumers (while failing to note that few people other than Dodd and Frank think banks are no longer “too big to fail”). …
We’ll give David Goldman (Spengler) the last word on the subject.
… the Wall Street protesters are foolish and petulant. American households levered a $6 trillion net inflow of foreign savings during the decade 1998 through 2007 into a bubble that benefited them far more than it did Wall Street. The impact of the bubble on the household balance sheet exceeds the growth in real-estate assets, moreover, because most small business expansion followed the housing bubble.
For fifteen years we rode a tsunami of foreign capital pouring into American markets. We didn’t save a penny. Why should we? Our home equity was our retirement account. Our smartest kids got MBAs and went to Wall Street derivatives desks. Engineering was for dummies. Home prices rose so fast that local governments swam with tax revenues and hired with abandon. Everybody went to the party. Now everybody has a hangover, especially the bankers. We thought we were geniuses because we won the lottery. Now we actually have to produce and export things, and we have to play catch-up. Our kids are competing with Asian kids who go to cram school and practice the violin in the afternoon. This isn’t going to be easy, and the sooner we decide to roll up our sleeves and get back to work instead of looking for bankers to blame, the better our chances of coming back.
Marc Thiessen liked Romney’s foreign policy address.
Mitt Romney did today what no other major presidential contender has: lay out a clear foreign policy vision. In a very good address at the Citadel, he explained the threats America faces in this new century—from Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, to a failed nuclear state in Pakistan, to a China leading a global alliance of authoritarian regimes, to a Western hemisphere dominated by Hugo Chavez’s malign socialism. And he made clear that the only response to these disparate challenges is a new American Century in which “America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world.” …
… Romney concluded: “I will not surrender America’s role in the world. This is very simple: If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president. You have that president today.”
Indeed. Now it is time for the other candidates to step forward and lay out their own visions for America’s role in the world.
Jennifer Rubin is a fan also.
The roll out of Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team, a major address and a comprehensive white paper on his views on national security reveal two things about the candidate, one we have seen before and another less apparent up until now.
As he did on his jobs plan, Romney’s foreign policy rollout is detailed, organized, professional and aided by very smart people. The logistics of assembling a big team of top advisors, crafting a short but bold speech and coming up with a detailed written document are daunting and impressive. The level of detail is unlike anything any other candidate has attempted, and far exceeds what we usually get in campaigns. This is Romney the executive, Romney the smart guy and Romney the polished professional. His message is clear: I’m prepared and I know what I am doing.
But what is surprising about his foreign policy effort is that unlike his economic plans and what has come top be seen as a character defect (e.g. lack of strong convictions) his foreign policy statements are bold, unqualified, and not couched for political advantage.
At the Citadel he offered himself as the not-President Obama: …