Credit the Occupy whatever movement with this: their protests are unwittingly underscoring the critical importance of property rights. I say "unwittingly" because they apparently lack the wits to figure that out.
Reports of rape, theft, sexual assault (even against children), and other such crimes taking place within the Occupy tent villages have begun to surface. The Baltimore Sun is reporting that Occupy Baltimore has sent a memo out discouraging protesters who are sexually assaulted by fellow protesters from contacting police, but rather to let the movement handle it internally.
Put starkly, it is extremely dangerous to live in tents with a bunch of people who oppose individual rights of life, liberty, and property. Female protesters are especially at risk. Naifs with $5,500 laptops and other high-dollar items who are protesting "the rich" are also asking for trouble. Parents who mindlessly drone "think of the children" should do exactly that and leave them at home.
By now it's known that the movement is supported by Communist Party USA, the American Nazi Party, Communist China, President Barack Obama, ad nauseam. Basically, it's supported by International Socialists, National Socialists, and Don't-Call-Me-Socialists.
All strains of socialism -- whether international, national, or in-denial -- believe the individual must be subsumed to the state collective, which is euphemized "the common good." At its core, socialism out of necessity obliterates the idea that each individual has God-given rights that no man or government may take away, including life, liberty, property, freedom to pursue one's own dreams, and related freedoms.
Those all are essentially property rights, with one's own person being the first and most important. If you cannot command your own self, you are a slave. Socialists want everyone to be slaves to "the common good"; as Orwell's socialist police state taught, Freedom Is Slavery. They also prefer to be the ones deciding what exactly is the common good.
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Granted, the possibilities to be realized through socialism must be intoxicating to entitled hippie wannabes who sunk themselves deep in debt pursuing degrees in various Victimization Studies and so forth who are outraged they weren't swarmed upon graduation with employers begging to give them six-figure salaries as Social Justice Executive Officers. The rich should pay off their loans and give them acceptably high-paying jobs, or else the world is broken. If they don't, the government should make them.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. That is their cherished creed. It always suits because they always see themselves as the needy, not the able.
There's not a Niemoller in the bunch to realize where that belief is taking them. A philosophy that makes ownership subjective to perceived need invites violence upon itself, not just the rich.
"Needs" aren't just pecuniary. Protesting guys have needs, too, and that attractive sociology student in the nearby tent looks like her body has the right "ability." The common good needs my continued presence, and my continued presence needs satisfaction, so I'm taking some. Some protesters can't afford the designer tents the others have, but look at that laptop over there -- that and a nearby pawnshop would take care of that need. The theft can be justified to serve the common good.
Once those needs have been filled -- in ways fully keeping with their mutually agreed-upon idea of social justice, mind you -- other needs arise. The movement needs to keep its rapes, thefts, molestations, and sexual assaults out of the news. Nothing must be reported that would make the movement appear bad. So your body is once again disregarded, a collective rape after the individual one. To serve the common good.
In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn cataloged how the Soviets regarded thieves and violent criminals as their social allies. Crimes against individuals were essentially immaterial to their concern; they were worried about political "criminals." They enjoyed the idea of political criminals being robbed, raped, and abused by violent criminals. It fed the terror.
Solzhenitsyn's was the experience of life in a fully formed socialist dictatorship that had learned to use its criminal by-product to its full political advantage. But isn't it interesting that even in its amoebic forms, little socialist societies are already allowing and covering up crimes against their own members for the common good?
It's no accident. It's the logical result of their beliefs.
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