In the old days, common sense reigned supreme. If you spent your days hanging around with that kid who smoked, it was a safe bet you were smoking too. “Birds of a feather,” we were told, “flock together.” These days, that kind of thinking will earn you a one-way ticket to the politically incorrect doghouse. Thanks to the holier-than-thou left, the great sin of our time is the willingness to lump people together based on behavior or ideology. Liberal Democrats have worked long and hard to villainize the very idea that there may be such a thing as “birds of a feather.” Take a quick look at the Occupy Wall Street movement, and it’s easy to see why.
Last week, self-proclaimed propaganda filmmaker Michael Moore roamed the streets of New York, where he joined the OWS protesters and repeatedly tweeted his deep, abiding support of their “eat the rich” cause. Moore’s editing projects and shameless self-promotion have made him a millionaire several times over, and his Park Avenue penthouse apartment (only blocks from the protest site) makes it easy for him to join in the fun. Regardless of his hypocritical socialist ideology, his uncanny ability to package and sell dissent has shown him to be the consummate capitalist.
Odd then, that on the same day, the Communist Party USA reaffirmed its belief in the OWS movement. Suddenly, a multimillionaire filmmaker and the decidedly anti-millionaire Communist Party found themselves supporting the same cause.
It’s common knowledge that former Obama administration official Van Jones has been one of the main forces organizing the Occupy protests. The African-American Jones, a self-described radical communist activist and 9/11 “truther,” has long sought to create a far left answer to the tea party, which he has described as a racist organization bent on taking away the civil rights of minorities.
Yet isn’t it strange that his Occupy Wall Street movement has been shown, repeatedly, to be a hotbed of anti-Semitism, which enjoys the full faith and support of the American Nazi Party? According to the skinheads, OWS is taking on the same “judeo-capitalist banksters” that they themselves so deeply despise. On their website, Nazi Party leader Rocky Suhayda acknowledged that many of the organizers and protesters were non-Aryan communists, but he wrote, “Even Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP had to vote with open communists on some issues to achieve their goals.”
Also willing to overlook logical inconsistencies in order to support Occupy Wall Street are President Barack Obama, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, fourth-ranking House Democrat John Larson and the ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, Louise Slaughter. All of these people have endorsed the Wall Street protests, unfazed by the fact that doing so aligns them with the Nazi and Communist parties.
If, as old-school common sense tells us, “Birds of a feather flock together,” what is joining these people?
Why would a high-ranking, pro-socialist Nazi like Suhayda align himself with a black communist and alleged civil rights crusader like Van Jones? Why would the Communist Party and a rich, fat cat, movie maker like Moore be on the same side of the fence? Why would Obama, Pelosi and other high-ranking Democrats tie their political fortunes to a group backed by such deeply un-American organizations?
Put simply, all of these disparate forces view capitalism and the United States as broken, deeply flawed constructs. The thing that unites them, no matter how unlikely their alliance may seem, is the idea that America needs to be undone and reconfigured as a country most citizens would scarcely recognize. As President Obama himself put it, America needs to be rebuilt “from the ground up.”
It’s time for Democrats to realize that, no matter how much they’ve tried to tell us otherwise, most people realize the truth: Birds of a feather really do flock together. Joining forces with the protesters may shore up their base, but the real “other 99%” — those who recognize the Occupy movement for what it is — will stay away in droves.
The more high-level Dems tie themselves to Occupy Wall Street and its various backers, the more they reveal their true colors.
Robert Laurie is a Michigan-based conservative columnist and freelance writer. He also runs a daily political commentary blog at RobertLaurie.net.