This column is reprinted with permission
from the Washington Times.
Some Belated Parental Advice to
Protesters
By Marybeth Hicks On October 19, 2011
Call it an occupational hazard, but
I can’t look at the Occupy Wall
Street protesters without thinking,
“Who parented these people?”
As a culture columnist, I’ve commented
on the social and political ramifications
of the “movement” – now known as “OWS”...
whose fairyland agenda can be summarized
by one of their placards: “Everything for
everybody.”
Thanks to their pipe-dream platform,
it’s clear there are people with serious
designs on “transformational” change
in America who are using the protesters
like bed springs in a brothel.
Yet it’s not my role as a commentator
that prompts my parenting question,
but rather the fact that I’m the
mother of four teens and young adults.
There are some crucial life lessons
that the protesters’moms clearly have
not passed along. Here, then, are five
things the OWS protesters’ mothers
should have taught their children but
obviously didn’t, so I will:
• Life isn’t fair. The concept of
justice – that everyone should be
treated fairly – is a worthy and
worthwhile moral imperative on which
our nation was founded. But justice
and economic equality are not the same.
Or, as Mick Jagger [2] said, “You can’t
always get what you want.”
No matter how you try to “level the
playing field,” some people have better
luck, skills, talents or connections
that land them in betterplaces. Some
seem to have all the advantages in life
but squander them, others play the
modest hand they’re dealt and make up
the difference in hard work and
perseverance, and some find jobs on
Wall Street and eventually buy houses
in the Hamptons. Is it fair? Stupid
question.
• Nothing is “free.” Protesting with
signs that seek “free” college degrees
and “free” health care make you look
like idiots, because colleges and
hospitals don’t operate on rainbows
and sunshine. There is no magic money
machine to tap for your meandering
educational careers and “slow paths”
to adulthood, and the 53 percent of
taxpaying Americans owe you neither a
degree nor an annual physical.
While I’m pointing out this obvious
fact, here are a few other things
that are not free: overtime for police
officers and municipal workers, trash
hauling, repairs to fixtures and
property, condoms, Band-Aids and the
food that inexplicably appears on the
tables in your makeshift protest
kitchens. Real people with real
dollars are underwriting your civic
temper tantrum.
• Your word is your bond. When you
demonstrate to eliminate student loan
debt, you are advocating precisely
the lack of integrity you decry in
others. Loans are made based on solemn
promises to repay them. No one forces
you to borrow money; you are free to
choose educational pursuits that don’t
require loans, or to seek technical or
vocational training that allows you to
support yourself and your ongoing
educational goals. Also, for the
record, being a college student is
not a state of victimization. It’s
a privilege that billions of young
people around the globe would die
for – literally.
• A protest is not a party. On Saturday
in New York, while making a mad dash
from my cab to the door of my hotel
to avoid you, I saw what isn’t evident
in the newsreel footage of your
demonstrations: Most of you are doing
this only for attention and fun.
Serious people in a sober pursuit of
social and political change don’t
dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like
attendees of a Renaissance festival.
You look foolish, you smell gross,
you are clearly high and you don’t
seem to realize that all around you
are people who deem you irrelevant.
•There are reasons you haven’t found jobs.
The truth? Your tattooed necks,
gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty
dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity
for the sake of nonconformity isn’t a
virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent
of college graduates are out of work.
If you are among that 4 percent, find
a mirror and face the problem. It’s
not them. It’s you.
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