They Don't Care Because It's Not Theirs

In responding to my last post, “Why do they Occupy in Tents?”, an anonymous visitor said, “[E]ven if we want equality in a lot of ways is it really okay with us for people to invade and take over our personal belongings? If I bought a Park and told every body they could come use it as a park, I wouldn't expect them to use it as a free camp ground. I didn't say it was a camp ground.” This visitor has struck upon the very reason why liberalism never works. These people don't care about the park because it's not theirs.

It has always been the case that people tend to take better care of things that they own. Landlords will certainly attest to this fact once they've had renter after renter trash their house. People who own the home and pay for its maintenance would never treat the home as poorly as many renters would. And neighborhoods with lots of federally subsidized housing are usually the worst.

We often see this attitude in teenagers. Parents work hard to buy nice things for their kids. Sometimes the kids don't even care as much about their own stuff as the parents do. Have you ever heard your kid say something like, “Oh, mom, I spilled nail polish on those new jeans so I'll need another pair before Friday”? It's not until they work, earn their own money, and pay for their own things that they begin to appreciate the fact that money is a limited resource.

This disregard for the property of others permeates throughout the entire Occupy movement. For example, one thing I've heard them demand is student loan forgiveness. Never mind that the lenders who made the loans and the tax payers who subsidized them will be out millions of dollars. The protestors don't think it's fair that they have to pay back tens of thousands when all they got out of it was a college education! So you see, they don't care that other people will lose money as long as they get to keep their money.

We see this attitude the most in the movement's “class warfare” rhetoric. The “tax the rich” mantra is simply a demand to take something away from other people so the protestors can have it. They want free college, free health care, free housing, and even free banking but they certainly don't want to pay more taxes to get any of it. Just let the rich people pay for it.

Newt Gingrich had it right when he said:

“All the Occupy movement starts with the premise that we owe them everything. They take over a public park they didn't pay for, to go nearby to use bathrooms they didn't pay for, to beg for food from places they don't want to pay for, to obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously explain they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything.”

What more can I say? Amen!