RALEIGH – Ideas matter. If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t have chosen a profession that involves the discussion and dissemination of ideas.
It might sound uncontroversial to say that ideas matter, but according to some economists, political scientists, and conspiracy theorists, ideology is irrelevant. They argue that material self-interest, class interest, or special-interest influence can explain social action without regard to the particular ideas being espoused.
Nonsense. Committed conservatives and libertarians know this is nonsense from their own experience. They’ll find another source of refutation by watching the Occupation movement closely as it devolves into confusion, bedlam, and farce. Its fate has not been a matter of a few bad apples, poor choice of tactics, or oppression by The Man.
There is a civil war within the Occupy Charlotte group, for example. One of its early leaders, 47-year-old Thomas Shope, helped organize the initial protest, created a web site and Facebook page, and acted as a spokesman for the group to the local media (I quoted one of his interviews in a previous column).
Factionalism soon intruded. Younger Occupy Charlotte activists – Shope refers to them as “high-school kids,” though I’ve seen no confirmation of their ages – decided to “exile” him from “the community.” They can say whatever they like, as can he. But the anti-Shope faction went further by recruiting an attorney to send Shope a letter demanding that he not return to the Occupy Charlotte encampment and that he surrender any donations collected at the protest. The faction also demanded that he turn over the Occupy Charlotte site and Facebook page.
Shope isn’t going to. He has registered the Occupy Charlotte name as a business and plans to start a nonprofit to advance the cause, which he identifies with the much-larger group of activists who participated in the original public demonstrations, not just the small number camping out on the grounds of Charlotte’s former city hall.
“I’m not trying to be a leader. It’s stewardship,” Shope told The Charlotte Observer. “These kids have had their run and their say long enough.”
For all their talk of democratic governance, many Occupation activists don’t seem to understand the necessity of basic rules of civil discourse and cooperative action. They exhibit little respect for the rights of others. As I have previously observed, their definitions of the freedoms of speech, petition, and assembly are remarkably selective. They assert their right to pool their time and resources to communicate a common message while denying the rights of others – of corporate shareholders and employees, for example – to do the same.
They also assert the right to “occupy” public property for weeks or months, without recognizing that such a demand is inconsistent with the rights of their fellow citizens to make use of the same property (public access to government lawns and parks is not on a first-come, perpetual-serve basis). When Raleigh leftists’ intrusive demand to occupy the grounds of the State Capitol was rejected, the response was telling. “It just shows that going through the standard practices and accepted procedures doesn’t work,” one activist told the Raleigh News & Observer. “This totally vindicates the movement. We are not going to get what we want through the system.”
Hmm.
My colleague Jon Sanders has taken note of more-egregious examples of the phenomenon in other states, where Occupation sites have become plagued by unsanitary conditions, drug abuse, property theft, and sexual assault. Of course, the vast majority of Occupy protesters have been victims of such misbehavior, not perpetrators of it. But the underlying assumptions of the activists – about what they are owed by society, about personal responsibility, about the sanctity of property, about the legitimacy of law enforcement – have been reflected in subsequent events.
Because the political agenda of the Occupy movement is, as far as I can tell, unfailingly leftist, I cannot say I am disappointed at its descent into self-parody. I don’t think government should acquire any power to tell Americans what to do. The Occupiers think otherwise. Still, I think it is unfortunate that well-meaning people have been suckered into wasting their time, and entrusting their hopes, to a movement doomed by its own faulty premises and inexorable logic.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.