Invades? I’m pretty sure they already lived there.
What makes this video is the ominous music and quotes from Karl Marx…
Invades? I’m pretty sure they already lived there.
What makes this video is the ominous music and quotes from Karl Marx…
GeorgePWood.com 
This video is produced by Tea Party Television with the intent of polarizing what the founders of OWS intend to be a popular movement.
God’s heart is revealed in the concepts of the seven year forgiveness of debts, the return of property at the year of Jubilee, the third year tithe for the alien, fatherless, and widow, gleaning for the poor, etc. A challenge for the church is to incorporate the heart of God into the culture. Christians need to be involved in the OWS movement and give it Christian values and ethics.
Steve:
Let’s stipulate, for the sake of argument, that Tea Party Television went to Oakland and interviewed only the crazy Communists among the Occupy Wall Street movement in Oakland. Whatever need Christians have to get involved with OWS in general does not, in my opinion, apply to OWS Communists in general. Indeed, the very Jubilee principle you cited–the return of property–indicates a very un-Communist support of private property.
So, let’s consider whether Christians need to be involved with the mainstream of OWS. I don’t see why Christians need to do anything such thing with a one-month old movement that doesn’t, as far as I can tell, have either a coherent understanding of the roots of our economic troubles, a consistent critique of government’s role in creating them, or any concrete policy proposals for resolving them.
At the moment, what I see is rhetoric. And on the basis of rhetoric alone, I simply don’t see why Christians need to get behind OWS.
Just my personal opinion….
GPW
I think Christians need to be concerned about the poor. OWS has that concern also. I do not see that concern in the Tea Party nor do I see the video produced by Tea Party Television as anything but polarizing. Just my opinion . . .
I don’t care if a political movement mentions “the poor.” What I care about is whether its policies actually help the poor. So far, OWS hasn’t articulated any coherent policy, and some of its slogans would harm the poor. Take debt forgiveness, for example. That sounds great. But if you universally forgive debts, you dry up credit markets and harm retirees whose pension funds depend on investment in banks. (Think MBA, the AG’s retirement fund, for example.)
The OWS movement will take time to come together but they are united in opposition to what the Tea Party stands for. No new taxes and cut spending are the battle cry of the Republicans heavily influenced by the Tea Party. Keynesian economics tells us that to boost the economy/employment requires government spending to stimulate the economy. No new taxes and spending cuts do just the opposite further aggravating the problem. Tea Party policies are a detriment to the poor.
Reagan policy supply side economics, trickle down, may have a short term good impact on the economy but long term it is disastrous for the poor and middle class. Since the Reagan administration, there has be a huge transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the upper crust. Taxing the rich is the cure for this problem. Unfortunately, the rich historically minimize their tax increases and the burden of stimulating the economy will likely end up the duty of the middle class that still have good jobs. It is a bullet the middle class will likely have to bite.
Steve:
The various “stimulus” packages–begun by Bush and continued by Obama–have been a bust. They have transferred money from the middle class to politically connected groups and politically favored industries in the form of bank bailouts, corporate bailouts, federal loan subsidies, and the propping up of state employees. They haven’t helped the economy. Further stimulus packages will just throw more money down the toilet.
The Tea Party movement recognizes this, which is why it opposes increased taxation, increased spending, and the increased transfer of private wealth to politically connected entities.
Supply-side economics did not have a “short term good impact on the economy,” it had a nearly two-decades long run of economic growth and growth in personal wealth and access to economic goods. Unfortunately, that economic growth underwrote an expansion of government spending at all levels that is unsustainable.
Unsustainable government spending–spending, that is, that generates public debt that cannot be paid off–hurts the very poor that it was intended to help. Something must change in this equation. OWS–if you’re correct–thinks that the problem is that the rich aren’t taxed enough. The Tea Party movement thinks we’re taxed enough already. The problem is that government spends too much.
Whether government spends too little or too much is thus the nub of the moral debate, here.
GPW