Patriot Update

The Occupy Wall Street movement showed once again last weekend why it, and not the Tea Party, is the darling of the media and many prominent politicians on the Left.

The civic-minded group Occupy Oakland led a riot, characterized by most media as a protest or demonstration, that resulted in more than 300 arrests, several injured police officers and untold thousands or more dollars in damages to city property.

Oakland officials, who have just about had it up to here with this kind of hooliganism, were more than a little irate.

“(Oakland) will not be bullied by threats of violence or illegal activity,” said City Administrator Deanna Santana. “Breaking into buildings, assaulting police officers, provoking confrontations and vandalizing property are tactics that are counterproductive and divide our community. They drain scarce city resources away from the neighborhoods in greatest need. Oakland deserves better.”

It was an oddly different attitude from that of a few months ago when Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and other city officials were issuing statements of support.

Not that Oakland was alone in backing the movement that is endorsed, and apparently led, by the Communist Party USA, the American Nazi Party and their ideological siblings.

Mayors in several large cities, and Democratic politicians all the way up to the White House, came out in favor of the movement that proposes to steal property from the wealthy and divvy it up. (The fact that many politicians could be considered to be among the wealthy whose property could be targeted by the Occupiers somehow never factors into the endorsements.)

Of course, some of the bloom is off the rose due to the Occupiers’ generally reprehensible behavior, including high incidences of theft, rape, assault, whining and bad hygiene — not necessarily in that order. Still, the media have done a remarkable job of keeping the Occupiers’ rampant and foul anti-Semitism and amazing levels of stupidity out of the headlines.

By comparison, the Tea Party is as dull as, well, a tea party.

The largest national Tea Party group, the Tea Party Patriots, thought it had the right ticket with its three-prong mission statement: lower taxes, constitutionally limited government and free enterprise. Little did Tea Party leaders realize that their slogans would come up against Occupy’s much pithier “Gimme, Dude.”

Clearly, it pays to make your bowel movements public, as Occupiers have done.

It doesn’t take much effort to connect the dots leading from the Occupy movement to the White House. Class envy is what our president’s policies are all about, and many of the Acorn activists who helped Obama win his first term have been caught red-handed working to organize the OWS.

Then there are the statements from Obama, such as when he told a group of Occupiers chanting during one of his campaign, er, policy speeches that they were the reason he ran for office.

And the love is largely mutual. Scratch an Occupier and 99 percent of the time you’ll find an Obama bumper sticker under the layers of filth.

Occupy Wall Street represents what is both old and new about Obama’s regime.

“Old” because it embraces the failed theories of socialism and the language of pre-revolutionary Russia and China with its false concerns about “the people” and its insulated and somewhat shadowy leadership.

“New” because the Occupiers’ mob seems likely to play a featured role in the coming general presidential campaign — though it’s an open question whether the gravity of that role will be influenced by whether Obama wins or loses the election.

The apparently welcomed support of the Occupiers by American Nazis, communists, foreign dictators, Nancy Pelosi and other unsavory anti-American types inspires dark visions of a new Kristallnacht brewing in the wings.

Tad Cronn is the editor in chief of The Patriots Almanac, a nonprofit, educational quarterly magazine.