BrianGarst.com

Some, particularly libertarians who can find at least some ideological agreement in either group, think there is hope for the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street (and its various offshoots) to work together somehow. They base this off an assessment of common ground expressed by this image:

Obviously it’s difficult generalizing movements that have significant diversity of views even within their membership, and the OWS crowd is particularly difficult to pin down. But insofar as their views can even be deciphered, the image seems a fairly accurate representation. But it’s also incredibly misleading.

Yes, there is overlap in what folks are upset about, but there is virtually none in the proposed solutions. Consider the same image with the logical solutions added. The Tea Party side would read, “The government has way too much power, so it should be reduced and the government should therefore be smaller.” And the Occupier side would read, “Large corporations have too much power, so it should be reduced through greater regulation, and thus a bigger government.” There is no common ground here, because the prescriptions are exactly the opposite of one another.

Occupy Wall Street is a big government movement at a time when big governments are imploding the world over. It is the last gasp of a dying ideology, lashing out in rage at its own impotence in the face of necessary cuts in government spending. They are the American equivalent of violent Greek protesters incapable of accepting the inherent internal contradictions of large welfare states that were behind the nation’s insolvency. Pretending that advocates for limited government can work with these people in any way, shape or form is an exercise in self-delusion.

Occupy Wall Street Tea Party