We’ve noted here before that they walk amongst us so it’s always refreshing to see someone in the media recognizing it as well. We couldn’t have said the following any better so are posting Nolan Finley’s editorial in its entirety. (Link to original at the end.)
The late state Sen. Joe Mack once said of the downstate backpackers who thought they knew more about what was best for his Upper Peninsula district than he did: “They come up here with a $5 bill and a pair of underwear and never change either one.”
Up that to $20 to account for inflation and it pretty well describes the crowd thronging to Detroit this week for the 2010 U.S. Social Justice Forum.
This ain’t no tea party.
The forum is a hootenanny of pinkos, environuts, peaceniks, Luddites, old hippies, Robin Hoods and urban hunters and gatherers. In other words, a microcosm of the Obama administration.
Up to 20,000 of them are expected in Detroit, although the actual count is hard to pinpoint since they’ll be sleeping in tents and 14 to a hotel room. Their mission is to tear down Wall Street and use the bricks to pave a Main Street where everyone lives in racial and social harmony, nobody has too little or too much, and food, shelter, transportation, education, clothing and cell phones are inalienable rights provided by a benevolent government and funded by — well, they’ll let someone else worry about paying the bills.
The actual event starts Tuesday. But the opening act got under way Saturday with the three-day Assembly of Jews: Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid. Of course. You can’t have social justice without giving Israel a good, hard kick.
The agenda is loose. According to the event website, it will mostly be an opportunity for jawboning by every possible grievance group, from transgendered Teamsters to tree huggers traumatized because their favorite redwood is now a deck in Bloomfield Hills. Every wart on American society will be mapped and lamented.
Organizers say the forums are transformational, noting the gathering held in Brazil in 2001 led to the election of the socialist, America-bashing Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as president. But since we’ve already elected a socialist, America-bashing president, the event may be anticlimactic politically.
They also promise the forum will be “a people’s bailout for Detroit” that will make the city “a model for a just transition to a green 21st century economy.”
The last thing a city crippled by an entitlement culture needs to hear is that there is a handout bonanza coming that will spare it the hard work of rebuilding Detroit through individual initiative and raw, messy capitalism.
But the forum could serve an informative purpose. Take a good look at our guests as you step across their sleeping bags on Detroit’s sidewalks.
As incredible as it seems, they’re the ones winning the policy debates in Washington. Congress is frantically enacting their agenda, and they’ve got their man in the White House. You can bet had Barack Obama not been elected president, he’d be in Detroit this week teaching a community organizing class.
If we don’t come to our senses in November, this is what the whole country will look like soon.
By NOLAN FINLEY (editorial page editor of The News)
