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Comment by zavulon | Hacker News Reader

I could not upvote you enough. It's sickening what is happening in this country. I was born in Soviet Union, and the resemblence grows more and more every day. All the protesters are lacking is a charismatic leader who will promise to punish the evil bourgeouis and distribute their wealth to the poor.

What happened to entrepreneurship. What happened to taking control of your life. What happened to working hard and making things happen. These protests make me very sad, and go against every principle this country was founded on.

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> These protests make me very sad, and go against every principle this country was founded on.

Given how enthusiastic the American founding fathers were for the French Revolution, which had a definite socialist and anti-elite flavor (not merely anti-monarchism), I'm not sure how true that is. Opinions varied, but many were of the view that a free society needs reasonable equality and can't coexist with large concentrations of economic resources.

Thomas Jefferson hoped (futilely) to achieve it by avoiding industrialization, remaining a nation of yeoman farmers and thereby avoiding what he saw as the ills of British industrial capitalism, with its predominance of wage labor, large factories, etc. (he didn't like either the industrialists or their trade-unionist counterparts). That, combined with robust public education.

Thomas Paine was a proto-socialist, traveling after the American Revolution to France to help with the revolution there, where his Rights Of Man: Part The Second was one of the first comprehensive proposals for what can now be seen as social democracy, with a progressive income tax and inheritance tax used to fund a social safety net.

The existence and independence of corporations was also a pretty active area of controversy until the 1850s or so. Before then, many of the founding generation were of the view that corporations were limited-time constructs under supervision of the state (which held visitation and dissolution rights), not fully independent entities, and were skeptical of corporations with a "life of their own", seen as a European pathology (the Dutch East India Company, etc.).

To use a Marxist term, what we're seeing here is a Social Democratic consciousness, not a push for centralized Communism. If you asked the protestors whether they wanted Russia in 1917 or Sweden in 2011, what do you really think they'd pick?

In other words, I think you're overreacting.

The American Dream is that everyone should be able to get a full-time job and that if you're willing to work a full-time job, you'll be able to pay your bills.

None of the bargain is that it will be interesting. None of the bargain is that it'll be glorified in media. But the bargain is that if you're looking for a job, there'll be one. And the job will be physically safe (unless extra-ordinarily compensated to make up for it), that you can get healthcare, and that you can go to sleep at night without wondering whether you'll be able to make rent the next month.

It's the dissolution of that bargain and that Dream that's driving OWS.

"The American Dream is that everyone should be able to get a full-time job and that if you're willing to work a full-time job, you'll be able to pay your bills."

If this is what people think, they have been misled. The american dream has always been that you have the ability to pursuit your dreams, not guaranteed a job. This means, you can start a business as someone who is poor and one day make enough to support your family and more. Right now, we still have this freedom.

With huge taxes and more government regulations and control, the dream will be dead. Then, the only entities left (because they can afford the taxes and regultions) will be big corporations.

"In the end, that's all most Americans are asking for. It's not a lot. You don't expect government to solve all your problems. You want to be self-reliant and independent. You want to be responsible for your own lives and take care of your own families. But what you do expect is a government that isn't run by the special interests. What you do expect is that if you're willing to work hard, you should be able to find a job that pays a decent wage, that you shouldn't go bankrupt when you get sick, that you should be able to send your children to college even if you're not rich, and that you should be able to retire with dignity and security." -Barack Obama

"Anyone who is honestly seeking a job and can't find it, deserves the attention of the United States government, and the people." -John F. Kennedy

"In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; . . ." -FDR

"But what you do expect is a government that isn't run by the special interests." -- Barack Obama

LOL. Says the man who gets money from special interest groups.

The liberal left are all about special interest groups.

While we're at it:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." -TJ

"If a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists." -MLK Jr.

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