Let’s take an in depth (and a little snarky) look at two movements in this nation right now. Let’s compare the Occupy Wall Street movement vs. 40 Days for Life.
We’ll start off with some visuals and then drill down into the details.
40 Days?
Occupiers?
Occupiers?
Or 40 Days?
Demands?
Occupiers? Free college education, debt forgiveness, a single payer healthcare system, income without employment, open borders, more trees.
40 Days? Please don’t kill babies.
Arrests?
Occupiers? Over 700 people have been arrested.
40 Days? None that I’ve heard of.
The media?
Occupiers? Currently 16,700 news articles.
40 Days? Currently 88 stories.
Reach:
Occupiers? Mainly centered in one city with some other protests in large cities.
40 Days? Nationwide movement with thousands of families at over 240 locations.
Celebrities?
Occupiers? Cornel West, Susan Sarandon, and Michael Moore.
40 Days? Uhm. Does Abby Johnson count? She was on EWTN, I think.
Urination?
Occupiers? Pretty much anywhere in public. It’s kinda’ like Woodstock on Wall Street.
40 Days? They go home or to the nearest CPC thank you very much.
Accoutrements?
Occupiers? Masks. Zombie makeup.
40 Days? Strollers. Lots of strollers.
Lives saved?
Occupiers? None. Not one. Zero.
40 Days? Over 4,000. And counting…
October 10, 2011 at 11:06 am
You Anglo-Saxons are so funny. I suppose the author of this blog and most of the commenters are poor and will stay poor all their life, just like me, but, being Anglo-Saxon, they love the rich and are horrified at the prospect of increasing rich people's taxes. You're saying : "I would rather die because of lack of medical care, rather than receiving medical care paid for by the taxes of billionaires. I infinitely prefer Lady Gaga buying herself a 10th Ferrari with her money rather than see an infinitely small amount of that money being stolen from her by the Government (boo ! Government is bad !) to be used to pay for my 2 year-old life-or-death operation that I can't afford ! It's my own fault that I'm poor and can't pay for my children healthcare. I don't understand what my fault is, since I worked hard all my life, always wanted a job, and when I wasn't unemployed against my will I worked 90 hours a week, but it must be my fault, because I'm poor ! Bless you, rich people, our intellectual and moral superiors !".
I can't decide if this is heroically brave or incredibly stupid. Probably both.
Cutting the snark, I see no fundamental contradiction at all between Occupy Wall Street and 40 Days for Life. And neither would, I am sure, some people like Pope Benedict (read his freaking encyclical Caritas in Veritate or any of the thousands of speeches in which he denounced capitalism, advocated environmental policies or wrote (as Joseph Ratzinger, I admit) that Marx's descriptive work was basically perfectly right (though the policies he recommended were terrible) (he wrote this in Jesus of Nazareth, Tome I)), all the previous Popes since Leo XIII (Pius XI, Pius XII, Paul VI, John XXIII, John-Paul II,…) who wrote encyclicals after encyclicals condemning capitalism, calling for Government (boo ! bad !) intervention in the economy and right to healthcare, or, well, Lord Jesus Christ, who said "Blessed are you the poor" and "Woe unto you that are rich" (Luke 6:20-22), called for rich people to give all their money to poor people or well, they had very little chance not to go to hell (Matthew 19, 24).
In particular, the occupiers' call for a right to healthcare is 100% complementary to the wonderful job of 40 Days for Life : 40 Days for Life affirm that human beings have a right to life from their conception to their birth, a right to healthcare means that human beings have a right to life after their birth.
PS : 40 Days for Life is doing an extraordinary, probably miraculous job and that is one Anglo-Saxon invention that I definitely want to see imported in my country. God bless them.
October 16, 2011 at 4:18 am
Thibaud, I don't know if you're for real or not. Your own snarky "you anglo-saxons" leads me to believe that you aren't, since you're obviously trying to do some good old-fashioned race-baiting. You also misquote the Popes, who condemned socialism and called for the principle of subsidiarity. If you insist on twisting the encyclicals, why do you call Caritas in Veritate "freaking"? And no, Cardinal Ratzinger would never have stated that Karl Marx the atheist was correct. You fool no one here, with the possible exception of yourself.
October 18, 2011 at 6:22 am
Occupy Wall Street will lead to Communism, which has never helped the poor, but brutalized and killed many millions of people. If the OWS people wanted to target their protest accurately they would complain about the educational system that has failed them so miserably and the welfare state that got built up by their forefathers in the 60s. Now they want to add another layer of entitlements to bury us all alive.