Wall Street Protesters Are Whiners and Crybabies

Like those who voted for Barack Obama, the Occupy Wall Street protesters want hope and change. But like those who elected Obama, they are not sure what that means.

The protesters want the government magically to improve their lives, but they have no idea how that should be achieved. Some want all debt canceled. Some want cop killers freed. Some want more “community awareness.” Some want an end to “greed” or “money-hungry fascists.”

The protesters are the antithesis of the tea party, which knows exactly what it wants: a reduction in the size of government and of government spending and deficits.

In contrast to the tea party movement, which is focused on reform through the political process, the protesters have no idea how to attain what they want except by creating a disturbance.

So far, the New York City police have arrested 700 of the protesters, diverting officers from fighting crime. Some protesters have urinated and defecated on sidewalks. Others have engaged in public sex.

To be sure, a small number of tea party members have carried signs with ugly sentiments about Obama. But contrary to myths in the media, none has engaged in violence.

Nor has the tea party prevented others from speaking, as the Occupy Atlanta protesters did with Democrat Rep. John Lewis. Their grounds for preventing a stunned Lewis from addressing them were that “no singular human being is inherently more valuable than any other human being.”

By now, the economy should have been in robust recovery mode, but because of Obama’s policies, we are on the precipice of a recession. Companies are afraid to hire because of uncertainty about the cost of Obamacare, about future taxation, and about more federal regulations that stifle free enterprise.

So we have an unemployment rate above 9 percent, and the unemployment rate among young African-Americans is a disgraceful 44 percent.

Still, it is possible to get a job. While some of the protesters say they quit jobs to join the protests, millions of young people are productively attending college to get ahead in the world.

My father, Dr. Ernest Borek, came to this country from Hungary through Ellis Island at the age of 14. He could not speak English. Living in the Bronx, the family of eight could barely afford to buy a piece of sausage that they brushed on bread to flavor it. Dinner often consisted of only chicken soup made with chicken backs and wings fortified with noodles. Once a week, my grandmother Hermina baked a loaf of bread. It was to last until the following week.

But my father — I later took the name of my stepfather, Dr. Myer M. Kessler — was determined to get ahead. Academically, he drove himself, attending night school to learn English while holding down several jobs to help support the family. While working at a fruit store, he would fade to the back of the store and read his textbooks as soon as a customer left.

My father could not have attended college in Hungary because he was Jewish. But he graduated from City College of New York City in three years and obtained a doctorate in biochemistry from Columbia University. He became a professor at both City College and at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

My father became chairman of the National Cancer Institute’s review committee, which awards NIH cancer research funds. His research made the front page of The New York Times. Before he died in 1986, scientists at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine nominated him for a Nobel Prize for his discoveries in the conquest of cancer.

Poor though he was, my father never got a government handout. “Life was never like this in the Turkish baths,” he would say when taking us to a fancy restaurant, referring to one of the jobs he held down while attending college.

In contrast, the protesters want a free lunch. As presidential candidate Herman Cain has said, they are “jealous” Americans who “play the victim card.”

“My parents, they never played the victim card,” Cain, who became CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, said on CBS’ Face the Nation. “My parents never said, ‘We hope that the rich people lose something so we can get something.’ No, my dad’s idea was, ‘I want to work hard enough so I can buy a Cadillac — not take somebody else’s.’”

If there is any doubt that the protesters represent Democrats’ agenda, look at the Democrats who have embraced them and egged them on — from Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The protesters are whiners and crybabies. Their unruly demonstrations will only help Republicans win the White House in 2012. Instead of camping out in the streets, they should be thanking God they live in America.

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. He is a New York Times best-selling author of books on the Secret Service, FBI, and CIA. His latest, "The Secrets of the FBI," has just been published. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via email. Go Here Now.