Tocqueville Predicted Antisemitism At Occupy Wall Street

There has already been documentation of antisemitism at Occupy Wall Street in New York--now there are videos of more of the same in Chicago and LA.

Actually, in Chicago Palestinian Arabs are taking advantage of the situation, where Occupy Chicago Joins Destroy Israel Anti-war Peace March




It does seem like a natural fit though:
Those who want a welfare state joining with those who want a welfare country.

More incidents linked to at FireAndearMitchell.com on Occupy Chicago Calls For Destruction of Israel.

Meanwhile, out in Los Angeles:



Here is an "interview" from something called RTAmerica



Apparently all of those antisemites are actually on the right wing: followers of Larouche and Ron Paul!

This is from RTAmerica, whose YouTube page brags: "We report on the other side of the story, not making any conclusions, but raising the unanswered questions."
Sounds like lazy journalism for lazy people--which explains why nothing this guy claims is challenged.
It's sort of an infomercial for liberals.

RTAmerica may pat themselves on the back for this approach, but others already saw the danger in this long ago.

In The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom wrote:

The great democratic danger, according to Tocqueville is enslavement to public opinion. The claim of democracy is that every man decides for himself. The use of one's natural faculties to determine for oneself what is true and false and good and bad is the American philosophic method. Democracy liberates form tradition, which in other kinds of regimes determines the judgment.

...Thus the external impediments to the free exercise of reason have been removed in democracy. Men are actually on their own in comparison to what they were in other regimes and with respect to the usual sources of opinion. This promotes a measure of reason. However, since very few people school themselves in the use of reason beyond the calculation of self-interest encouraged by the regime, they need help on a vast number of issues--in fact , all issues inasmuch as everything is opened up to fresh and independent judgment--for the consideration of which they have neither time nor capacity.

...In the absence of anything else to which to turn, the common beliefs of most men are almost always what will determine judgment. This is just where tradition would to be most valuable. Without being seduced by its undemocratic and antirational mystique, tradition does provide a counterpoise to and a repair from the merely current, and contains the petrified remains of old wisdom (along with much that is not wisdom). The active presence of a tradition in a man's soul gives him a resource the ephemeral, the kind of resource that only the wise can find simply within themselves. The paradoxical result of the liberation of reason is greater reliance on public opinion for guidance, a weakening of independence. (p.246-247; emphasis mine)

And a weakening of the very independent judgement groups like RTAmerica brag they are helping to form.

Technorati Tag: Occupy Wall Street and Antisemitism and Tocqueville.