Andrew Sullivan provides the conservative rationale for backing the 'Occupy Wall St' movement that looks like it is here to stay:
I've arrived at the conclusion these past few years that the kind of fantastic income and wealth inequalities in this country (and the trends that keep reinforcing them) are a threat to our political and social order. The massive concentration of wealth at the top is undermining some core assumptions about common citizenship, even within a free market economy, especially since much of the wealth seems acquired by accounting chicanery, crony capitalism and a K-Street fix. As such, conservatives should be worrying about inequality as much as liberals. So far, this is largely a peaceful, groovy, inchoate protest against the right target: the concentration of wealth in the financial sector and its immunity from any kind of social or political accountability for its role in the unending recession in people's incomes. I see nothing more culturally out there in these protests that were not in the Tea Party protests - from the other side. One man's nose-ringed hippie is another woman's costumed Tea Partier.
There is nothing conservative about the economic system most Americans live under. It is a debt based, consumer driven system with no thought for prudence or fiscal planning. To boot, the rich are protected by the nanny state while the rest live under a brutalist free black hole where those who lose die.
'Occupy Wall St' should be joined by anyone disturbed by monumental corruption and corporate malfeasance regardless of political labels.
