My Reply to Occupy Wall Street

Your existence does not place a claim on my resources, my wealth, my life, or the fruits of the sweat of my brow.  Your existence permits - nay, compels you - to serve others by competing in the commercial marketplace to meet the needs, wants, and desires of your fellow man.   To assert your claim on that which belongs to others is to essentially contradict the principle of the inviolability of personal property rights.  It is through our understanding of personal property and the cooperative exchange of goods and services that we organize society.  To demand that that which belongs to one person  be coercively taken from him and redistributed to other persons or groups is nothing less than tyranny, and it is against this I stand.  Demands to punitively "tax the rich" will neither create more jobs nor increase prosperity throughout the land.  From the current phase of capital strike will emerge full-fledged capital flight, capital controls, rationing and shortages, general want and poverty.  If each person occupying Wall Street would decamp, buy one ounce of physical silver, and take positive steps to hold our elected officials accountable for their votes, then far more would be accomplished to correct the economic ills which our nation and people suffer.  

Waltzing Though Life - NOT!

It's Labour Day 2011.  Gloomy and dark is the day.  And so I've decided to begin a blog - just to share my feelings, my inner being, my sense of existence.  It isn't for anyone else, not the public, not my friends, or  family, or for any reason, except to be an outlet to acknowledge my existence, perhaps just to prove to myself that I am, and somehow in some small way my life matters and has mattered to someone else.  I often wonder what will be my legacy when I am gone.  My uncle, Ellis Elton Wilder, died the other day - Friday, September 2nd.  He was 95, having been born 25 July 1916.  His funeral is this Wednesday in Montrose, and I'm wondering if I should go, if I would even be welcome to attend.

Ah, but back to me, where does my life proceed from here.  So many open doors, yet so many already closed by fate.  I was watching "Becoming Jane", yesterday.  Fabulous 2008 independent film about the life of Jane Austen.  How I admire her for her independence and creativity.  And that reminds me of the central theme of my life:  the ever-present conflict between the drive for independence (total freedom of action), and community (the urge to fully committ to another).  Those competing desires have never been able to come to an armistice in my life.  As one of my observent therapists once said, "You can polka, but you can't waltz"!  I have yet to find the synthesis that will allow me to waltz through life.  And that is where these wanderings and wonderings are aimed, as I search for the mythical waltz.