Democracy in America?: Occupy Calls Nation's Bluff

In many ways, the core of the Occupy Wall St. movement's impact in the U.S. has been to expose how corrupt our systems of governance really are, and to show what (direct) democracy in action actually looks like. We live in an age of perverse language, when "democracy" and "freedom" are exported by drones, or at gunpoint, and where anarchism -- democracy without government -- is viewed by many as tantamount to terrorism.

With those specific things in mind, here is a cluster of material related to the underlying theory and evolving practice of the Occupy movement, highlighting adaptive and prefigurative organizing successes and casting an eye towards 2012.

Another cluster focusing on corporate and state repression of democracy in the United States, with an emphasis on anti-OWS actions, will follow shortly.

• Thank You Anarchists
  With their emphasis on participatory direct democracy, the anarchists behind Occupy Wall Street have changed the very idea of what politics could be, and they've offered American political life a gift, should we choose to accept it. They’ve reminded us that we don’t have to rely on Republicans or Democrats, or Clintons, Bushes or Sarah Palin, to do our politics for us. With the assemblies, they’ve bestowed a refreshing form of grassroots organizing that, if it lasts, might help keep the rest of the system a bit more honest. | THE NATION
  
  
• Occupy Wall Street's Anarchist Roots
  The 'Occupy' movement is one of several in American history to be based on anarchist principles. From the beginning, organizers made the audacious decision to operate not only by direct democracy, without leaders, but by consensus, and with a commitment to direct action. | by DAVID GRAEBER, AL JAZEERA
  
  
• Occupy Wall Street Revives An Ideology
  The anarchism that motivates some Occupiers today is ultra-egalitarian, radically environmentalist, effortlessly multicultural, and scrupulously non-violent...The “horizontal” nature of a movement brought to life and sustained by social media fits snugly inside their anarchist vision of a future in which autonomous, self-governing communities would link up with one another, quite voluntarily of course.  | THE NEW REPUBLIC
  
  
• Intellectual Roots of Occupy Wall St. in Madagascar?
  Occupy Wall Street's most defining characteristics—its decentralized nature and its intensive process of participatory, consensus-based decision-making—are rooted in other precincts of academe and activism: in the scholarship of anarchism and, specifically, in an ethnography of central Madagascar. | THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
  

Principled, Consistent, Wrong: The Perfectly Selfish Problematics of Ron Paul

He’s the only truly anti-war, anti-imperialist candidate in the 2012 Presidential race, but here's the truth: Take a good look at Ron Paul and you'll see a racist, sexist, anti-gay, anti-worker candidate whose ideas about getting rid of all environmental regulation, returning to the gold standard, rolling back civil rights, and further restricting women’s access to abortion, are all extremist. So is his libertarian support for the Austrian School of Economics. Paul, like Rick “Oops” Perry, is another right-wing free-market zealot from Texas not worthy of holding higher public office.

But what is it about Paul–his brand or his substance–that pulls support from so many parts of the political continuum?

• Of Broken Clocks, Presidential Candidates, and the Confusion of Certain White Liberals
  "And [Paul would] shut down the Fed! Woo-hoo! That would be awesome: so then interest rates and the money supply could be controlled entirely by private banks, without even a theoretical modicum of public accountability! What progressive wouldn’t love that? And sure, the Fed was created by an act of Congress, but that doesn’t matter: a president with the determination of David Duke can just snap his fingers and poof! All the central bankers will be begging on the streets for change! Like I said, it’s fucking magic!" | BY TIM WISE 
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• Let's Be Clear: Ron Paul Sucks, and Here Are 20 Reasons Why
  Every single one of the candidates currently running for the Republican nomination is a walking disaster. But one of them, Texas congressman Ron Paul, seems to be getting a disturbing amount of support from liberals. Mostly that's because his nut-job libertarian views happen to not sound so nutty on a handful of issues. He wants to end the War on Drugs. He is against the death penalty. He would support a constitutional ban on gay marriage. He was opposed to the War in Iraq and wants to end all American military intervention abroad. All of that sounds pretty good to us left-wing types — downright refreshing coming from a Republican. Some progressives have claimed they'd rather vote for him than for Obama. Even Occupiers have sung his praises. But if you're a liberal who supports Ron Paul, you either haven't been paying enough attention or you're out of your fucking mind. | BY LITTLE RED UMBRELLA 
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• Paul criticized equal pay, AIDS patients, sexual harassment victims 
  Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) may be the most principled and consistent Republican candidate for president, but what exactly are those principles? | THE RAW STORY
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• Ron Paul Thought His Newsletters Were Pretty Great in 1995
  Ron Paul's position on the newsletters with racist statements that were published under his name 20 years ago has changed quite a since then -- in a 1995 interview with CSPAN, for instance, he was pretty proud of them. | THE ATLANTIC
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• Occupy protesters interrupt Ron Paul: "Why do you hate gays?"
  Protesters with the 99-Percent movement have been interrupting campaign-related events all over Iowa. | THE RAW STORY
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• On the Environment, Ron Paul Even Crazier Than Bachmann and Perry 
  OK, forget that he'd like to make it a criminal offense for a woman to get an abortion. How about that he thinks there should be no environmental protections at all? | TREEHUGGER
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• A Bigot Through and ThroughThere isn't any reason good enough to support Ron Paul | ELIZABETH SCHULTE, SOCIALIST WORKER

OF RELATED INTEREST:

• The Trap: What Happened to our Dream of Freedom? 
  A series by Adam Curtis exploring the concept and definition of freedom, specifically, "how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom. | BBC
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• The Austrian School of Economics is Crank Science
  The Austrian School of Economics is a tiny group of libertarians at war with mainstream economics. They reject even the scientific method that mainstream economists use, preferring to use instead a pre-scientific approach that shuns real-world data and is based purely on logical assumptions. But this is the very method that thousands of religions use when they argue their opposing beliefs, and the fact that the world has thousands of religions proves the fallibility of this approach. Academia has generally ignored the Austrian School, and the only reason it continues to exist is because it is financed by wealthy business donors on the far right. The movement does not exist on its own scholarly merits.
  
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