Morality According to Wall Street

In a couple articles in The Times about Occupy Wall Street, David Brooks gives a moderate version of the same moral argument heard from the hysterical right.  He too blames the losers, though the moderate version is more of an invitation to “responsible” adults to condemn the protesters as irresponsible whiners scapegoating the rich for their own problems.   

According to Brooks, those of us left behind by the Wall Street coup on our economy and our democracy should shut up about profits and class and corruption.  Instead we should look to our own lives and solve our own problems by working harder and harder and harder in order to consume without debt.  Meanwhile we should leave the distribution of  the wealth we create through our hard work to moderate Wall Street and Washington types who, like father, know best.  

The one moral claim protesters want heard remains out of bounds:  The system of money and power is unfair.