Dear editor,

As Americans we have the right to protest what we will, be it the failing economy or rising unemployment. However, as Americans we also have a duty to know the facts of what we are protesting.

Occupy Wall Street supporters are not just blatantly following dumb logic, but they are protesting the hardworking men and women on Wall Street when, by their own beliefs, they should be appealing to CEOs like Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros.

While thousands of the OWS supporters couldn’t even tell you what credit or debt is, or what an investment banker does, they fail even more in their inability to see that what they are demanding is simply un-American. Among the more popular demands are:

1. They want minimum wage to be raised to $20.00 an hour. Stalin and Lenin agree. However, in America, where we have proudly practiced democracy and capitalism for 235 years, it is unconstitutional. The Constitution promises one the right to the pursuit of wealth, not a guarantee of free income.
2. Free college education. Cost Benefit — consideration of explicit and implicit costs — analysis shows that professors could not work for free, and neither could the government afford to pay them. So where would the money come from?
3. One trillion dollars each in infrastructure and ecological restoration. If OWS is truly concerned about the infrastructure in the wake of natural disasters such as Hurricane Irene, maybe they should spend more time volunteering, not spend time suggesting how we spend money we don’t have.
4. Decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants. If this were to happen, the U.S. would immediately lose 19.1 percent of its power. Furthermore, compared to coal —which is nearly half of U.S. energy production. Nuclear is a rather clean form of energy.

            OWS supporters would have you believe that these terms are fair and that Wall Street and the “one percent” are to blame for the current recession. I would advise you to do some research of your own. Look up the number of people who took out mortgages in 2008 even though they couldn’t afford to pay them back.

Look up popular companies like Apple, Ford and Boeing that outsource most of their labor, contributing much more heavily to unemployment than Wall Street. If the supporters of Occupy Wall Street had their way, we would lose everything that it is to be an American.

Derek Lowe

Class of 2015