Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

October 27, 2011

Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Marine combat veteran of the Iraq War, survived that imperial venture abroad ? but he may die from wounds inflicted by the Empire?s domestic enforcement apparatus.

Olsen, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, was shot in the head by a police projectile during a protest in Oakland, California organized by the Occupy Wall Street movement. Riot police armed with rubber bullets, tear gas, and other supposedly non-lethal weaponry had been deployed to clear the streets of protesters near City Hall.

According to an AP report, Olsen ?participated in the protest because he felt corporations and banks have too much influence on the government?.? He had come to the same conclusion as his fellow Marine, Major General Smedley Butler ? the most decorated combat veteran in U.S. history.

Eighty years ago, amid the last Great Depression, Butler published a slender book entitled ?War is a Racket? in which he lamented the role he had played as an enforcement and collection agent of Wall Street and its allied political elite.

Scott Olsen is the human link connecting the concerns behind both the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement, who should unite in a joint effort to dismantle corporate socialism.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.