David McElroy

In their mad rush to fight “gang activity,” school officials in a little town just west of Omaha, Neb., have banned a 12-year-old girl from wearing a necklace resembling a rosary — because they’ve been told that gangs in distant states might be using them as symbols.

She really looks like a hardcore ganger to me, even if she says she doesn’t understand what a gang is. So is the school saying that it believes this girl is trying to promote gangs — with the various things she wears to promote her faith?

“I’m wearing a cross necklace, a cross T-shirt and a cross bracelet,” she said. “I’m thinking of how Jesus died on the cross and how he gave up all his sins for us.”

The school superintendent says it’s a safety issue, but it seems that the real issue is school administrators who aren’t smart enough or brave enough to figure out when there’s an actual problem requiring a solution and when there’s nothing wrong.

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A greedy businessman is telling Barack Obama that he needs to quit attacking successful people who earn lots of money. The twist is that the “greedy” businessman is one of America’s most prominent black men.

Robert Johnson started from nothing and has built up an empire worth more than half a billion dollars. He doesn’t appreciate the attacks coming from Obama leveled at people — such as Johnson — who have earned their money. On Fox News Sunday, he had this to say:

“Well, I think the president has to recalibrate his message. You don’t get people to like you by attacking them or demeaning their success. You know, I grew up in a family of 10 kids, first one to go to college, and I’ve earned my success. I’ve earned my right to fly private if I choose to do so.

“And by attacking me it is not going to convince me that I should take a bigger hit because I happen to be wealthy. You know, it is the old — I think Ted and Fred and I we both sort of take the old Ethel Merman approach to life. I’ve tried poor and I tried rich and I like rich better. It doesn’t mean that I am a bad guy.

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In the 1953 movie, “The Wild One,” a girl asks Marlon Brando’s character, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” Johnny looks at her and deadpans, “Whadda you got?” I get the same feeling from many supporters of Occupy Wall Street. They’re angry about something, so any protest is as good as another.

I’ve made it clear that I’m opposed to government handing out taxpayer money — whether real money or fictitious money made up out of thin air by the Fed — to anybody, whether it’s individuals or business interests or other groups. I’ve strongly opposed every bailout of any company or industry. But the current Wall Street protests miss the root of what’s wrong. The problem isn’t on Wall Street. The problem is in a political system that claims the right to transfer money from any group of people to any other group.

If you’re going to protest against people who are being bailed out, you’re going to have to “take over” autoworker union halls and big farms and government-operated schools all over the country, among many others. I don’t have any special love for Wall Street bankers, but it’s irrational to pretend that they’re the root of the problem. This protest just diverts attention from where the real root is — a coercive state that claims moral authority to tell all of us what to do.

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