Right's Response to Occupy Wall Street: 'We Are the 53%'

The conservative response to Occupy Wall Street is here, in the form of a Tumblr called "We Are the 53%." Referring to the 53% of Americans who pay federal income taxes, the blog is a direct counter to the Occupiers' similar "We Are the 99%" site and operates on the assumption that the Occupiers are among the other 46%. Conceived by RedState.org founder and CNN correspondent Erick Erickson, the Tumblr frequently features messages like, "Suck it up you whiners," and conveys a sense of pride in paying taxes—an interesting message coming from conservatives, who are traditionally not fans of forking over money to Uncle Sam, notes the Washington Post.

But a co-founder of the Tumblr says that paying taxes is simply "the responsible thing to do," and that whether or not taxes are too high is another question entirely. Over on Gawker, Max Read finds the whole thing depressing. "What makes 'We Are the 53%' so heartbreaking isn't that its contributors are enormous jerks—it's that so many of them could just as easily be writing in to 'We Are the 99%,'" he writes. Contributors post stories about having no health insurance and barely affording rent, "but not as a cry for help or an indictment of a broken system. Here, it's a badge of pride. ... And if any of those problems are directly attributable to reckless, self-serving behavior on the part of enormous banking conglomerates, for God's sake don't blame them! You are the 53%!" (More We Are the 99% stories.)