On its face, Occupy Wall Street looks and acts like a traditionally left-wing movement. The slogans and placards, the relative youth of the crowd as well as the general "idea" behind the movement, disrupt business as usual for the nation's financial elite, would seem to square the circle and firmly establish OWS as an outgrowth of the left.

But I don't think OWS is that at all. It is not the Left's "Tea Party" as some pundits and columnists have hoped for. In fact, it is decidedly non-partisan, something the Tea Party was not ever interested in. In fact, I expect, and sincerely hope, to see a left-right convergence around the message of OWS. And what is that message?

That the basic social contract between citizens and their government is broken. Ezra Klein, in the Washington Post, captured this truth about the movement more eloquently and concisely than any protestor ever could:

The organizers of Occupy Wall Street are fighting to upend the system. But what gives their movement the potential for power and potency is the masses who just want the system to work the way they were promised it would work. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans are really struggling. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans want a revolution. It’s that 99 percent of Americans sense that the fundamental bargain of our economy -- work hard, play by the rules, get ahead -- has been broken, and they want to see it restored.

"Work hard, play by the rules, get ahead." That is what's broken. 

Does that sound like the ramblings of an anti-globalization masked and anonymous rabblerouser storming the ramparts? Or does that sound like the cry of someone who simply wants to know that their country remains, and will remain, a place where they can flourish?

But because our country is so divided, we've become expert at talking past one another, segregated no longer by color or class, but by our partisan tribes, trapped in our own media environments with mini-universes of biased-reportage and commentary. (Fox vs CNN, Maddow vs. Rush, etc) The effect of this is that any time one "side" starts to get traction on something whether it be a poll, or an upcoming vote, its opponents immediately start discounting it, undermining it. 

This is exactly what has happened with conservatives and OWS. We so feared that OWS had some very real and honest goals about it, we figured that we couldn't participate because it didn't emerge directly from our ranks. This is not true.

I am not calling OWS a conservative movement; that I think would be a bridge too far. But I do believe that if conservatives dig deep, they may be surprised to discover that many of the legitimate issues animating OWS and motivating people who have never given a thought in their life to protesting anything, to finally, strip away their life long apathy (that thing we all used to gripe about in the 90's if you don't remember, now the problem is we care too much apparently), are issues that make sense to us as well.

So, can OWS appeal to conservatives?

I believe it already does. To wit: let me point you towards a poll that FOX NEWS, yes, that Fox News conducted on its website today. They found that 70% of those polled, presumably Fox News viewers, actually SUPPORTED Occupy Wall Street. Shocked? Don't be.

And what did Fox do?

They immediately took it down. Why? Because a real convergence between right and left, between purists on both sides who do realize that if they are ever, EVER, to make the structural changes our society so desperately needs, poses a threat to institutions like Fox and CNN and all the other status quo coagulants that oil the gears of our broken society.

But if we devolve into that same old binary thinking: those knuckle dragging tea partiers, those tree-hugging socialists, than we'll be giving Wall Street, the bloated and inefficent Federal Government and all the other sectors of our country that benefit from keeping us divided and apart another chance to take our country away from US. You and I. Left and Right. People.